1. College isn’t high school. If you managed to finesse your way through high school, staying up to all hours of the wee morning playing video games online, and you think you are going to continue this habit — forget it. You won’t make it. First of all, you need sleep to function in class. And second, the amount of study time required to get a good grade, especially in science technology, engineering and math (STEM) courses, exceeds anything you have attempted previously.

2. College requires sacrifice. Our campus is located in South Florida, a mile from the beach. While I have no problem with a student going to the beach for a few hours on the weekend, the fear of failure must loom larger than whatever it is your friends think is more important in the middle of the week than hitting the books. Learn to tell them “No” early on.

3. College requires time management. My assignments are date-sensitive; they open on a certain date and they close five days later. Once they’re closed that’s it — you’ll get a zero unless you have a valid excuse for missing a deadline.

4. College doesn’t give participation awards. In an era when everyone gets a trophy, sorry — you don’t get an award for simply showing up.

5. STEM courses require solving problems. My college physics teacher had a cartoon on his office door that showed a confused student explaining to his professor that he really understood the material, he just couldn’t do the problems. You cannot learn science by osmosis. Magic happens when the brain, eyes and hands all come together in beautiful synaptic choreography, guiding a pencil across a sheet of paper.

6. Put your cellphone away. When I went to college, there was no internet, no laptops and, of course, no cellphones. If we needed to look up a physical constant, we had the “CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics,” a tome that required two hands and a healthy back to lift. While the improvements in technology and instant access to information are largely positive for students, many are addicted to their cellphones and the instant gratification of likes on social media. If you want to impress your professors while succeeding in your coursework, put your cellphone away — at least during class — and learn how to use it as a study aid.

7. Date your books. Sorry, but as a freshman, you don’t have time to get involved with a boyfriend or a girlfriend let alone the emotional roller coaster that almost always accompanies these relationships. If you are serious about graduating with a degree, especially one in STEM, your love life can wait at least until you are an upperclassman.

8. Do every assignment, even the extra credit. Missed assignments become zeroes. And you never know when a few extra points will come in handy. More often than not, a student with a borderline grade would have been bumped up to the next letter had he or she just completed all of the assignments.

9. Don’t wait until it is too late to ask for additional help. Swallow your pride. College is hard. It is not an admission of intellectual weakness if you need to spend time with a peer tutor or come by the professor’s office for additional help. At Palm Beach Atlantic, we are a small enough university that I can offer generous office hours to reach out to struggling students. Take advantage.

10. Show me that you really care about my class. I go out of my way to help promising students who struggle with the material. However, if you frequently cut my class, blow off assignments and do none of the extra credit, don’t you dare come to my office in April sobbing, “What can I do to pass your class?” My response at that point will be, “Take it over.”

If you want to avoid just squeaking by, here’s your first assignment: Commit these suggestions to memory and put them into practice every day. You will be tested on them frequently throughout your next four years.

Gregory J. Rummo is a lecturer of chemistry in the School of Arts and Sciences at Palm Beach Atlantic University and an adjunct scholar at the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. He is the author of “The View from the Grass Roots,” “The View from the Grass Roots — Another Look,” and several other volumes in the series.

A well-rounded education must include religion from the start. Writing in “Taking Religion Seriously Across the Curriculum,” Warren A. Nord and Charles C. Haynes explain, “An elementary school curriculum that ignores religion gives students the false message that religion doesn’t matter to people — that we live in a religion-free world.”

“This is neither fair nor accurate,” the authors continue. “Silence about religion also denies students the promise of a good education. If they are to understand the world they live in, they must be exposed at an early age to the religious dimensions of society, history, literature, art and music. Without this foundation, they will be unprepared for the more complex and critical study of the upper grades.”

In July 1995, the Clinton administration issued a set of guidelines entitled, “Religious Expression in Public Schools.” (Later revised in 1998 to reflect the Supreme Court declaring the Religious Freedom Restoration Act unconstitutional.) The guidelines addressed topics such as student prayer and religious discussion, graduation prayer and baccalaureates, student assignments, religious literature, and the teaching of values.

This may shock those who assume the Bible is forbidden inside the public-school classroom, a misconception likely due to widespread misunderstanding about the separation of church and state.

Historically, public schools in America not only tolerated but encouraged religious practice. Students were allowed to pray and read their Bibles. Generations of children read from the New England Primer, a textbook of prayers and questions and answers taken directly from scripture.

Public schools also used McGuffey’s Readers, compiled by Dr. William H. McGuffey. Essays addressed such topics as God, heaven and the spiritual dimension of people. None of these were a cause for constitutional concern. From their publication in 1836 until 1920, they sold more than 122 million copies.

So here we are almost 30 years after the release of the religious expression guidelines. Why then don’t we see more teaching of the Bible and religion in public schools today?

There are several reasons.

Religion is viewed as controversial by many who see it as only generating conflict between church and state. This often results in frivolous litigation and ill will.

In many instances, the religious expression guidelines never filtered down from administrators to educators, parents and students. Consequently, most remain unaware of their existence, let alone of the breadth of religious freedom the Constitution permits in the classroom.

Also, many educators stubbornly resist the idea of incorporating religion into the public school curriculum. They believe that teaching about religious beliefs in any serious way somehow implies intellectual weakness or the acceptance of superstition.

“The roots of the problem are largely philosophical, a matter of worldview. Educators have come to adopt the view that our intellectual disciplines must be scientific, or at least secular,” write Nord and Haynes.

It still remains largely parents’ responsibility to inculcate their children with a belief system, teaching them about God in the home. Moses told the Jewish people: “Drill them [God’s Laws] into your children. Speak of them at home and abroad, whether you are busy or at rest” (Deuteronomy 6:7).

Nevertheless, if the public schools do nothing to teach religion or act openly hostile toward it, they are tearing down what is being built up in the home while painting a warped picture of the world.

Nord and Haynes conclude, “We teach students to think about the world in exclusively secular ways. This marginalizes religion intellectually. … The curriculum all but completely ignores religion as a live way of making sense of the world here and now.”

Students must be taught about a religious sense of the world here and now in which a living God is actively involved in the affairs of people. But this will never happen until educators are willing to accept the challenge.

Gregory J. Rummo, D.Min., M.S., M.B.A., is a lecturer of chemistry in the School of Arts and Sciences at Palm Beach Atlantic University and an adjunct scholar at the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.

College opened the door to everything else I have ever wanted to do with my life, including further studies in several different graduate programs and careers in both industry and academia.

I get it that college isn’t for everyone. Mike Rowe provides a valuable resource through his Mike Rowe Works Foundation for those who want to pursue a career without a four-year degree. And there are trade schools for those who’d rather build or fix things instead of designing them.

But for those of you who are considering college, let me encourage you to hold on to that dream. It will be worth it all in the end. And it’s not a waste of money, time or talent as some have bloviated.

You don’t have to go to an Ivy League school to be successful or achieve your dream. There are exceptional students in every college, just as there are short-cutters and cheaters. Hard work and integrity will be worth far more to a future employer, graduate school admissions committee or the college professor who writes you a stellar letter of recommendation, than the name of the institution appearing on your diploma.

There are public community colleges and smaller private universities that provide a good education — maybe better in some aspects, since class sizes tend to be smaller. And there are affordable degree programs online offered by accredited schools for the truly self-motivated who cannot attend a traditional day institution due to work schedules or family responsibilities.

I attended what was then a small, private Catholic college for my undergraduate degree and a larger, Catholic university where I earned one of my two graduate degrees.

My parents started saving money for my college education when I was still in elementary school. But that was during an era when their first house, a small Cape Cod in Yonkers, N.Y., cost them less than $6,000. (Yes! Six thousand dollars!) Inflation has inflated everything, not just college tuition.

My father, who had an M.A. from New York University and taught music in a public high school in the Bronx, told me that he’d pay my tuition, but anything beyond my undergraduate degree was on me. “Oh — and get a job to pay for your books,” he added.

For parents reading this column, I have several suggestions. Remember, anything worthwhile is worth the expense. Save money for your children’s future education. It’s never too early to start. Open a 529 college savings account.

Try to avoid student loans if at all possible, but if you are forced to go that route, do so with every intention of paying the loans back. To do otherwise is unethical and it sends the wrong message to your son or daughter by kindling a spirit of entitlement. Remember, nothing offered by the government is free. It just means someone else is paying for it.

Make your children get a job as early as they can legally work and have them save a portion of their income for their future college expenses. They’ll appreciate college much more if they have to work for it.

Most importantly, encourage your children to develop good study habits. Good study habits equal good grades, which in turn equal scholarships. This is by far the most effective way to reduce college costs.

Lastly, do your own homework. College can be a game-changer for your son or daughter. And maybe pay less attention to the media dissonance that asserts college is a waste of money, time and talent.

Gregory J. Rummo is a lecturer of chemistry at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach and a student at Knox Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale.