Your College Success Guide

Change of Heart

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Wed, 26 May 2010 19:28:00 +0000

In retrospect, I think calling it quits on this blog was a mistake. Perhaps it was a false sense of ennui, but I feel as though I may have more to contribute on this topic than I previously believed. I will soon be entering into an online Master's program and I expect that experience will provide me with considerable useful information to pass along to you. So, with renewed vigor, here's to your college success.

UConn Administrative Failure

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 16:21:00 +0000

In one of the least inspiring stories coming from the hallowed halls of academia recently, the University of Connecticut has denied prodigy Colin Carlson admission into class requiring three weeks of field study in Johanesburg, South Africa, reports ABC News. Read the full article here.

In most cases, I'd be inclined to agree that allowing a 13 year old to participate in field study research in Africa is a bad idea. However, in this case, the 13 year old question is double majoring in ecology and evolutionary biology and carrying a 3.9 GPA. Frankly, most college students in the 18-22 year old range can't manage that feat. Additionally, his mother agreed to accompany him, on her own dime, for the duration of the field study.

This demonstrates an important facet of college success that frequently gets glossed over. Colleges are administrated by human beings that can be completely irrational. What almost certainly happened here is someone looked at this kid and saw nothing but kid, instead of a stellar student excelling in two difficult fields of study. Now, if this had simply been the case of one person making a bad judgment, it would be understandable. However, this decision has apparently been backed by the higher ups at UConn, which is not understandable. It exposes a ugly and, apparently, pervasive flaw in the review process that this decision underwent.

The lesson to take out of this, for would be successful college students, is that sometimes the bureaucracy of a university setting is going to work against you. If it's important enough to you, fight it. If it's something you can live with, let it go.

As for UConn, your grade for this decision is an F.

Updates

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 02:33:00 +0000

So, I took most of this last week off from blogging. What I have been doing is finishing the first draft of my novel. Yep, I take my own advice and have been pursuing a personal dream. I've also been taking a type of time/personal management course to better balance my working/personal life. I can something of a workaholic if I let myself be and I find that, periodically, I have let my work life overrun all of my waking hours. Then I pull back, reassess, and start over. What does this have to do with college success? Nothing. This is about life success, which includes college, but also goes well beyond it. Habits like constant work and study can serve you very well as a college student, but can work against you badly once you're done. Don't be afraid to reevaluate what you are doing every once in a while. You may find that what you're doing is not leading you down the road to overall happiness, which is a kind of success not nearly enough of us achieve. So, today, here's not only to your college success, but to your life success.

Experiment Time

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 14:11:00 +0000

In an attempt to improve my blog and bring you a more useful and enjoyable experience here on Your College Success Guide, I'm trying out a new program. You can read about it below:

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

The best blogging techniques.
How to get traffic to your blog.
How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

Minor Pains

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:00:00 +0000

Of course, it all depends on your college, but lots of programs (at least in the lib arts/humanities areas) require that you do a minor. A minor can be an excellent experience that broadens your horizons and adds depth to your education. A minor can also be a nightmare.
My experience with a minor was the latter. At my college, the transcript issued for your major was produced on a completely different system than the the one for your minor. So, when I did a transcript review at the beginning of my senior year, to make sure my ducks were in a row, it told me my minor had been fulfilled. Then, a month into my final semester, I received a notice from the registrar's office that my minor had not been fulfilled and that I could not graduate. After my head threatened to explode a few times, I did my homework and figured out that I had racked up enough psychology credits to qualify for a minor.
Getting this all on record required a lot of work on my part. I had to fill out forms, have a meeting with a department head, and generally spent a lot of time I did not have getting it resolved. The interesting part is that that registrar's office had a general attitude that the whole thing was my fault. Which brings me around to my object lesson here: Make sure that you find out how your registrar's office processes minors. Then, make sure you have the classes you need to fulfill that minor. Failure to do so can mean spending an extra semester or two just to take a single class per semester to get your degree.
The other point I'd like to make is that you should choose a minor that both interests you and complements your major. For example, a history major might consider minoring in anthropology. An education major might think about minoring in psychology. A minor gives you a genuine opportunity to expand your skill set and beef up your resume. A minor can also give you the chance to pursue the thing you didn't dare have be your major, like Art or English. Just try to figure out a way to make that minor seem like it adds, rather than detracts, from your overall value in the field that you enter.

Tutoring

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:00:00 +0000

In my last post, I mentioned that I worked as a tutor as an undergraduate. It occurs to me that a lot of students will only go to see a tutor under threat of a failing grade in class. So, it seems that spending a little time talking about what tutors are and do might be worthwhile.
In short, a tutor is a person that the instructor feels has a good enough handle on the material that they can help other students to understand it. By and large, tutors are other students. This is not a hard and fast rule, some colleges and universities hire professional staff to handle tutoring duties, but typically you'll be dealing with another student.
So, what does a tutor do? A tutor, unlike the professor, is not there to teach you new material. They are there to clarify the material that has already been covered in class or material that should have preceded the class. For example, a tutor in a writing center might help a student to work through a problem in paper structure or to understand semicolon usages. Tutors might also look for patterns of errors. If, for example, you find yourself doing fine on tests, but your papers always get low grades, the tutor might go through one or two papers looking for a consistent problem. They aren't going to point out every example, but they will likely walk you through an one or two examples.
What doesn't a tutor do? Tutors are not there to hand out grades. Asking a tutor what they think you will get on a grade is pointless. The tutor isn't the instructor. You might as well be asking a classmate. More to the point, tutors are generally forbidden from offering an opinion about grades.
Tutors are not there to do your work for you. If you go to a tutor with an assignment you haven't begun, expecting them to do it, you'll be sadly disappointed. An especially patient and nice tutor might offer you some advice on the process of time management or working through that particular kind of assignment, but that's about it. In point of fact, when I was tutoring, I learned pretty quickly to not even carry a pen or pencil. I insisted that the students write everything. (My brother, who also tutored, gets a nod for that piece of insight.)
Of course, there is also the perceived stigma of going to a tutor. People don't want to ask for help. It's natural, but it's also foolish. A tutor is a resource, like the internet or a textbook. They still get paid, whether or not you make use of their services. The best advice I can offer to someone that is wavering about whether to go to a tutor is to ask yourself why you're wavering. If you're just not sure you actually need the help, but would be better off studying a little more, than study a little more. If you're worried about what your friends are going to say, I'd tell you to remember two things. First, tutors are generally forbidden from discussing the people they tutor with anyone. Second, your friends don't have to live with your grades, you do. In the long run, you're going to suffer for a bad grade on your transcript a lot more than your friends are going to suffer.

Test Anxiety

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:44:00 +0000

One of the ways that I supported myself when I was an undergraduate was by tutoring. Plenty of students would come in that needed genuine assistance with material, but almost as frequently, the students understood the material just fine. More often than not, the problem these students had was test anxiety. They would do the work and study hard, but when they test rolled around, they would blank out or panic. This wasn't confined just to just one subject either. I tutored psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy and I worked as a tutor in a writing center. This issue with text anxiety happened to students in all of these areas with about the same frequency. The exact causes of test anxiety are well beyond the scope of this blog and the expertise of this blogger, but dealing with test anxiety can be a cornerstone of achieving college success. Fortunately, Penn State University has put together an excellent and extensive guide to dealing with and overcoming test anxiety.
You can check out their guide here: Test Taking and Test Anxiety
Here's to your college success.

Stress

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:30:00 +0000

Just a quick post today. Stress is one of the things that goes hand in hand with the college experience. Finding ways to manage stress is critical to college success. So, with that in mind, here's an easy exercise you can do to help manage stress right at your desk.

Close your eyes and slowly take three deep breaths. Listen to the sound of your own breathing. If it sounds strained, it means you're probably holding a lot of tension in your upper body. Keep your eyes closed and take three more deep breaths. With each breath in, imagine your body filling up with warm, clean water. On each breath out, imagine the water running out of your body, taking some stress with it. I like to imagine my stress as being a muddy color. It makes it easier to imagine the water carrying it away. Repeat the exercise two or three times to really get the full benefit.

Hope this helps to reduce some of your stress. Here's to your college success.

Spring Break

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 02:11:00 +0000

So, it's spring break around here, which brings up a relatively important subject: travel and safety. Lots of college students go home on spring break to catch up on sleep, family time and, let's face it, laundry. However, just as many head out to more exotic locales, such as the Florida Keys and other beach destinations. Spring break can be a lot of fun, but every year some college students got robbed, raped or become the victim of other crimes. So, if you're heading out on spring break, here's a few tips to help you there and back again.

1) Let People Know Your Itinerary
Sure, you may not want your parents to know the exact details of your spring break adventure, but make sure someone you trust knows where you're going and when you're supposed to get there. Arrange call-ins with people at pre-determined times, such as on departure and arrival and periodically throughout your stay there. Here's the most important part, actually make those calls.

2)Don't carry lots of cash
You may very well have saved up a chuck of change to take with you on the trip, but don't flash it around. Flashing a wad of cash makes your a target for muggers, scam artists and pick-pockets. Carry only what you expect you will need from day to day. Get yourself some traveler's checks. They may be a pain, but they're harder to spend if their stolen and can frequently be replaced. A pre-paid credit card with a finite amount on it is also a good choice. If it's lost or stolen, it limits the damage.

3)Don't gas up at poorly lit gas stations
If you're driving to your destination, don't stop at a sleazy looking gas station or hotel/diner/or any other business for that matter, unless you have to do so. Try to stick with well-lit, chain stores you are familiar with or ones that look well maintained.

4)Employ the buddy system
It may seem like a good idea to wander off with some hot guy or hot girl, but it isn't. Use the buddy system. Go out with a specific person. Before leaving with anyone, introduce the new guy/girl to your buddy and make it clear that mutual calls are expected later that evening. Being easily identifiable makes would be evil-doers a lot more cautious.

5) Be nice to the local cops
Wherever you are going, understand that while spring break may be a great time for you, it's a horrible week for local law enforcement there. The population swells, crime rates spike and it all lands in their laps. If a cop shows up asking questions, just answer them honestly. If you haven't done anything remarkably stupid, you'll probably get off with nothing more than a verbal warning. If you try to play tough with cops that are already having a bad week, they'll probably haul you in just to teach you a lesson. So, be nice to local law enforcement.

Other than that, enjoy your spring break!

Work Smarter

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:06:00 +0000

One key to college success is working smarter, rather than always working harder. You'll have plenty of opportunities to work hard, but you have to make your opportunities to work smart.

1) Figure out when you're most productive

Everyone has their productive periods. For me, I find that I'm a lot more productive with writing and assignments first thing in the morning and at night. Other people find they are more productive in the middle of the day. Track your productivity for a while and see when you get the most done.

2) Set up your class schedule to accommodate your productivity

Of course, you can't control when classes are offered, but if you have a choice, schedule your classes for times when you are less productive. Listening to a lecture, taking notes and asking the occasional question is fairly non-intensive work. Sitting down and getting things done takes some ambition. Don't hamstring yourself by scheduling your classes during the periods of the day when you get the most work done. Then you have no choice but work when you're lethargic, which is a recipe for disaster.

3) Accountability Buddy

If you find that you're easily distracted, get yourself an accountability buddy. This is a friend or classmate that you get to serve as your Jiminy Cricket. Their job is to ask you whether or not you're working on your terms paper, doing your homework or studying. Use your human capacity for shame to your own advantage. Unless you're a chronic liar, you'll get your work done just to avoid the moral dilemma.

4) Get Help If You Need It

A lot of students flat out refuse to go to a tutor or an instructor when they are having trouble. Pride is important. It can keep you going when you would otherwise quit. Pride can also make your life harder. When it comes to your grades, check your ego at the door. You don't get points at college for being too proud to find a way to understand the material. Tutors and instructors get paid whether you go to them or not. Make them earn their money. After all, your tuition is being used to help pay them.

Remember, you're the only person that is completely devoted to how you do at college. Your friends, parents, and even your instructors may care how you do, but they have their own lives. It's up to you to set yourself to do as well as you can. Here's to your college success.

Faxes

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:30:00 +0000

The vast majority of college related paperwork can be handled via the mail or online these days, but every once in a while students find themselves needing to send out a fax. While some homes still have them, the steady replacement of traditional, landline phones with cellular phones have made fax machines less common. Now, reason would dictate that a college or university would provide a method for students to send the occasional fax. This is not always the case, which means that you need alternatives.
UPS and FedEx both provide fax services from their store locations. Copy shops will also frequently provide fax services. If you don't live near one of those, you can take advantage of online services like FaxZero, that will let you fax .doc and PDF files directly from internet. The service is free for up to two faxes a day. If that doesn't strike your fancy, or you have to fax a form you filled out by hand, many banks send faxes out for a small fee. So, do not despair if you college isn't helpful on the faxing front. Here's to your college success.

Managing Relationships

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 16:00:00 +0000

College offers people a lot of opportunities to get into relationships and to screw up the relationships they have. It's kind of the nature of the beast when you cram several thousand hormonal, inexperienced members of the opposite sex into a tightly confined area. Managing a relationship at college can be extremely difficult. You're confronting a lot of new responsibilities. You have to be responsible enough to get to class, do your homework, maybe juggle working a job in as well. Now throwing a potential emotional powder-keg into the mix can be the proverbial straw. So, how does one manage a relationship while still in college. (Be advised that I'm talking in generalities here. No advice is or can be applicable to every individual situation.)

1. Be realistic with the amount you expect to spend together. This applies equally to men and women. There's a lot going on and you can't realistically spend 30 hours a week together every week. There will be midterms and finals and breaks that take you away from one another. This is not to mention extracurricular activities likes sports, clubs and jobs.

2. Don't sweat hearing about the other person's exes. Colleges are closed communities. The odds of both hearing about and bumping into someone's ex are actually pretty high. It's the risk you take while you're dating in college. Moreover, there's a pretty good chance your significant other is going to bump into an ex. Unless you have a really good reason to think that there is something shady going on, assume there isn't.

3. Be conscious of the fact that you are not the only relationship that your significant other has. Your significant other has friends and family that expect to spend time with them, just like you. Also be aware that the times your significant other spends with them isn't always going to be convenient for you. This is not to say you could come second every time. If you're coming up second behind friends and family every single time, then it's time to have a long talk or move on.

4. Understand that no matter what you think your heart is telling you, your significant other is not perfect. Your significant other is nowhere even close to perfect. Don't put that expectation on them and the certain disappoint you will feel on yourself. They have flaws and when your hormones calm down, those flaws will annoy you. When that starts to happen, you can either decide that the other person's flaws are more than you can handle or not bad enough to warrant breaking up.

5. If your relationship does end, it is not the end of the world. You're in college. You are absolutely surrounded by eligible, single people. Don't limit your vision unnecessarily. If a relationship ends, feel bad for a while and then move on.

Who Wants To Be Smarter

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:01:00 +0000

(Note: this is not a promotion for a specific brand or product. There are no affiliate links and I am not being compensated for this blog post.)

More importantly, who wouldn't want to be smarter? While it's not everything, intelligence does play a big role in your college success. The problem is that there's a lot of factors that play into your apparent intelligence. One of the big ones is being tired. When you're tired, as many college student perpetually are, it's a lot harder to focus on the work at hand. This means that your papers are less cogent and your ability to test is reduced. What if there something you could mix into some orange juice that would help to mitigate some of grogginess that goes along with being tired? Would you want it? Even if it tasted bad? If you're answer to these questions was yes, than you might want to look into something called Piracetam.
Piracetam is a nootropic, also called "smart drugs." Developed in Belgium in the 1960's, Piracetam boosts cognitive function and improves memory and learning. It is believed to also encourage enhanced communication between the two hemispheres of hte brain, essentially bringing more of your brain to bear on a task. While regulated in some parts of the world, it is available as a supplement in the U.S. and does not require a prescription. It can be purchased in a tablet form, as well as in bulk as a powder. Unlike so many medications, Piracetam does not cause toxicity. This means you can take large doses without fear that you're going to become ill or get hospitalized.
This is something that I have and do use personally. My personal experience with it is that it works as advertised. Some people report some mild side effects, like heads, anxiety or slight tremors, but I never experienced any of those side effects. The powder form, which I use, is extremely bitter and needs to be mixed in with some kind of liquid. I've mixed it with lots of different liquids, ranging from coffee to cranberry juice. So far, I'm going with the general consensus that the best thing to mix it with is orange juice. Orange juice seems to cover the bitterness better than anything else.
The best way that I can think to describe the effect is that it is like waking up...again. It generates an enhanced clarity and speed of thought, while my retention really did seem to improve. If you're one of those college students that is working all the time and never getting enough sleep, this may be something you'll want to check out. Come to think of it, anyone that wants improve memory, clarity and speed of thinking should probably check this out.

Administrative Nonsense and College Success

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:00:00 +0000

There are lots of great things to be said about college. You get to meet lots of new people and may make some very good friends. You can potentially discover the thing you want to devote your life to doing. Like most experiences, though, college can have some downsides. One big one is dealing with administrative offices like the financial aid office or the registrar's office.

The hard truth is that these office are frequently populated with student workers who are only marginally competent. Worse that than, these offices are also frequently populated by full time staff that only marginally competent. The reasons for this have never been entirely clear to me, but I know it's true. My long time girlfriend didn't have a single semester where some screw up in an administrative office didn't cost her weeks of stress.

It is both normal and frequent for these offices to lose paperwork, neglect to mail paperwork to lenders, and arbitrarily change information on transcripts that make them inaccurate. For example, in my final semester as an undergraduate, I was told that I would not be permitted to graduate because I had failed to fulfill a language requirement or a minor. Now, here's the kicker, my transcript indicated that I had in fact fulfilled my minor. Turns out that the program that kicked out transcripts for majors was not used to determine if minors had been fulfilled.

It all worked out in the end, I had taken enough classes to fulfill a psych minor, but I had to do all the work. I had to review every class I had taken, get a special form signed by a department head, and file paperwork with the registrar. This was on top of the more than full time class schedule I was doing, including an independent study, and the 40 hours a week that I was working.

The point here is that as a college student, you really need to be your own advocate. Office staff in these offices are prone to treating students like an inconvenience, which means that you will often be required to force them to do their jobs. So, here are some approaches you can take to minimize your the chances that you will be subject to the stresses of last minute paperwork filing.

1. Follow up on your grades - It's standard practice these days for grades to be posted in some online format following finals. Check and make sure that your grades have been posted.

2. Get copies of your transcripts - I recommend getting a copy of your transcript at least once a year and reviewing it. Make sure that all the classes you have taken are reflected on the transcript and that the grades are accurate. Most colleges require professors to keep records of grades for at least a year and frequently for two or three years.

3. Follow up on your loans - Do not trust that the Financial Aid office is doing what it is supposed to do. If you have filed paperwork and not heard anything more about it, check with the financial aid office. Make sure your paperwork is on record and has been filed with your lending bank.

4. Make sure your minor is being on file - Most colleges require that students declare a minor in the same way they declare a major. Make sure that the paperwork for your minor is on file and that you have a way to make sure you are or have filled all the requirements for it.

5. Do a review with your advisor - Going into your senior year, sit down with your advisor and make sure that everything is in order. Make sure you have or can take all the classes you need to graduate.

With luck, these tactics will help you to avoid any unnecessary stress as you move through the college experience. Next time, we'll be discussing more about how to time state mandated testing. Until then, here's to your college success.

Choosing College Classes, Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:00:00 +0000

So, in the last post, I promised to talk some more about choosing classes. One of the big things that comes up when students are picking classes is dealing with professors that you don't like. In a perfect world, you wouldn't have this problem. The reality is that barring some manner of miracle, you will have to take some classes with professors you don't like, don't see eye to eye with, or just don't understand.

The first thing you should be aiming for on this this issue is to minimize these situations. On a lot of campuses, the instructors will trade off teaching particular classes. This happens for lots of reasons you don't really need to worry about, but you can take advantage of it. With careful planning, you usually put off a class until the next semester or the following year to avoid a professor you can't stand.

Of course, you may bump into a situation where a class you need as prerequisite to another class you need is being taught by one of these professors. If you don't see eye to eye with the professor, you can consider taking the class as a pass/fail. In essence, you are giving up the right to receive a tradition A, B, C type grade and the benefits those confer to your GPA or QPA in return for increasing your chances of getting the credits you need. Pass/fail policies vary from campus to campus, but if they are available on your campus, you can ask you advisor or a professor you like about the details.

Something else to consider when choosing classes is making sure you'll have all the classes you need to graduate. Advisors are good about trying to make sure you'll get the classes you need, but you should take an active role in plotting your classes just to be sure. At smaller colleges it is common for key classes in a major to be offered only once every two years. You should make a point of finding out if this is the situation for any classes in your major. If so, be sure that you have arranged to have the necessary prerequisites out of the way in order to take those classes when they are offered.

One of the options available to students that is rarely taken advantage of is the independent study. An independent study is a class that is comprised of, usually, just one student. The student works one on one with an professor, usually in the student's major, and they design a course that focuses on a specific area in the subject matter of the major. These can be used to fill upper division credit requirements. The nice thing about independent studies is that they afford the student a chance to really focus in on an area that interests them.

I did an independent study as an undergraduate so I could spend a semester focusing on a concept in Nietzsche's philosophy that I found particularly interesting. I found that the course was very rewarding personally and that I learned a great deal.

In the next post, we'll be discussing the kinds of nightmares that some of the administrative offices can create for students. Until then, here's to your college success.

Choosing College Classes, Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 13:00:00 +0000

Choosing college classes is a bit of an exercise in judgment. One the one hand, a large number of your classes will be selected for you by state requirements for graduation. In most majors, however, you are given the opportunity to pick out electives. Some of them are so-called "free electives" and some are in major electives. The question is how to go about picking these electives.

There's probably a hundred theories about this, so I'll offer you mine. First of all, try to spread out your free electives as far as possible. You are going to have semesters where virtually every class you have is either a pre-requisite for a class you need or simply is a class you need. In semesters like those, I liked to use a free elective to pick a class about something unrelated to my major that I was interested in learning about. I took art classes, sociology classes, whatever was peaking my interest at the time. I found that these classes broke up the sense of responsibility that goes with semesters full of required classes.

In-major electives are a different animal. Generally, you'll get a certain number of in-major electives at the lower division level (freshman or sophormore level) and a certain number at the upper division level (junior and senior level). How you handle these is gong to depend largely on whether or not you plan on attending graduate school or plan to go directly into the workforce. If you are planning on attending graduate school, try to pick out classes that will help to prepare you for that and look good on a application. I took almost every upper division course that my department offered during my tenure as an undergrad. If you're heading into the workforce and you know what you want to do, take classes that will benefit you in that line of work. This may mean doing some research about the exact nature of the job you want, but it's time well spent.

Of course, there are other factors that go into picking classes, such as professors you don't like or independent studies, that will be covered next time. Until then, here's to your college success.

Choosing a Major

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 13:09:00 +0000

There's a lot of pressure these days to know what you want to major in the day you get to campus. The best advice I can offer is to stop panicking about it. Most college students go through at least one change in major over the course of their undergrad career. It is common to change majors three or four times. While an undergrad, I changed major 3 times. It's not the end of the world if you pick the wrong major and you don't have to pick yours first day at college.

The whole idea of a liberal arts education is to provide a broad view of the areas of study that are available. This is what general education requirements are all about. Many students are have undeclared majors until their sophomore year. They take gen ed classes and try to figure out what they enjoy or are passionate about doing. I started out as a network technology major and finished up with a degree in philosophy. You can't get much further apart than that.

When the time comes to declare a major, consider the classes that you enjoyed most. Think about whether you believe you would be happy working with that kind of material for five or ten years. I strongly recommend against talking to friends and family about it too extensively.

Your friends can't really guide you on this decision because they aren't in your head. They don't know what classes you really enjoyed or where you see yourself in ten years. Family is a little better, but frequently parents, usually out of a misguided desire to see their children in careers that will be financially stable, will try to steer their kids toward majors that are safe. This comes out of a protective instinct, but rarely reflects what said children are actually interested in doing.

The best advice I ever received about actually picking a major is to follow your passion. You'll be happier and almost certainly do better in your classes.

Saving Money on Textbooks

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:58:00 +0000

Textbooks are one of the biggest expenses a college student faces aside from tuition and room and board. Some books are more expensive than others. For example, by and large, books for Philosophy and English classes tend to be more or less reasonable. This stems in part from the fact that these are disciplines in which there is fairly static content. After all, Plato, Aristotle, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald aren't writing anything new. Textbooks for math and the sciences tend to be absolutely outrageous when you buy them at the bookstore. If it's a new edition, forget about it.

So, what can you do? As a first semester freshman, you're usually stuck buying what the bookstore has to offer. There's too many factors involved with trying to reduce costs. However, once you've been at college for a semester or two, there are some ways to cheat.

One of my favorite ways to get around the overpriced bookstore was to touch base with professors between semesters and simply ask them if they would be willing to tell me what books they plan on using for the class I have with them the next semester. In my experience, professors hold a dim view of the college bookstore system and are happy to provide you with titles, authors, edition numbers and, frequently, the ISBN number. With this information, you can generally find the textbooks you need either through amazon.com or half.com at a significant discount from the college bookstore price.

Some college bookstores are open a few weeks prior to the beginning of a semester (particularly the fall semester). If this is the case with your college and you live in the same town, you can simply go to the bookstore with pen and paper and write down the titles, authors, editions and ISBN numbers and order them online.

In many cases, the "new" edition of a book is almost identical to the old edition of a book. If you're on good terms with a professor, you can always contact them and ask if you will actually need the new edition of the textbook or if the previous edition will be sufficient. I've found that it's about a fifty-fifty split between instances where the old edition is fine and where the new edition is substantially different. The upshot is, if the old edition is ok, you can usually get it online for about one tenth the cost of a new edition.

As a measure of last resort, some student in the same major will schedule the same classes, split the cost of books and share them. I have seen it work, but I've also seen it fail. I recommend against this method. If you have a falling out with your friend or they have the textbook and decide to go on an unplanned trip, it can leave you holding the bag. It's usually better to pay the extra to get your own textbooks than to try to time manage co-ownership of a textbook.

Until next time, here's to your college success.

Odds and Ends

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:18:00 +0000

I'm sorry I haven't posted in the last day or so. I was wrapping up a stint of grand jury duty yesterday. I was glad to be able to participate in the legal process in a positive way. I am equally glad that it is over. Thing should be back on track tomorrow when we'll be talking about how to save some money on buying textbooks. Until then, here's to your college success

Academic Advisors and College Success

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 13:00:00 +0000

Most people don't give it much thought, but your academic advisor can play a pivotal role in your success or failure as college student. In the best case scenario, your advisor will be a professor in your major. This means they will know, inside and out, what you're going to need to graduate. Sometimes, this even happens.

Often, people wind up with advisors who are not instructors in their major. In situations like this, students can wind up taking classes they don't need and miss classes they do need. This can affect your GPA and your graduation date.

A good advisor can also help to direct you toward or away from particular instructors. Every college has professors that grade extremely hard or simply have no time for a student that is not majoring in those professors area. This can be especially problematic for students meeting general education requirements in math and the sciences, but it can happen in any department. An advisor with a bit of awareness will direct students away from the "difficult" instructors and toward instructors that are gearing their classes for non-majors and majors alike.

So, what should you do if you have an advisor that has been leading you astray? Most colleges will let you change your advisor on request. Ideally, find an instructor with whom you get along that is teaching in your major or the major you plan to take. Discuss the possibility with that instructor of having them be your advisor. Most professors are willing to take on a student to advise. They can guide you on the policies and procedures for changing advisors on your campus.

College Success and Alcohol

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 11:13:00 +0000

Here at Your College Success Guide, I try to be a realist. One of the realities of college is that many, not all mind you, but many college students are going to drink and some are going to drink a lot. I don't endorse this behavior or condemn it. I like my beer as much as the next person. However, drinking and college success frequently work against each other. For example, most of the people I knew that were freshman and drank frequently never made it to their junior year. Two years of college and no degree makes for an expensive party. So, as promised, here's why I recommend that if you are going to drink that you wait to do your drinking until Saturday.

There's a lot of temptation to go to parties or to the bar (if you're of age) on Friday night. The week is over and you want to blow off some steam. I get it. I really do. Everyone else feels the same way. The odds are good, though, that you will be assigned homework and reading on Fridays. The argument to go drinking on Friday is that you have the whole weekend to finish your assigned work. The argument falls apart if you wake up with a hangover on Saturday. If you have never tried to read fine print in a textbook or stare at a computer screen while hungover, I strongly advise against it. This essentially leave you Sunday to get your work done and it adds stress right before the week starts.

Now, if you can ante up and say no to drinking on Friday, here's a few of the benefits. Places like the library tend to be very quiet on Fridays. If you need to find some books for a paper, it's a great time to do it. If you live in the dorm, frequently your roommates will be gone for most of the night, leaving you with one less distraction. If you do homework on Friday and the next morning or afternoon if necessary, you will probably be finished with everything you have to get done for the entire weekend. Then, if you want to drink you can do it guilt free, responsibility free, and you have Sunday to recover if you drink a little too much.

In the next post, I'll be discussing how having the right academic advisor can make or break you college career. Until then, here's to your college success.

How to Get to Your Finals and Still Sleep

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:25:00 +0000

In the last blog, I discussed how changing yourself is harder than changing your surroundings, but that it's the internal changes that can make or break your college success. I also recommended that if you're going to work on changing yourself, you should start with showing up on time and working on your assigned reading and homework daily because it'll make your life and finals easier. Here's why.

Up until now, unless you worked during high school, your schedule has been forced on you by your parents, school, and coaches. Once you get to college, the only person who can make you show up is you. But, not showing up on time can hurt you in a thousand ways. Constantly showing up late or not at all makes you look bad to your professors. They'll think that you don't care, don't take your education seriously, and that you'll probably turn out to be a waste of their time. That perception of you is going to impact how they grade you and probably for the worse.

If you do show up on time, every day, the opposite will happen. Your professors will assume that you do care, do take your education seriously, and that you aren't going to be a waste of their time. They may not grade you any easier, but they might, and they certainly aren't going to grade you harder. They are also far more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt if you do miss class or need an extension. Beyond all of that, the numbers don't lie. Students that show up to every class or almost every class tend to score higher and have better retention of the material. Come on, you are there to learn (at least theoretically) and why not get the most out of it.

There are a couple of reasons you should work on your homework/assigned reading every day. To start with, the homework tends to be a lot easier if you do it while the class is still fairly fresh in your mind. The second reason is that, generally, you have a full day between classes. By doing your homework the same day it's assigned, you have the chance to track down a professor or tutor if you're having trouble with the material. This all tends to, again, lead to better retention of material and higher grades.

The really big reason to work on your assignments as you get them is this. A few weeks before the end of every semester, all across the nation (and probably the world) a strange thing happens on college campuses. Every student who has been coasting along and doing the bare minimum suddenly remembers they are at college. They also remember that there big tests at the end of every semester. They start cramming for finals and working to make up missed assignments. They miss sleep. Huge numbers of students start looking and acting like zombies. They're overtired and trying to learn. It's a no win situation.

For the student that has been consistently working throughout the semester, their workload may increase a bit, but it will be manageable. They won't be scrambling to learn everything in the last few weeks. They're main responsibility will be reviewing material they already know. This means that when the final does arrive, you can go in rested and confident in your knowledge of the material. You will stress less and probably do a lot better on your finals.

In the next blog, I'll be discussing why it's better to put off drinking until Saturday. Until then, here's to your college success.

Change and College Success

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:00:00 +0000

College is a time of many and large changes. For you, it may be your first experience with real power over how you spend your time and money. Your parents are no longer in the room next door. They may not even be in the state next door. Yet, for all the talk of change you're going to hear, most of the changes you will experience are external. It's a new environment, not a new you.

If you were good about doing your homework in high school, you'll probably be good about it at college. If you were lazy in high school, the new environment isn't going to change that about you. Those kinds of changes are a lot harder and take a lot longer than moving somewhere. Unfortunately, these kinds of changes are the ones you'll need to make if you want to achieve college success.

Making it through four or five years of classes isn't really something you can half-ass, at least not if you want to get a job when you're done. It takes some focus and some discipline. The real trick, if you need to alter how you handle responsibilities, is not to do it all at once.

If you want to change some things about yourself, just pick one to start with and work on it every day for one month. It takes around 27 days to form new habits. Once you have your new habit though, it's yours to keep forever. Then, move on to the next thing.

My recommendation is to start with doing your homework/assigned reading daily and showing up on time. These are two of the biggest stumbling blocks for a lot of otherwise talented college students. In my next blog, I'll talk about why working on these two things will not only make your short term life easier, but will make your finals a walk in the park compared to other students.

How Saying No Can Be Important

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:27:00 +0000

Nothing too long and drawn out here today. Most people are raised to be at least moderately polite. When college rolls along, this can translate into getting roped into events or activities you aren't really interested in attending because you don't want to be mean. Sometimes, you have to say no and refuse to be pressured into attending someone else's pet activity.

Here's the reality, there is always going to be someone who wants to go and do something every night. I mean this literally. If you want to have a shot at a college success, it requires setting limits. You must make it clear to your friends and acquaintances that your free time is limited. They will either learn to accept your limits or go away and make room for people who have more respect for you goals.

Helpful tip: Practice saying no in the mirror. It'll make it easier when you have to do it for real. Here's to your college success.

How a Couple of Motivated College Kids Kicked NASA's @$$

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Dontigney) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:54:00 +0000

There are some people out there who believe that college, let along college success, is a pointless endeavor. So, if you hear that from someone, you can just tell them that a couple of college kids managed to out-think NASA. Using a little ingenuity and about $150 bucks, these guys managed to get a camera up high enough to shoot images of the curvature of the earth. How much do you think it cost NASA to get pictures like those? I don't know either, but I bet it was a heck of a lot more than $150.

You can read about the details of the story here.

Never let anyone tell you college isn't important. Here's to your college success.