<p>Definitely interesting topic. I know a lot of people who hated the first quarter/semester at college and ultimately wanted to move back home. But I think a lot of it has to do with the campus and specifically where the campus is located. SCU is definitely not in the most exciting of places, especially the southbay. Stanford is up the street and is a pretty decent area to hang out around and has an excellent campus, likewise with Berkeley, which is in a great college location. I think college is what you make of it and the people you surround yourself with and in the end the experience will be much different.</p>
<p>I live by a strict moral code and don’t do anything I consider immoral that most other college students do (drugs, drinking, premarital sex). I also make it a point to not associate with anyone that does drugs, advocates for the legalization of illegal narcotics or drinks underage frequently. This has obviously limited my “social experience”. Which I could care less about, that is why I went to the largest undergrad school in the country…lost in the crowd so to say. I have a couple of friends who share my views and I am fine with that. </p>
<p>I spend most days in the gym, doing classwork, going to classes and eating properly. I haven’t been involved with clubs yet, but I do intend to join one in particular in the fall that is preprofessional.</p>
<p>On weekends it’s gym, classwork, and watching football. My goal in college is simply to graduate quickly and move on to the profession where I really want to be. I might miss a “college experience” but if that is the cost of making responsible choices then so be it. I refuse to budge from the moral high ground.</p>
<p>I also spend a significant amount of time on non-college work directly tied to career exposure and preparation.</p>
<p>My only true complaints are the noise made by irresponsible students going well into the AM every night (which is why I’m online now), poor dietary options and a nightmare parking situation.</p>
<p>I came into college with the clear goals of getting a degree and career preparation; my college has been decent at meeting those goals so far. .</p>
<p>th3vault, seriously? </p>
<p>Are you happy?</p>
<p>OP and all: how are things going second semester?</p>
<p>funk: I am content. The point of college is to get a degree and get a career. My career requires that I stay clean with both activites and those who I associate with. I have to go through a background investiagtion and polygraph, so making responsible choices now will benefit me down the road.</p>
<p>Now with that said, I don’t expect anyone else to act as I do. There are only a few careers that have background/moral requirements as high as mine does, so I only expect others who wish to enter the same career path as me to act in the same manner.</p>
<p>I may come across as puritanical, but that is what is required of me. </p>
<p>To anyone else reading this who wishes to enter law enforcement or a military posistion that requires a top secret clearance, you would be wise to act as I do. There will be a background investigation and a polygraph. They will look at your residential history and people you associate with, they will not be pleased if they see drug users there. They have zero tolerance for drug use by applicants, generally if you ever use any hard drug, dealt any drug or used marijuana more than 10 times in your lifetime you will be permanently disqualified. Any criminal conviction, numerous traffic tickets, bad credit history, frequent underage drinking and you will be disqualified for at least 5 yrs. Also, dangerous drugs that may be technically legal will result in dsiqualification. Do not use salvia or adderall, you may be disqualified.</p>
<p>There will be a 30 page packet that you will have to fill out about your background, and they will look very closely at how responsible you were in college. You might be forgiven for minor issues in high school due to youth, but they expect you to be mature and responsible in college and will look very closely at the decisions made.</p>
<p>Different career tracks have different levels of tolerance for “having fun” in college. </p>
<p>Overall, yes I am happy. I would rather work hard for 4 yrs and go into a career I will enjoy than have fun for 4 yrs and be forced into a career I won’t enjoy.</p>
<p>Remember college is only 4 years, your career will be at least 40. Make responsible choices now so that you can be doing what you want to be doing for the next 40 years.</p>
<p>Lemme guess… FBI? CIA? DEA? Secret Service? Just curious.</p>
<p>And I agree with vault to an extent. For instance I’m looking at joining the Air Force after college through ROTC. I’m not on a scholarship from them right now but if I do get one, I’ll have to be on pretty darn good behavior. I’m not gonna pass up the chance to fly jets or serve in the military as an officer so I can get ****faced at a party that I won’t remember.</p>
<p>I don’t think I was ever “illusioned” in the first place. I didn’t want to go to college, but my mom told me to just try a year, that I’ll love it, I’ll have freedom, blahblahblah. Here I am, a little more than halfway through the year and I still don’t think college is for me. For one thing, I hate living on campus. I guess the freedom’s fine and all, but my shyness and socially anxiety, coupled with depression which has lead to lack of eating has made it almost impossible for me to enjoy campus life. I’ve tried to make friends, but it’s just too difficult for me.</p>
<p>As for academics, well, I do like the work they give us as opposed to high school, but it all feels so pointless because I don’t know what I want to major in or even what I want to do with my life. Choosing classes this semester was like a chore because close to none of the classes interested me. Call me lazy or dumb or whatever. It’s just how I felt.</p>
<p>I did like the teachers I had first semester though. They were very nice, attentive and always available for help. They were probably the main reason why I cared about going to class every day and why I didn’t flunk out. We’ll see about this semester though…</p>
<p>Yeah, my problems have to do more with myself than the school. If nothing changes, I suppose I’ll continue my studies, but I’ll commute from home instead.</p>
<p>DCHurricane: USAF SF first, then Texas DPS. The moral standards are just as high for state/local law enforcement as they are for federal.</p>
<p>Barack Obama became editor at the Harvard Law Review, taught of the University of Chicago, and now is president.</p>
<p>He also has drank, smoked weed, and snorted cocaine. All while he was a teenager.</p>
<p>It’s not like all drugs make you ■■■■■■■■ the first time you use them.</p>
<p>oh god don’t do SF, I hear it’s awful. Standing around watching a plane for 10 hours. Nah, if it’s what you’re set on then go for it. Are you doing ROTC or OTS?</p>
<p>And they are, although the only agency I know of that (used) to disqualify even experimental use of weed was the DEA. Now they are a tiny bit more lenient.</p>
<p>“Different career tracks have different levels of tolerance for “having fun” in college.”</p>
<p>You can still have fun!</p>
<p>“I do intend to join one [club] in particular in the fall that is preprofessional.”</p>
<p>You should intend to join one that is fun too! You’re way too young to be a robot.</p>
<p>DCHurricane, that is only one portion of SF. I’m going to see how OTS looks in a yr or two with the force shaping. A few years ago they only considered engineering/hard science majors and those applying for rated posistions. Some ROTC detachments use that same standard when selecting candidates for POC and especially for handing out scholarships. If that doesn’t change, I’m looking at either enlist w/advanced rank or commission in a different branch. You should be okay if you want flight school, I am not eligible for that due to vision.</p>
<p>funk, I do have fun. It’s just not the same way most college students think of having fun.</p>
<p>Bookshelf, in most states lawyers are not held to moral standards as high as military/law enforcement/certain other civil service careers. However, there are a few states that have very stringent character investigations for lawyers.</p>
<p>The effects of drugs are not the problem so much as the fact that the applicant showed blatant disregard for the law.</p>
<p>I’m not in college but for the people who hate their experience:</p>
<ol>
<li>Did you research your schools thorougly beforehand? </li>
</ol>
<p>I crossed two schools: Fordham/Syracuse off my list because I heard about the type of people that go there- rich, snotty & artificial (dont quote me, students review). Even though its just a website, more than one person was saying this. Plus the location is bad for me too.</p>
<p>I choose UPitt and Duquesne as my top choices because I researched them THOROUGHLY. I check the websities for info that I may need, talk to current students, visited school & city etc. </p>
<p>Plus I believe in the saying that “college is what you make it.” I’m really outgoing and fun so I’m more likely to surround myself w/ similar people hence increasing the experience. High school is fun but college has got to be funner b/c of the freedom that I’ll have.</p>
<p>Plus, not to be rude, a few of the posters are social misfits and this was bound to happen. I dont drink or smoke and I dont have friends who do that but we have tons of fun. Fun comes in many forms so you can be free w/o messing with your moral standards.</p>
<p>Just want to know about your college selection process so I wont have the same problem next year. Thanks:)</p>
<p>I was not disillusioned by my first taste of college, but that probably had more to do with my expectations of college than anything else. I came into college prepared for the worst, although I hoped it would be fun, I just acknowledged that I might have a difficult time transitioning and making friends. Also, I realized that I was not going to be making best friends in the first week of school, no one gets that close over one week, and people who seem to be that close are just faking it.</p>
<p>On a note for a narrower group, people who are heading for top schools need to learn to dissociate their self worth from their academic prowess. We get it, you were the best person academically for all of your schooling up until this point and that may have become a big part of your personal identify. However, now you are not going to be the best at academics any more and that is ok. There are still plenty of opportunities to do stand out and you still have the ability to do well in school, but you can no longer pride yourself on being better than everyone else, something that many bright HS students do. I have watched some people struggle with this.</p>
<p>On a more positive note, bear in mind that you too were chosen to attend the school. Don’t be intimidate by other’s intelligence, odds are they are equally impressed by how smart you are. Even though you may no longer think you are that smart, you still are.</p>
<p>I think my initial expectations for college were much higher than I assumed and in the beginning I found myself disliking a lot of the culture in college, but as time went on, meeting new friends and doing things I’ve wouldn’t have done before made it so worth it. I started to accept what college was and enjoy the time I have here.</p>
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<p>I find it stranger still that so many people in America actually believe that the students who go to the top ranked schools are automatically the most intelligent.</p>
<p>I’d go further but I will just leave it at that.</p>
<p>People who study only to get good grades on paper are very similar to robots(I would know; I am one of them). Robots very rarely come up with new ideas and change society as a whole.</p>
<p>Why even bother with the claim made about drugs and alcohol?</p>
<p>We saw in the 1930’s when Prohibition ended that there really wasn’t any point in trying to enforce laws that would never truly be passed.</p>
<p>Humanity is nothing more than a slightly more sophisticated form of monkey; and College is nothing more than a bunch of semi-trained monkeys.</p>
<p>^ I would rather be a semi-trained, sophisticated monkey than an actual monkey.</p>
<p>People who only study to get good grades are rather robotic, yes. But that’s WHY the top universities don’t make selections based only on GPA and test scores. If you don’t demonstrate to an Ivy League school that you get good grades for some reason other than seeing a 4.0 on your report card, you’re not very likely to get in.</p>
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<p>This shows that American society cares very little about what you did in College as far as capitalism is concerned.</p>
<p>Isn’t he suppose to be saving the Economy…oh snap.</p>
<p>Maybe he should he studied a little more in undergrad. But that doesn’t even matter, he still got into Harvard Law with a 2.0-3.3 GPA.</p>
<p>Now that I think about it, this is one of the reasons why America is going toward this trend.</p>