Freshman Cheat Sheet
By Julie Gordon
ILLUSTRATION BY IAN BYERS (WWW.IANBYERS.COM)
HEY STUPID! STILL CAN’T FIGURE OUT THIS COLLEGE THING? CO-ED DOLES OUT SAGE ADVICE FOR THE CLUELESS COLLEGE NEWBIES
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astering the art of beer pong was easy. Ten cups on each side of the table, two balls and a helluva lot of beer. But the “Introduction to Geology” class that was supposedly “Rocks for Jocks”? You never were that good at baseball (or science, for that matter). Welcome to second semester freshman year, the best time to take a look at the “mistakes” you’ve made (or are hoping to prevent) and make sure you don’t kill the rest of your academic career. Whether you got less than stellar grades in the fall or have no idea how to choose a major, there’s a road to recovery straight ahead.
Drop classes if you think you might fail. Most schools give you a few weeks to drop a course before getting a “W” (Withdrawl) on your transcript. If you’ve passed the deadline for dropping and think you’re going to fail, take the “W.” It’s easier to explain to a potential employer or grad school why you withdrew from a class (“personal reasons” is always a great excuse; “pathologically flatulent” is funnier but less effective) than why you failed.
Don’t study in your room. Even you don’t believe that you can concentrate in a room with Instant Messenger, the stereo blaring, your roommate screaming on the phone with his girlfriend and the X-Box calling your name. Head over the library or study lounge, alone or with a study pal. Art history is not a good elective. Go to a few museums, talk about Van Gogh and hook up with hottie pretentious chicks. Easy, right? No. Your Art History professor will show slides of artwork and expect you to memorize the artist, date and significance of the piece. If you’re an art fanatic this is great, but if you’re not (like 99.9 percent of us), avoid this class at all costs. Stop screwing around. Senior Jenna Stefanik went from academic probation to the Dean's List at the University of Connecticut. If she can make that big of a leap, there's definitely hope for you. Just start going to class already! You absorb a surprising amount of material if you’re actually in the classroom. To study for an exam, read over your class notes and supplement them with readings. Don’t read every word in the book, only main concepts and what your professor emphasizes.
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MOST SCHOOLS GIVE YOU A FEW WEEKS TO DROP A COURSE ...
Take your general requirements ASAP. There’s nothing worse than being the only second-semester senior in an “Intro to Political Science” lecture. Get those general requirements out of the way quickly, especially if you haven’t declared your major yet and aren’t bogged down with those requirements.
Don’t take more than the normal course load. Since you know it’s tough to balance class and your social life, why make things harder than they have to be? If the average course load at your university is 15 credits, take 15 credits. You can always take a class later at a community college (which is usually cheap and easy, like your mom) if you’re worried about not graduating on time. Justin Koser, who graduated with a degree in computer science from Cornell University in May, says he probably should not have pushed himself so hard at school. If a computer science major at an Ivy League institution had trouble with an extra course, imagine what it'd be like for the rest of us.
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Try out classes before you take them. University of Colorado senior Josh Ortega suggests signing up for 18 or 21 credits at the beginning of the semester. You should try all classes out, he points out, and then drop the ones you don’t like. “What the class looks like in the registration book may not be what it’s really like,” he says.
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