I went into college very blindly. Since I was the oldest in the family, I didn't have any older brothers or sisters who could tell me what to expect when I got there. The whole thing was very much a shock to my system and I don't think that I ever quite got over it. So, here are a few things I would have like to have been told before starting this step toward adulthood:
1. You will rarely spend more than four hours a day in class.
This absolutely blew my mind after I had set my schedule at pre-registration. After 10 years of being in class six hours a day (1st and 2nd grades were shorter days), I thought I had done something wrong. Mom explained that I was supposed to spend that extra time each day studying. I still felt like something was wrong. It took me a while to get used to a two-hour lunch on Monday, Wednesdays and Friday and no classes after 12pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. My second semester my Freshman year, I had no classes on Thursdays. I used those days to work on my research papers at the last minute.
2. There is no such thing as a Perfect Attendance Award in college.
Very few professors took attendance while I was at Eastern New Mexico University. At least, this was true of the smaller classes. The large lecture classes always sent around an attendance sheet around because they had no way of figuring out who was or was not in class. During my second semester my Freshman year, I experienced burn-out and had a two-week period in which I skipped most of my classes. When I decided to go back, it was like I hadn't missed anything. However, I took a Fortran class the summer before my senior year. I missed one day so that I could welcome my brother back from his trip to England. That was the day they covered sub-routines, which was a major portion of the final exam. I had straight A's up to that point, but missing that one day caused me to get a B for my final grade. As it turned out, I never needed Fortran once I graduated.
3. If you were an A and B student in high school without working really hard, you will be a B and C student in college if you do not properly adjust your study habits.
I was shocked at how many C's I got my Freshman year and how few A's I received. So were my parents. This was because I didn't really learn how to study in grade school. I rarely had homework. But I did get the hang of it later on. The first semester of my sophomore year was the first in which I didn't get any C's, but I only got one A. However, the second semester that year found me with nine A's and one B. (I was very overloaded that semester.) I still made the occasional C during my final two years. I read one person's strategy that involved studying two hours for every one hour of class. Even at the college I went to, that would have been overdoing it. As mentioned above, that meant I would have had to study eight hours for the four hours of class I had on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
However, there is another side of this coin: I knew a few students who made mostly C's in high school and became 4.0 students in college. Somehow, something clicked inside their heads about how to tackle academics that simply wasn't there in high school. It reminded me of that "Happy Days" episode in which Chachi is getting an athletic scholarship to college, but has a hard time handling the entrance exam. The coach calls him a "late academic bloomer" and tells him he can take the test later. The coach then sends in a ringer to take the test for him. While that coach was being deceptive, I do believe that being a "late academic bloomer" is something real and these students that I knew would qualify as evidence.
4. Do not expect to meet your future spouse at college.
This probably messed up my college social experience more than anything else. My parents had met in college, married and had me before they graduated. They expected me to do the same thing. I found it very difficult to consider whether or not I wanted to pursue certain girls as I felt compelled to view them as potential wives. And I don't think I was the only one who had this problem. There was a large number of upperclassmen who were married and started their families. I know now that I was not mature enough to become someone's husband in college. I actually didn't reach that level of maturity until I was around 35 years old. I may have mentioned before that I had consciously made a decision to remain celibate until I was married. I would have enjoyed more opportunities to make out with girls without some long-term form of commitment. However, I recently read a comment by this one woman who said she regretted getting a boyfriend fairly soon after going to college. She said that all she did all four years was hang around with her boyfriend and didn't spend any time developing actual friendships. She and the boyfriend broke up and she had no friends after college. I'm glad that didn't happen to me.
5. Even though "Animal House" came out four years before you went to college, all the fraternities are still trying to be like Delta House. (Please note this reference is dated for 1982.)
This is the main reason I avoided pledging a fraternity. I resolved at an early age to avoid alcohol. When I visited the fraternities during pre-registration, it seemed like all everyone wanted to do was drink beer and have sex with drunk girls and the fraternity members would look down on any pledge who did not wish to pursue these two activities. In the movie, the Omegas are made out to be the bad guys, but they had a level of sophistication that actually appealed to me, even though I abhorred the corruption that existed under their civilized facade. I had hoped that at least one of the fraternities would offer a more academic approach to the Greek system, but none of them did. Another issue was that even though all the fraternities said that none of them participated in hazing rituals, there was plenty of public humiliation going on among the pledges that I saw. The situation was so bad, that a group of students from my Freshman class tried to start their own fraternity. They really didn't want to go through the pledging process to join a club helmed by a bunch of alcoholics. They just wanted to be able to put the fraternity on their resumes.
6. College is large filter of every type of student you can imagine.
If you were the smartest student at your school, you're going to come across at least 20 people who were the smartest students in their school. If you were your school's top athlete, you're going to meet at least 20 people who were the best athletes at their schools. If you were the best actor or singer at your school, there will be at least 20 others just as talented, if not more so. If you were the class clown at your school, there will be at least 20 other students trying to cut up in class (and they will all somehow wind up in the same class at the same time). If it was a struggle to get yourself into those positions in high school, it's going to be even more of a challenge trying to crawl your way to the top. Everyone will be nipping at your heels, and you're probably going to lose.
7. Students who started college before you will not necessarily be gone when you become a senior.
This would prove to be a huge problem in the Theatre Department, which I will detail in a later post. When I went to college, it was about the time that a trend started in which students would start taking five or six years to complete their degree plans, as opposed to four, which had been normal for several generations. Thus, some students who should have moved on to the "real world" continued taking classes and were kind of taking up space. That would be space that I was expecting to slide into, but was constantly kept out of it by students who didn't know when they have overstayed their welcome and faculty who didn't do anything about it.
8. Do not look at college as the key to making a lot of money when you graduate.
I have to reflect on my college experience as a bridge to adulthood, not a path to riches. I majored in Radio/TV Communications and later added Theatre as a second major. Neither one of these were strong prospects for earning potential. My senior year, I took a job interviewing class. One of the professor's former students, who was about to graduate, came to the class to talk about her landing a job with a major accounting firm after a rigorous interview process. She said she was going to make $50,000 a year (and this was in 1985). After class, a few of us Radio/TV majors were talking about this. One girl wondered if she had chosen the right major. I wanted an interesting job. That's why I chose the majors I did. I just figured the higher paying slots would come later in life. I was very wrong, but I still have no reqrets about not being a Business major.
9. You are not obligated to spend all four years at the college you choose.
While I was aware that it is not uncommon for students to switch schools when attending college, I really didn't see how making that change would benefit me. I would have had to go out of state to find a better school than the one I was at for Radio/TV and out of state tuition would have been a lot more. I didn't realize at the time that my parents actually could have afforded to send me out of state. (Among other things, Mom had made it seem like it was going to be a hardship on them for me to attend Ball State University in Muncie, IN.) Out of all the things on this list, this is the main thing I needed to know about college. I will go more into detail about that when discussing the issues I had with the Radio/TV department.
10. If you were a geek in high school, any attempts to change the type of person you are when you start college will likely fail.
I came to college with a full head of steam. I was determined to drop my old personality and become the type of person people would look up to. In my mind, this would be possible because there were only about four other students from my senior class in Artesia who would be attending ENMU and fortunately, they were all people I was able to tolerate. I wanted to be considered important. And this actually worked for the first few days when I was getting to know everyone. However, without even realizing it, I regressed into my old habits and the person I really was became very apparent to everyone I met. Because of my Asperger Syndrome, I could not just completely change myself overnight. The only way I could have fixed this is by talking a lot less. That would have been the best course of action. It's too late now.
I would like to point out that these tidbits of information are not necessarily applicable to every student about to enter college. I just wish I had known them when I was 17 years old.
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