Because entering college doesn’t come with an instruction manual like your iPad does, I thought I would impart a few quick-but-vital lessons to the newly arrived crop of UF students. Due to space limitations, I have broken this into a two-part series for this week and the next.
1)Spend a year living in the dorms.
This is a simple solution to combat the difficulties of adjusting to college life. I spent my first two nights at UF in Graham Hall for orientation and swore I would never live in a dorm, so I got an apartment, and that was that. However, I didn’t realize until much later that I only made it harder for myself to adjust to the college setting. The fact of the matter is, you just moved away from home where your mom and dad provided literally everything you needed to function normally, and now you have to do it all on your own. The best way to handle this situation is to live with a hundred other people who are in the same boat. Sure, it’s like spending a year at summer camp with no privacy and debatable personal space boundaries, but it’s only one year. One year where you can live with people who will be as maladjusted to adult society as you, to whom you can ask important but embarrassing questions like, “How do I do laundry?” or “What is this personal hygiene thing everyone speaks so highly of?”
2)Take time learning how to make inexpensive, healthy meals.
High school teaches you advanced lessons in algebraic formulae, biologic cycles, human interaction and language composition – but not how to complete the timeless and relatively simple task of cooking yourself a healthy and cost-conscious meal. It used to, but someone high up decided that home economics was less important than AP Advanced Critical Computational Analysis, or something like that and nixed it from the curriculum. So, you’re whisked off to college with cosmic problem-solving abilities and yet no concept of how to prepare a decent meal for yourself. Ramen is no better for you than eating sod off the dorm’s lawn and, unfortunately Panda Express does not offer a balanced nutrition program. So take a weekend, spend time with mom or dad and apply your advanced computational analysis skills at memorizing cheap and simple college meals that can be prepared with primitive cooking utensils (i.e. anything you will find in the dorm).
3)Study with a purpose
Welcome to college, where classes centralize on many topics inapplicable to any part of functioning society beyond the college campus itself, and professors love to have you read books upon books to make an often simple point that could be summed up in about three to five paragraphs. In high school, the government was paying for you to expand your knowledge foundation to be a functioning part of society. Now you are paying for a piece of paper to get you that corner office with the private bathroom and the fake fichus plant. So, don’t forget that your number one purpose in studying is to pass the class. This means, you need to do what it takes to perform well on exams and essays. Often, exams and essays focus on specific portions of the readings, footnotes and an overall grasp of the subject. Therefore, you are not reading to understand every nuance of the author’s thought on the subject. You must sift through seemingly endless amounts of material to find the part of the text the teacher has hinted at in class a dozen times. If this means changing your study habit, then do it. The ability to prioritize your study time will be your greatest tool.
Bryan Griffin is a first-year law student. Part two of this column will appear in next Thursday’s Alligator.
