If only I had known.......

Parents Forum
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<p>........A frequent lament of seniors who took three years to learn how to be successful in college.</p>

<p>Very insightful advice. I'm going to save this and give it to my son when he starts college next fall. I thought some of you would be interested as well. </p>

<p><a href="http://www2.stockton.edu/xfactor/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www2.stockton.edu/xfactor/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Thank you. It's filed in my bookmarks under "Stuff for Son." I'll give it to him on his birthday, which will precede his leaving us for college by about three months.</p>

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<p>ditto what citymomteacher said.</p>

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<p>The author mentions a book which I found immensely helpful -- "Making the Most of College: Students Speak Their Minds" by Richard Light. I thought the book was useful in a different way than the poupular "Letting Go" but I hardly see it mentioned. The book has been out several years and was publicized in a mailing to Harvard parents
(Light is a Harvard professor).</p>

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<p>The article offers good advice. I am a mechanical engineering major and I've had my ups and downs. For my first two years of college I spent countless hours studying only to get a C average. At my new school studying lecture notes and assignments translates into good grades. But it is important to know that even with great preparation bad things can happen. In my strongest class this semester I started out with an A (91%) on the first exam. On the second exam I missed 28 points on one problem because I was following the problem-solving method to a different problem. That grade was 72%. On the third exam I got nervous because I had to restart an entire problem and rushed to finish it. I also made the same mistakes that I made in previous assignments but the prof failed to correct them (so I thought I was doing everything right). The third exam grade was 66%. A to C to D.....in the class that I understand more than any other class.</p>

<p>My message is that good study skills will work in the long-run but there may be times where you are having a bad day, get confused on a tricky problem, etc., and your grade will plummet. The key is to stay focused and work harder to ensure that bad things won't happen again. I was successful in doing that for another class, but not this one. You don't always win every battle in the war.</p>