The college experience!

[Rijuhn]

College and free time cannot co-exist. I guess they can if you are lazy and don't really care about college, but I definitely do. I care very much about my education and my future, so that means I'm going to have less free time for the next several months. I'm not freaking out about going back to college this year because I'm looking forward to it. I've grown so tired of staying home this whole summer, and becoming stale.

My mind has stagnated, and my body is just sick. I need to do something constructive and educational. A part of me wants to summer to continue, so I can keep on being a lazy-loaf. But the better part of me realizes that I should stop waiting for certain seasons to do certain things, and stop trying to cram my life into neat little chapters with happy endings. Just because it’s not summer break anymore doesn’t mean I can’t have fun.

Instead I truly realize that I need to make the most of each day, even if it seems like I only accomplished very little. I need to do what I can, when I can, instead of waiting for tomorrow. That's why I need to have responsibility pushed on me. I NEED to have schoolwork and homework. It’s because of work I am better able to relax and enjoy drawing more completely. I seem to have more passion when I have a deadline on my amount of free time.

To be honest, I seem to draw more when I have more work to do. It's when I have to work that I cherish play more than ever, because I know it's limited. All of my best works have come after hours of working and schooling.

So...let the education begin!

[Guardian]

I did some college time in NC. I was at the end of my 3rd year when I had to leave to go back to the Army. However, my school was interesting. It's designed for working adults, so we go to class one night a week (and the classes go from 5 - 9 weeks ... mostly 6 weeks) and meet for a study group another night of the week. Despite how crammed everything was, I still learned a lot. Being there was much better than high school! Of course, it helps if you're good at writing ...

[Orion]

Hm... college has left me with too much free time, and I love it. There seems to be nothing really hard about it... Most of my classes have been a breeze. This semester I only really have classes 2 days a week.

[Rainman]

My engineering class schedule this year will be fairly full probably compared to most. I've got class from about 9:00 am to about 4:00 on weekdays. I also have (hopefully) work study which I have no idea how much time that will take up. When I think about it though I probably will have about as much free time as I did in highschool with 8:00am-3:00pm classes and a demanding sports schedule. Also, I have a background in most of my classes. One of the best things though. I have no english which means much less research papers and reading assignments. It's not that I really hate english, but it's such a time consumer. Now all I have to do is study easy things like Calculus, physics and chemistry. :)

[ShadowTiger]

Augh, research papers. :sick: I really enjoy English, but only if taken in the right light. :shrug: I'll be commuting, so most of my day will be filled. Monday is my most hectic day, with Tuesdays and Thursdays having the next most crammed schedule. Wednesday, I'll only have two classes. Time to go out for pizza. Friday, I have nothing at all. (Yay, time to catch up on homework... and a very non-sarcastic attitude toward it as well.)

I think the worst parts will be the commute, and the research reports. >_< I don't know how you can all think that College doesn't give a lot of work. I mean, it's freaking college! @_@

[idontknow]

I'm sooo pumped for college! I'm gonna be a freshman and i can't wait! I ready to party it up. I know that college is more than that, but i dont really have to try at school. I've always done fairly well even without little effort. And although i know this is much different, i am sure i'll continue to study & what not, and, unlike some people i know, i'm am confident i'll be able to balance partying with studying.

i share similar feelings w/ BH4 w/ regards to summer though..i mean, i had a full-time job the whole summer, working at least 40 hrs per week, at a nursing home, mowing lawns, taking out the trash & stuff, but every time i'm off, rather than bothering to call friends, i simply pig out & chill on the couch.

Why is, by the way, that when summer rolls around, everyone seems to get soo excited to do stuff, and people are like, "oh yeah, we're gonna have a blast" and then it ends up that nobody ever even calls each other? its kinda sad. i have been to a few parties, but all in all, the summers been a bummer. (no rhyme intended ;))

[Cloral]

My college experience was probably most similar to Orion's. I actually had classes scheduled 4 or 5 days a week most of the time, but I had a lot of bad teachers and consequently didn't go too often. It just seemed like a waste of time to me if I wasn't going to get much out of going. So instead I'd just keep up on the reading and do the assigned homeworks - both of which generally gave me a better understanding of the material than the teacher ever could. I actually had one class that I only went to 3 times: first day, midterm, and final. The teacher was just that bad (which I knew because I had had him before).
It's sad, but most of the professors really don't care about teaching. They just see it as a nuisance, and that's why some classes are so bad. I had one teacher who did the teacher evals on a different day than usual in an effort to avoid getting reviews from the students for whom the class was going poorly (assuming rather correctly that these students wouldn't come on that day).

[ShadowTiger]

And you were actually allowed to do that, Cloral? How did it turn out?

[King Link]

Hopefully I'll be going to college next month (starting September 7), but there's no guarantee.

Right now, I want nothing more to go to college and continue my education. It's just another stage of life, I guess.

[Cloral]

And you were actually allowed to do that, Cloral? How did it turn out?
Over 3.7 GPA, got the job of my choice (game developer).
(one thing you have to remember is that many of the classes have hundreds of people, so very few of them take roll. The only ones I ever had that did were lab secions, some discussion sections (which are only once a week), and a few of the upper division CS classes in which there were often fewer than 30 students)

The important thing was that I didn't just blow off the classes like some of my friends did. I still kept up with the reading and did the assignments, so I learned the material. I just found that in many cases it wasn't worth while going to lecture since I wouldn't get anything out of going.
Which isn't to say that all the classes were bad. There were a number of classes that were interesting and I enjoyed going to. Networking 2 was a good example - the material was interesting, and the teacher did a good job. It is amazing how much of a difference it makes when the teacher is actually enthusiastic about teaching.

And of course its important to get out and have fun. Go to lots of parties. UCSB was a good school for that, as the nearby village of IV was basically a 20,000 student residence. On weekends, there were so many people wandering out on DP (the main party street) that the local pizza places simply refused to deliver there. And on Halloween there were so many people, DP turned into a friggin mosh pit. It was great fun to just go out there and see all the costumes people had. Last year a bunch of people got together and turned a truck or something into a pirate ship. One conversation (and yes I'm going off on a bit of a tangent) was funny: some guy yelled "take off your top" at a drunk girl on the 'ship'. She yelled back "take off yours". He promptly did, and yelled back "now you have to take yours off". "Oh s**t!" she muttered, and then as it was somehow now her duty to do so, she flashed us.
So uh, yeah. The most important thing in college is to have fun with it. When you're done you should have stories that are a hell of a lot better than that one.

[Orion]

The most important thing in college is to have fun with it. When you're done you should have stories that are a hell of a lot better than that one.

Amen to that.

[AlexMax]

Hm... college has left me with too much free time, and I love it. There seems to be nothing really hard about it... Most of my classes have been a breeze. This semester I only really have classes 2 days a week.

I have a similar experience, except I take 5-6 classess. The trick is to find good professors and manage your time correctly, so you can get equal parts homework and studying and fun time.

Once you got that figured out, you enjoy college. Not that you shouldn't take college seriously, but if you go through your entire college career being a bookworm and anti-social, you will regret it.

As long as you go to class, you should be fine. The temptation is great to skip class, but don't get into the habit, or else you'll always skip class. My second semester, I started skipping my computer science class because the professor was boring and I wasn't really learning much of anything. I still ended up with an A in that class because it was such an easy course , but it was a lesson in how hard it is to go back to class once you skip a few times. It ended up being hard for me to go back to class for tests and stuff because you're so used to being without the class. Don't start not going to class unless you are ABSOLUTELY POSATIVELY sure you konw the material already and you can keep up with assignemnets through out of class contacts. (I was lucky, some of my classmates lived next door to me)

[Cloral]

Yeah, I guess I should point out that I am not advocating doing what I did. As AlexMax said, it is a very hard habit to break.