What you wish you know as a first-semester freshman

<p>10characte</p>

<p>Know or knew?</p>

<p>I suppose you’ve never made a typo? ^^</p>

<p>Yes, you can stay out till 4am on a weeknight.
AND YES, it will have repercussions and bite you in the ass. </p>

<p>Books - read them. They’re not just furniture; but like no ****, read the books and study hard. You have to know the specifics now. </p>

<p>DON’T FORGET - Sparknotes still exists; just don’t become dependent on it or use it for papers.</p>

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<p>Lofting your bed definitely clears up a lot of space, but rolling out of bed instead of climbing down hurts… a lot.</p>

<p>It’s OK to talk to professors! Most of them don’t bite and actually are happy to help when you have questions. I also tried to sit at the front of the class so that I would stay awake better. I studied hard, but then made sure to take some time to goof off on the weekends.</p>

<p>Have fun!</p>

<p>“I suppose you’ve never made a typo? ^^”
I wasn’t attacking you, just curious because it could be 2 different questions.</p>

<p>I wish I had gotten involved freshman year. I am doing it this year, but I should of last.</p>

<p>Sasha isn’t joking. I just transferred in from a community college with a 3.8 GPA and 50+ credit hours. I was used to being the smartest person in almost all my classes. Now I’m below the class average in all my classes. They really do expect SO much more from you here than anywhere else. Find out when and where all free tutoring is and go every chance you get. Go to TA and prof office hours as well. This place can be brutal if you don’t stay on track.</p>

<p>“brutal” is quite the right word. Even “Introduction to Biology” involves the Krebs Cycle and Calvin Cycle. That’s not intro at all lol.</p>

<p>Im a non traditional student that was a business owner for 12 years before starting college.</p>

<p>The main thing that i wished i would have known is how difficult lower level classes are in college. As anyone who has gone to college for a few years will tell you, the hardest classes are your freshman level classes. Many of these classes are introduction and general type survey classes. Often you can skip these classes and move into junior and senior level classes which are much easier. </p>

<p>A second thing that i have found important is to find out which professors are easy and which are not. A professor that has taught for less than 10 years is usually very difficult as opposed to a professor that has been teaching a long time. I personally never take profs that are new and there is no way i will take a class from some TA who has never taught before. These people are usually not only ignorant of proper pedagogy but are harsh with the grades and do not mind failing lots of people.</p>

<p>The final thing that i wish i had known was how important it is to make friends with your professors. This will absolutely not happen in a class over 20 students, so look for schools and sections where the class size is small. Be nice to the prof and you will find that many will bend over backwards to help you. This is the main thing that i believe has helped me only make 2 B’s while in college and keep my GPA over 3.9 with a little over 90 hours of credit.</p>

<p>^You are amazing! Those advice are really true!</p>

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<p>I’m pretty sure most universities intro courses go into that much detail in Cell Resp/Photosynthesis since most HS AP classes cover it as well.</p>

<p>Don’t live on campus. Its the worse decison I’ve ever made. If you plan to have a social life, living on campus will adversely effect both that and your academic career. There’s no such thing as hanging out for a little while then going to study, you either need to make up your mind to go to West Campus and be social or stay on campus and study. They’re too far to be able to practically float between the two. I would also go greek or join a similar organization, even if you join the “worst” house at UT, its a way to meet people. My friends that arent in an organization like that literally do nothing except watch Netflix. This is too big of a school to hope to meet likeminded people in freshman survey courses, you need to shrink it down yourself.</p>

<p>Uhm, I’m not sure if living on campus would adversely affect your academic career. In fact, I think that would probably have more of the opposite effect.</p>

<p>As for social life, if you find the right, compatible group of people to be with, you could be what I would consider “social”. In fact, I know several groups of people that live on campus that are so darn close-knit that you might as well call them a Greek organization. It’s kind of hard to explain; you just “gravitate” towards the right sort of people. After that, it really depends on your group dynamics as to what you do and how often you hang out.</p>

<p>As a freshman, if you’re serious about grades, it might not be the best idea to go Greek, especially if you don’t have a good feel on how well you can handle your courseload. I personally attended rush with a good friend of mine for a couple of fraternities, but they didn’t really suit my tastes (I’m more of a nerdy, non-committal type of guy).</p>

<p>Living on campus doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t have a social life, but living off-campus doesn’t necessarily guarantee you it either. Those extremes don’t really exist. Obviously your social life is what you make it out to be and depends on how assertive you are. If you consider regular partying to be an essential part of your social life, then perhaps living off-campus would be more conducive to that. If you just want to go out bowling or watching movies with close friends every so often, then living on-campus would be equally good for that.</p>

<p>People who live on campus tend to have higher GPAs.
Usually because they are close to campus resources such as libraries, food, and classes.</p>