Academic lesson:
It is hard not to take advantage of all the new freedoms that come with freshman year. In high school, if you missed class, there would be repercussions with your attendance office, teachers, and possibly your guardians. Yet, now you can miss any class you want, create your own curfew, and make your own schedule. It is important not to let these freedoms become distractions, as it is easy to lose track of how to prioritize and organize your time. Not only showing up to class but showing up on time is necessary for every student. Getting a good night’s rest, eating before class, and completing your assignments are some of the best ways to guarantee that you will show up promptly and prepared. It is vital to keep your schedule on track so that you know when your classes are and what assignments you have due for them. Although your parents won’t necessarily get a call if you skip out on a class or don’t do an assignment, many professors are very strict regarding punctuality and attendance. Most courses will allow you to miss four to five classes before bringing the concern of your absences to an advisor. Four to five days may seem like nothing over the course of fifteen weeks, but it is essential to remember that missing two days is the equivalent of missing one week of class. There will be days when you just do not want to go to class, and on rare occasions, a break is good for rejuvenating your mental health. However, in the long run, managing your time in a way that allows you to be prepared and punctual will help eliminate a lot of college stress.
Social lesson:
Developing a routine and figuring out how you want to live your life as a new college student can be very difficult.For some it’s hard even to develop a proper balance between going out and staying in. For example it’s a Thursday night and your friends are begging you to go out but you have an assignment due the next morning that you haven’t finished yet. What do you do? You don’t want to miss out on the so-called fun college experience but you also don’t want to go down a bad academic path and get bad grades. That’s where timing and a little bit of routine can go a long way. If you know that you’re the type of person who wants to go out at the end of the week, it would be extremely beneficial to try and get your schoolwork done early. Something that can help is setting time aside to get work done and really committing to an assignment once you start. It’s easy to become overwhelmed at school and nobody wants that to happen. College also isn’t all about going out and partying on the weekends. Although that can be fun if you’re interested in that kind of thing, there are also a lot of on campus activities that you can get involved in to keep yourself occupied during the week. You don’t have to be a varsity athlete to play a sport, there are clubs, intramurals or even just getting a few friends together to play a game for a little bit. If sports are not your thing, there is an abundance of clubs you could join or even jobs to get if you want to make some money. The biggest realization a student can make is figuring out that the world is their oyster, they just have to crack into it.
Sports lesson:
As an athlete in college balancing your time along with your responsibilities as an athlete is a difficult thing to do. For me I’ve definitely struggled with this in my first couple of weeks as a student athlete. I have quickly realized the difference between the workload of a highschool athlete and a college athlete, however it is only scary if you let it be scary. There are plenty of ways to balance the most important however the most important is using your time wisely, this may seem easy but it can be rather difficult. Find the balance between time focused on school work and time focused on athletics and focused on your social life as a student athlete. This will take you a long way if you can figure out what aspect of college needs your attention and when they need it, and the decisions you make will greatly impact this. There is nothing like playing a sport for your school. The feeling of taking the field, the ice or the court while representing your university is one of the best feelings in the world as an athlete. Playing sports is one of the best ways to find people just like you at a university. When I arrived here just two months ago, I was nervous that I was going to have a hard time finding a group of people I can call friends. Once I met the rest of the hockey team, it felt like I was part of a family and I can tell that some of these relationships will last a lifetime. For non-athletes, sports are a great way to show pride in your school. Creating that feeling of community that comes with supporting your school’s sports team will make you much happier on campus.
