<p>Ok, so no one in my immediate family has been to college except my brother who is in community college.</p>
<p>Well, today I got accepted to UT! (University of Texas at Austin, which is a great uni!)</p>
<p>My concern though is about college readiness... Honestly, right now I do no more than 30 minutes of homework each day because that is all I have.. And have had forever! </p>
<p>I honestly have no clue what to expect at college. So, I guess I'm just trying to get some insight by reviewing your experiences.</p>
<p>So, here are some of my questions I have...</p>
<ol>
<li><p>How many hours per week do you devote to study?</p></li>
<li><p>Does most of your work consist of essays, or not?</p></li>
<li><p>Can you give me a vague explanation about a college final? Why do people like collapse when talking about them?</p></li>
<li><p>Taking notes is essential.. My problem though is I write slow and seem to forget what I'm writing.. Is this problematic? </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Idk... I just have a lot of questions, most of which are silly. I'm just a bit scared I suppose!</p>
<p>As a second semester freshmen i devote at least 2 hours a day to studying. I have essays due a couple times a month (up to 10 well written pages each). In my chemistry class it is essential to be fast a note taking, however most of my professors post their notes, overheads, lecture outlines, and powerpoints online.</p>
<p>In response to #3 it’s probably because they don’t review throughout the semester so suddenly they need to refresh or even relearn everything they’ve been taught. If you do a simple weekly cumulative review of things you’ve learned, I’d say you stand a better chance at not stressing out.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>How many hours per week do you devote to study?
I probably study about… 20-30 hours a week? Rough estimate since I study at weird times. About half of this time is actual homework.</p></li>
<li><p>Does most of your work consist of essays, or not?
Last semester, I had 3 essays total. This semester, I don’t think I’ll be writing a single essay, and I’m not sure I’ll be writing any more for the rest of college. As for lab reports, I write two a week and sometimes more than that.</p></li>
<li><p>Can you give me a vague explanation about a college final? Why do people like collapse when talking about them?
I don’t understand why people are collapsing after them. At my university, we get one day off after classes before exam time begins. (Most universities are nice and give you ACTUAL time off to study.) Our finals last about two hours each and are usually either essays or multiple choice and short answer. Usually for me, I’ll have 2 finals on the same day and the rest spread out. (This semester, I’ll have three on the same day.) Really not seeing what the big deal is so long as you keep up over the semester.</p></li>
<li><p>Taking notes is essential… My problem though is I write slow and seem to forget what I’m writing… Is this problematic?
Bring a tape recorder. It’ll take you twice as long to take notes (as you’ll have to go over them again), but it should help. Also, check if your professors post notes online. Plenty do.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I’m a second semester freshman too… 1st semester I only took 13 credits, I pretty much never studied until 2 weeks before Finals when I spent every waking moment studying lmao. I also managed to somehow get a 3.7 with skipping approximately 1/3 of my classes. I only read one of my 3 English book, by the end of the semester though I realized that I needed to read all of my books to get a good grade on the final so I read the two books I didn’t read in a week haha. I simply made sure to do all my assignments on time and my classes were a joke, I think I got really lucky with my GPA, I did learn that procrastinating wasnt a good idea…</p>
<p>This semester I’m taking 18 credits (not really sure how any body can maintain a 3.5+GPA with more credits tbh…), and my easiest class is harder than my hardest class last semester -.-. Basically I actually got to do work so I’ve set up a time-management system (something I think every good student does) and promised to never skip a class (still keeping this promise).</p>
<ol>
<li><p>How many hours per week do you devote to study?
I set aside two hours everyday (between 10-12AM) to study, I treat it as a class and make sure this time is spent well with no distractions. If I have any additional work I’ll do it on my own time, usually I do about an hour or two extra of studying everyday so approximately 3-4 hours of study a day. I doubt I ever study more than 25 hours/week though, I like going to the gym, socializing, going out and having a balanced life too much to study more than 25 hours/week.</p></li>
<li><p>Does most of your work consist of essays, or not?
no… I have to read 30-100 pages a day and I get several small writing assignments spread throughout the week(1 page assignments), do homework for the technical classes (science/maths) and understand the principle concepts and theories. Most of my classes are graded based on 4 big exams each consisting of around 25% of my overall grade. The only essay class (writing) is my English class, and I only got 2 small essays (1000 word papers) and one huge research paper (4000 words I think), this doesn’t include all the small assignments and quizzes given over the period of the semester.</p></li>
<li><p>Can you give me a vague explanation about a college final? Why do people like collapse when talking about them?
College finals are typically between 10-40% of your final grade, so they are pretty important which is probably why a lot of college students go crazy talking about them… Basically, a lot of students end up working so much more than they should have to as finals approach and in a lot of cases this doesn’t make up for the earlier procrastination throughout the semester so they still end up getting bad grades even though they feel mentally exhausted after all that studying.
I collapsed last semester because I realized at the last moment that I was not ready for them which is why towards the end of the semester I pretty much became a zombie and studied 10 hours a day just to catch up to everything I had missed (If I had a typical 16-18 credit schedule I very much doubt I would have been able to get a 3.7 this way). If you manage your time well early in the semester and throughout the semester, you should be much better prepared for finals.</p></li>
<li><p>Taking notes is essential… My problem though is I write slow and seem to forget what I’m writing… Is this problematic?
Yeah it is problematic haha. I’d have to disagree with atomicCafe in that I don’t think bringing a tape recorder to class would help in any way… The idea of taking notes is to decrease the amount of time you study, not increase it. Bring a laptop to non-technical classes (social sciences and English) since you can write much faster with it and can google topics your professor discusses, just don’t facebook or skype in class (or when studying too).
Note-taking is a skill that everybody should learn to do effectively, don’t take down everything the professor says and don’t bother trying to understand the fragmented terms or jargon presented, listen critically and note down the main points. What you want to do with notes is understand the larger picture, so that the smaller points and issues can be guessed or understood when coming across them. Oh yeah, always remember: the purpose of note-taking is to reduce the amount of time you spend studying! [Study</a> Hacks Blog Archive Why Most Students Don’t Understand the Real Goal of Note-Taking](<a href=“http://calnewport.com/blog/2007/08/09/why-most-students-dont-understand-the-real-goal-of-note-taking/]Study”>Why Most Students Don't Understand the Real Goal of Note-Taking - Cal Newport)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Congratulations! You have a fantastic opportunity and you must be thrilled. You should also make the best of it! I’m only going to answer the first question…Study an hour a day per class, outside of class time. If you do this right from the beginning, finals should be a breeze because you will have kept up. And, reward yourself by allowing yourself to do something fun, pick a time for this at the end of the day, IF you do the requisite amount of studying!
Good luck!</p>
<p>In addition to what everyone else has already said about finals, they also carry a lot of weight. In some cases, your final is worth half your grade. Plus, being the end of the semester, you know exactly what you need to get the grade you want. If you mess it up, there’s no next time to do better and pull your grade up. And all of your finals are within a week.</p>
<p>Wow, thanks for all the responses everyone! They have really helped me a lot… I’ve gained quite a lot of insight :)</p>
<p>I have a few more questions, if you guys don’t mind. </p>
<p>So, I plan to major in Sociology. Given that this is a BA program and not a BS, and a lot of it is theory/research based, I’m sure that essays will be most of what I do. Do the professors require lots of annotated bibliographies, and all of that? Or, do they just want nicely written essays and then a bibliography at the end?(with no annotation needed, etc.)</p>
<p>I guess I ask because I am still not all that good with annotated bibliographies and just want to know how most professors assign their essays and the criteria they want for them.</p>
<p>I’ve heard that the general rule for studying is you should match your class time in hours spent studying–i.e. if you’re taking 15 hours, you should also be spending about 15 hours/week on studying, homework, and whatnot.</p>
<p>For freshman year and probably a lot of sophomore year you’re just going to be completing the general ed. requirements of your school unless you’re in one of those specialization schools (which I don’t think UT-Austin is). So quit assuming all your work will be essays, although when they are assigned they will obviously be important. Also, this might be relevant to you, I’m taking intro to sociology as a gen.ed. course this semester and we have no essays at all, in fact, our grades are based solely on 4 exams, each consisting of 25% of our overall grade (our final exam is one of those 4 exams) obviously this could be very different from your school’s intro to sociology (I hope so because my professor is horrendously biased with liberal political views yet doesn’t endorse any use of technology in class… or anywhere tbh).</p>
<p>About the whole bibliography thing… It’s really simple and the professor should answer any questions you have (it is also very dependent on the professor, a lot of professor’s don’t care how a paper is written but some require a more formatted paper, I found this especially true in my compulsory college English courses), there’s different formats to follow each with their own simple formulas. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do the research, the research and gathering sources is the hardest and most important part of writing papers, learning how to use MLA or APA or whatever style you have to source in becomes a very easily solvable issue.</p>
<p>Every essay I’ve written has used an annotated bibliography, even from high school. Last time I wrote one with a bibliography just at the end was probably when I was 13 years old.</p>
<p>Thanks all for the responses! They have really helped, as I have been contemplating these things for a while but never asked. </p>
<p>CollegeBoss- Lol, I have heard that. When I told my Physics teacher, she said “You’re getting of Bachelor of Arts?” But, I like the degree because I would like to be a Social Worker and many agencies/organizations(including the State of Texas) hire social workers, even if they have a degree in Sociology instead of Social Work. Anyways, but I chose Sociology because I know that people with a Sociology degree can get into all different kinds of fields-of-work. From human resources, to advertising. </p>
<p>But, it’ll probably change. We’ll just have to wait and see!</p>