Do you feel it? The sights of overcrowded classrooms, the sounds of zipping bags ten minutes before class ends and the smells of caffeine paired with too much body spray.
If you do, then congrats, you’re a college student! I’m a believer that the first month is always the toughest one, but just like a good ole tootsie pop, there is actually an end to the adjustment cycle.
So, let’s invoke this publication’s status as “the assayer of student opinion,” and share my totally expert and not at all ‘winging it’ attitude by sharing tips on being a college student. You know that I’m most qualified for this considering that I have one full year of college behind me!
Consider this my tryout at being a life coach.
Read your syllabus
Sounds basic, but this step is really important. Your syllabus has all the information you need for your class. That includes test dates, rubrics, emails, and office numbers that work every now and then.
To quote my former psychology professor, if you have not read your syllabus, then my friend “you have sinned!” Of course, he’d use that verbiage to call students out for not reading their textbooks.
I won’t lecture you on reading though, your syllabus’s Artificial Intelligence section can already do that for you.
Talk to your professors
If you’re a freshman, or have just been incredibly lucky with class scheduling, you’re more than likely encountering what it’s like to be in lecture halls for the first time.
It’s fun at first. Lecture halls are cozy, spacious, there’s no assigned seating and it feels like you’re watching a movie, a very slow movie, but a movie, nonetheless.
Here’s the thing, your professor is not going to know you unless you introduce yourself. So, stick around after class and talk to your professor.
They’ll really appreciate this action. Just don’t ask them on the first day if there’s extra credit. Instead, you can make them your friend and then ask them for extra credit.
More than likely, it won’t work unless it’s in the syllabus, but hey, as my friend Nate says, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” He wasn’t talking about professors but there’s a connection.
Talk to students
Listen, I understand that college is the time to ‘lock in’ and unleash your inner academic weapon. But does doom scrolling through your phone while sitting alone with your headphones really constitute as ‘locking in?’
Oh, and as for the academic weapon part, that’s not being unleashed till finals week.
So, if you have the time, or in other words if you get off of TikTok, talk to other students! Make friends, and create a close group you can each lunch with, spill the tea, and cry over getting dumped on your second day… no? Just me?
Mingling in “serious” places is how I’ve made a majority of my college friends.
That counts for my job, clubs and classes. Just go up to people and be yourself.
After all, The Prospector sports editor and my good friend Kristian Hernandez said that when he met me, he thought “who is this tall guy with too much energy?” Now he gives me rides home, so I think I did something right.
College life will never be easy; every semester is a new challenge but it’s important to remember that rough patches can always be beaten.
So don’t let the nervousness of challenging courses, the late nights of textbook readings, the general smell of the Liberal Arts building get you down, or that one lunch date you went and thought went really well but then you just got ghosted bring you down, because all these factors are part of your investment into building up your future.
Just make sure there’s a shower in that future, preferably tomorrow.
No. Body spray doesn’t count.
Sebastian Perez-Navarro is the multimedia editor for The Prospector and can be reached at [email protected] or Instagram and X @sebastianpn8, and on LinkedIn @sebastianperez-navarro.
