Survival of the Fittest: The College Edition
By Linh Ngo
There are just some things in life that no one can understand until they are actually face to face with them. Personally for me, college was one of those things. I didn't understand the word "big" until I stepped onto the campus during a normal school day. The high school I graduated from was considered big and had over three thousand students, but yet I was still blown away by the new faces I kept running into at the University of Minnesota (U of M).
The first two weeks were the hardest for me, and it was during those first two weeks I started to think about how the average garbage man was not paid that badly. Luckily for me, before I threw in my towel and started looking for openings at BFI, I learned a few things that one must know in order to get through the first semester of college. These few things have been intimate enough to me for me to think of them as my personal survival code.
The first lesson of survival and probably the most important was an absolute shock to me when I came to its full realization: I had to actually work for my grade. Now that might not seem like much for someone else, but if one was in my shoes, that very thought alone would have been enough to push them over the brink and into a straightjacket. During my high school years, work was limited to doing homework five minutes before class and studying for a test during the test using the bottom of my shoe as my reference. Nowadays there is that small thing called academic dishonesty that prevents all that last minute studying. When advisers say that there must be at least three hours of study out of class per credit in class, they are not joking whatsoever. I was taking 17 credits my first semester assuming that all was fun and games. I didn't do much studying for the first week and by the second week I was terribly behind and frustrated. My TA in chemistry simply told me to study or drop the class. At that point I saw the light and started to study like I have never studied before, ignoring all the headaches that came with it.
Secondly, there are many "distractions" at the U that could potentially impede success in school. With about 80,000 or so students on campus there are bound to be many of the opposite sex. After the second week I learned an important lesson: keep your eyes where they belong, in your books. Also, try to stay clear of those social gatherings that contain activities that police love to know about. No sense in paying for legal matters and tuition at the same time now is there?
All in all, college can be a breeze if a person does one thing and only one thing: Take it seriously! Do not put off anything to the last minute. This is where a person needs to pay heed to that thing that high school teachers preached about day after day, good study habits. Remember to put in at least 2-3 hours of study time per credit out of class per week, or try to.
Last of all, if anyone ever pulls out the , "C'mon, everyone is doing it or gonna be there," ask them how they met all 80,000 people. College is meant to be a fun experience; the only problem is how a person has their fun. I have lots of fun doing well in school and knowing full well that when I return back to that minimum wage job in the summer, I can at least think of getting to a better place than BFI.
Linh Ngo Autobiographical Information: Currently enrolled as a freshman at the University of Minnesota double majoring in Microbiology and English and discovering the world outside of my home.
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