<p>I've made many mistakes in college. Don't repeat them. I know the logic of the situation tells you that you are right and i am wrong. But if this post convinces only one person to make a few better decisions, then it will have been a pretty decent 30 minutes of my life spent writting this.</p>
<p>Don't double major. It doesn't look that impressive to employers. The school will tell you that it does so you give them more money for summer courses, more money for going over the credit limit each semester, and more money in filing fees when you file for 2 degrees at graduation time. An employer wants to hire you to do one thing. Maybe it is chemistry, maybe it is electrical engineering, maybe it is journalism. But please don't kill yourself in college. I have friends who double majored in Forensic Science and Chemistry or FS and Bio. It is a pointless double major. It is like buying Macintosh apples at the grocery store and saying, "Mmm, but the apple pie i'm making would be soooooooo much better if i ALSO buy granny smith apples!" What is the point? Then there are the double majors in radically unrelated fields like Chemistry and Philosophy or Art History and English. It is totally fine to have interests outside your major. But no one is going to say, "We need a chemist to run the mass spectrometer, but we would also like them to have a fine appreciation for the writtings of Kant and Mills, but it might also be nice if they understand Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs." Your employer wants you for one job.</p>
<p>Give yourself free time. College is hardwork. Your day shouldn't be waking up at 7am, running to classes/labs, then running to a job, then to an internship, then do 3 or 4 extra curricular activities you signed up for because you think it will make you stand out to future employers. There is never enough time to do everything you will want to do, but please pace yourself.</p>
<p>Do not cram. It doesnt work, it never works. Anyone who tells you that it works for them is lying to themselves. My roommate insists that it works for her, but it doesn't, it never has, and it isn't going to start working. This is the way memory works. You read some stuff during the day and it is stored in short term memory, and then later in long term memory. When you sleep, and you get enough RE****L sleep, you wake up refreshed and you don't even realize that your brain finished hardwiring what you learned the other day. When you cram, you only ever end up retaining the last few things you crammed before going to sleep if you are lucky. Most of the time, you wake up and don't remember any more than you did yesterday. Study a little bit every day. It adds up. I assure you this works.</p>
<p>College shouldn't be a random decision, but you don't need to have a 10 year plan written in stone either. If you don't know what you want to major in, take a bunch of different courses, including ones you think will be hard and that you cannot do. I started off as an engineering major because i thought when you graduated high school you are supposed to know what you want to do with the rest of your life. I avoided any classes i thought would suck, like chemistry, i thought i couldn't do it. I transferred to a community college and got an associates in computer networking technology. This is a useless degree, but my time was far from wasted. On a whim, i took a chemistry course. That course was THE most fun thing i had done up to that point in my life, i'm annoyed i didn't take one earlier. I transferred to a university after community college and there i majored in chemistry. I am currently a grad student in boston studying more chemistry because i love it so much.</p>
<p>You don't need to be number 1 in high school to get into a good college. Most people over value the NAME of the institution they are at. A few people like to act pretentious at professional conferences and say, "Well, at Harvard or Stamford, we do things the proper way" Going to an Ivy League or a top 20 school doesn't make you awesome. Going to ANY university, studying your field, interacting with professors and maybe doing a research project, that makes you awesome. Employers aren't stupid. They don't look at a resume and say, "Wow, this guy went to Carnagie-Mellon, he is obviously a better programmer than this guy who went to UConn." I do know a few hiring managers personally, and they all say that when they get an applicant in an interview and they ask "why should i hire you?" and the responce is "because i went to a prestigous university" they just blew the interview.</p>
<p>Community College isn't for idiots. I went to community college, it was the best thing i did for myself. Don't write it off if you don't know what you want to do with your life just yet. Consider my career path as an example. I graduated 38 or 39 out of 79 in my high school. It was a small town school that almost lost accreditaion. We were a little famous in the area for going through no less than 4 town referendums on the budget every year because the school wanted new history text books and the tax payers thought that was a stupid thing to spend money on. I followed a girl i liked to a private university, only to hate my major. I tranferred after 2 years to a community college, where i discovered that i was good at, and loved chemistry, but not until the end of an unrelated program. I tranferred to a private university which had a chemistry program that kind of sucked. Being that college is what you choose to make of it, i did very well in the program. Northeastern University in Boston accepted me into their full time PhD program for Physical and Materials Chemistry.</p>
<p>Take your time in college, don't rush through in 3 years. Everyone i know who has rushed through in 3 years is miserable now.They didn't have as much fun as they could have, they missed out on opportunities you get once in your life. One of my friends got his Bio degree in 3 years and now is the resident director at a state college. Why? He has no idea what he wants to do with his life, so he is doing the only thing he knows how to do. Be an RA. Only now, he is the boss of the RAs. I guess that makes him a super RA or something.</p>
<p>Don't drunk email your professors. I've done this. It might be a funny story to tell to your friends when you are all still immature. But really, your professor doesn't want to read some whacked out email written with the worst grammar and spelling in the world about how you figured out how if you can stretch a wormhole at the speed of light, you can make a time corridor. The only thing this does is give them ammo for the Awkward Hallway Moment if they like you as a student, or, worst case scenario, if they hate you, it goes in letters of reccomendation that you exercise poor decision making ability from time to time.</p>
<p>Don't cheat. Ever. For any reason. There is NO situation you are going to be in where it is necessary, warrented, or accepted. Being that i am a grad student, they make us teach recitation sections. I fail people who cheat. I don't take off a letter grade and play the nice game of "well, its ok, i didn't kill your grade, but don't do it again" because that sends the signal "i can cheat and the reprocussions are still a higher grade than if i actually did the work." They out and out fail the course. Don't do this. It isn't worth it. I have had one parent contact me and thank me for what i did. Apparently their daughter made a habbit of cheating through high school and every time she was caught, she would cry to get out of it, and i was the first person to make her face reality.</p>
<p>Here is the success recipie for college. Take some courses to see what you like doing. Major in that area. Work hard, but don't kill yourself. At the end of 4 years you will have a degree you are proud of and hopefully a job opportunity lined up. The rest of course, that is up to you.</p>