For the incoming freshmen
For almost eight years in grade and high school, you are now at the stage of no turning back- the college life. Freshmen! That’s what they call you.
Okay, you might have heard different stories about tertiary education per se. When I was at your age, I think of college as a giant monster. Lots of homeworks. Mounting projects. Evil professors. Some say it’s boring. Others say it’s challenging.
But the truth is, college is no less than an ordinary life. You must know how to play the game. In basketball you play in teams of five. College is like that. You enjoin yourself with others. Your coach in basketball teaches you strategies, in college you have to find ways and means. At the end of the game, you win or loss but in college there is a lot of possibilities.
Just like you I thought of being a diligent student to get through college. But I discover that being diligent is a two-way process. For one, you can be fully diligent. This means less happy hours or totally out of it. At the campus you can find only few of them, if not, there’s just some. Those phony-tailed hair ladies embracing lots of books with their boys wearing eye-glasses, you call them nerds. Of course at the end of every semester they all pass.
And there’s a diligent but happy-go-lucky type. They party all night long but they find time to scan their notes and read their manuals. You can see them under the shed of a tree just having a good time with a rock-star wanna be serenading them with his guitar. But from time to time you find them serious about some paper works near a photocopy shop. Yes they also pass the semester and are contented with just 3.0.
That’s the way it is.
I chose to be the diligent and at the same time happy-go-lucky. You know why? I never enjoyed my high school years. As I stepped into the college, I promised to earn a degree but at the same time to enjoy the four years of it. The way I see it, you can never enjoy college if you stick your eyes to your books and bundles of papers. You have to learn how to party- college is a socialization stage, gain more friends and build your confidence by knowing different kinds of people. JUST DON’T DO DRUG SESSIONS!
Balance is the name of the game. While you are partying, you have to see to it that your homeworks are done and there’s a little grasp left in your brain for the exams the following morning. You don’t need to be really intelligent. I managed to listen carefully every class sessions. And there’s no need for me to study those at night because I am confident that I was able to comprehend today’s lectures. I only open my notes one-hour before the exam starts. That’s it.
I used to play Counter Strike then. Unlike the elementary and high school years, you will not be scolded by your professor if you do so during class hours. Skip-class they call it. But the professors only care for your exam results. The rest is all up to you. After playing computer games I will just photocopy my classmates’ notes.
You don’t need to be a saint to hurdle college. Enjoy it. At the same time be responsible to it.
cool.
yeah