A new class of freshmen will soon descend on colleges as the fall 2024 semester begins. As a college chemistry professor who has seen it all, I’d like to offer 10 suggestions that will help you survive your first year.
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.
