Picture a scenario all of us have experienced. We’re meeting someone for the first time. They ask what grade you’re in or what do you do, and you inform them your a college student at so-and-so. From that point, the next question is “What are you studying?”
Deciding a major in college is very important. Even high school juniors are pressured to have a career path lined up for themselves. Whether you are feeling pressured by your lack of preparation or just want some reassurance, here’s some tips for choosing your college major.
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Find your interests
What do you like to do in your spare time?
What are your favorite subjects?
Do you have a dream job?
These question will push you to where your interests lie. From there, you can start finding fields that suit your interests. There are surveys online that take your interests and show how many people in certain fields have similar interests.
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Play to your Strengths
Is there any subject you’ve really excelled at?
Do people constantly compliment you on certain activities?
Have you ever thought it would be easy doing a certain type of job?
If you’re good at something, make a career of it! Several type of unusual careers are sources of income (including blogging).
Do your research
If you’re going into computer science because it sounds cool, find out what you can about programming first. Think the medical field is the way to make a lot of money? See how your biology and chemistry classes are going. If you want to dedicate four years of your life to studying something, make sure it’s something you actually want to do.
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Don’t overthink it
If you find yourself enjoying some of your electives, don’t be afraid to branch out. You could take up a minor, or maybe a double major. And if you’re doubting your original choice of major, you’ve got some time to adjust. One in three college students change their majors at least once. One in ten change it twice or more.
In Summary
Your college major is an important decision to make. It is up to you to decide what you should study. Find your interests, play to your strengths, do your research, but don’t overthink your decision. It is up to you to decide what you want to major in. Just chart a course and sail on ahead!
College comes with expenses. Not just the tuition and board, but also the daily necessities. Because of this, most college students end up taking a job at least at some point in their college careers. Whether it be for income or the experience, if you’re in college, you’re probably going to get a job.
Every college has available on jobs on or near campus. Some will be available through work-study, and others will be open-market. While colleges usually try to make it easier for students to get jobs, it’s still a competitive environment that runs on first-come, first-served. And for those who worked minimum wage jobs in high-school, it’s a tradition to jobs that usually require more responsibilities.
If you’re new to finding a job, here’s a few tips:
Apply to as many places as you can
- Unless you have guaranteed spot on a job, you’ll need to keep your options open. You can always turn down a position if you get more than one, but remember to get at least one in the first place.
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It’s not about “what” you know. It’s about “who” you know.
- If you want a job in the library, find any excuse you can to talk the head librarian. Want to work for IT? Visit the IT office and talk to people. Want to work as a lab assistant? Find some science professors and talk to them. As long as they like what they see, you’ve got your foot in the door.
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Dress smart when being interviewed job
- Business casual is the dress code for a traditional job interview. If you’re squeezing in the interview between classes and don’t have time to change, don’t panic. Just wear something nicer than jeans and a t-shirt to make a good first impression.
If you’ve had a job before, here’s some differences you’ll want to note:
Job consistency
- While jobs in college are “seasonal”, they tend to keep their employees. Unless you burn down the building or lose some master keys, you should be able roll over most jobs you get in college for several semesters.
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Opportunities
- Work on a college campus usually leads to you talking to people in higher places, or those who are used to dealing with people with high potential. If you nail a job that relates to the industry you want to work in, do well, and you’ll have an excellent recommendation in life.
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Getting a job is almost a staple for your college career. You’ll get some cash. You’ll get some experience. And you may make some connection that will make your post-college climb a lot easier. Happy Hunting!
Alright, it’s winter break! Time to bring out the holiday cheer! Finals are finally over and family and fun await. It’s good to take a couple of days just to relax and get rid of this stress from the previous semester, but it’s also a good time to really double down and get a little bit of a head start on the coming semester. It doesn’t take that long, just a couple of hours out of your relaxing vacation. It will really help you in the long run before school starts again in the spring. So let’s get down to five ways to make your winter break more productive.
If you have your syllabus, read it.
A lot of professors are pretty on top of giving out syllabi before the semester begins. If you have one of those professors, start reading that syllabus immediately. Even if it’s just a preliminary one, it gives you a good idea of what books you need to get. Also, look for what assignments are going to be given and get a basic idea of how much studying you’re going to need to do for your classes.
A Planner
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This one is really up to how you schedule your day. Personally, I remember things better when I can write out my daily and weekly agendas. If you feel that this system works for you or you want to try it, go right ahead! Some people also find bullet journaling to be a big help in planning out and keeping track of their goals. Now’s the best time to get started!
Evaluate your study habits
You may or may not have gotten your grades back already, but really look back and see if you need to change anything about your study habits. Do you need to switch from paper to digital notes? If you were taking digital taking notes did you find yourself looking at social media lot? If your current note-taking method isn’t working for you, research a new one or change it up a bit. Try notebooks instead of binders, OneNote instead of Google Docs, or maybe a different system of highlighting. See what worked and didn’t work the previous semester and adjust as needed.
Wardrobe
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With the new season comes different temperatures and of course your look. Now is the perfect time to look around and see how you can change up your wardrobe a bit. Look around for different clothes and styles and find a few statement pieces to change it up for the new semester. Sometimes, all you need is a couple of pieces to go with your basics, something brightly-colored or a little more unique than what you wore last semester, to really look like a new you!
Hit up your Classmates
If you have some friends who are in a class with you, hit them up! Send a quick message for the holiday, and see how they’re doing. See about setting up a study group before you even start the class! It never hurts to ask.
So there you have it. Five ways you can make your winter break more productive. Let me know in the comments below if you have any other tips or have questions about the tips given. Be sure to follow us on social media and give us some feedback!
Eating is one of the most fundamental aspects of daily life. When you’re new to college, you’ll quickly find that your eating options come will be coming from one of these places.
The Cafeteria
If your college invests in its food, you’ll be able to consistently get good meals. Otherwise, you’re out of luck. It’ll provide some nutritional value, but it probably won’t be tasty or healthy.
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Local Restaurants and Takeout
While this depends on the area the college is located in, most of the time your high-quality meals will be coming from off-campus. Fortunately, local businesses tend to make themselves accessible to college students. Unfortunately, unless you’re in the heart of a big city, you better hope you like the kinds of food they provide, because you aren’t getting much else.
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Your Kitchen
This can include anything ready-to-eat you’ve stocked up or meals you’ve made yourself. Preparing your own food is usually the cheapest option, but the time, skill, and energy it takes to cook leaves many college students cooking nothing but ramen in their kitchens.
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Cafeteria food will get boring fast, and unless your budget can take restaurant and takeout options for the next four years, you’ll need to learn some basic cooking skills. But fear not! For the art of cooking for yourself is a simple three part process.
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Prepare
Find out what you want to be eating, and find recipes and ingredients for what you’ll be making. Sometimes you’ll need to substitute ingredients if you can’t find what you need. If you need to do that, make sure to look up the proper substitutions online.
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Follow
The instructions! I don’t care if you’re doing as simple as following a cake-mix recipe that has the instructions spelled out for you on the side of the box.
Follow the instructions as close as possible! If the instructions say one cup of warm water, get a one cup measure and make sure your tap water is running slightly higher than room temperature.
If you try to make a small cup of coffee with a huge mug of cold water, don’t be surprised when it doesn’t come out how you want it.
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Repeat
Practice.
Practice.
Practice.
They say practice makes perfect. While that’s not always entirely true, it’s a good motto when it comes to cooking. After you learn how to follow the instructions, it comes down to experience.
When you first start making, say, muffins. follow the recipe to the “T” for the first two or three times. After that, you’ll probably start transitioning to making it by memory.
Eventually, there’s a point where you won’t even have to use formal measurements. You’ll be able to add the ingredients and amounts by memory. Through sight, feel, and taste, you’ll know which ingredients to use to improve the batter.
If you’re feeling adventurous, you’ll start innovating. You’ll mix recipes, add new ingredients, experiment with different techniques.
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To Recap
Don’t be scared to try, and don’t be discouraged if the result doesn’t come out quite as you wanted on the first try. Cooking is an art, one that requires preparation, instruction, and practice. And in the next four years of your college career, you won’t be short on time.
For many college students, finals are leering over you. Some of you might have already taken it or are in the middle of them. The most important thing about finals is don’t stress. You probably already have prepared for this or have been preparing. Even if it isn’t last minute studying or an intense study session with your classmates, you have been studying throughout the entire semester and have been absorbing the knowledge from the beginning of the class.
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Of course, there might have been times where you weren’t quite been paying attention or were out of class that day. That’s fine. Those are the parts really study for and briefly go over before going into the testing area. However, stressing beforehand can lead to panicking, which definitely leads to test anxiety, which can really mess you up. It occupies a whole lot of brain power and keeps the adrenaline pumping which you don’t need.
Personally, I always have taken my studies and finals pretty seriously. I would study a month in advance, going over my notes and previous assignments sometimes redoing the ones I didn’t do too well on. I would also try to go over my previous tests and redo the questions I missed.
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One thing I learned was to always read comments that my professor is left on my test and essays. If your professor took the time to write it down it’s probably a good idea to read it. Those left me a lot of clues as to what they were looking for when they were grading. If you keep on top of those previous assignments and keep your professor’s notes in mind, then you should do pretty well on your test.
What you want to do is go over those topics you missed or that you don’t feel too confident about. If you do this you’re going to be much more relaxed because once you know that you’ve done the studying it’s all a matter of regurgitating it all on paper or typing it depending on what kind of test your professor gives. Just relax.
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Before the day of the exam make some time to just meditate, or lay down and breathe your body completely relaxed. After a few minutes, you can continue to relax, mentally go over your notes, or just put yourself on pause.
Make sure that you have all the materials that you will need the night before. Pencils, paper, eraser, extra pencils, etc. but make sure you pack them. That way, you just need do a quick once-over in the morning.
What acing an exam really boils down to is preparation. You do the work in advance and it kind of just all falls into place. You don’t have to worry too much about the next step if you have already prepared the steps before that. I wish you all the best!
It’s that time of the year again. Procrastinators and studious students alike quake as they await the appalling arrival of…
Finals
There’s an exam that you need to study for. There’s a paper you need to finish writing. But there’s almost no time to get it all done. You’re desperate, but don’t despair! All you need is an emergency study guide. In times like these you’ll need to take quick action, but as the old saying goes, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”.
Since we don’t want that to happen, let’s get you a plan.
Exams:
The first step to studying for an exam is knowing exactly what you need to study. To do that, you need to know what your professor will base the exam on. Depending on the professor, it will be based on one of three things:
- Textbook material
- Class exercises
- Homework
If you have a study guide, use it. If you don’t, you need to find out what your professor will be basing the exam. You can even ask him or her directly. Usually, professors will guide you to the material you need to review. They want you to learn, not fail. If your professor isn’t helpful, find someone who took the class before and ask them for advice.
Now, outline a plan. Chart out the units and chapters that the exam will cover. Then, break it down into categories and subcategories. Make notes of important information in the sub-categories—this is more useful for reading-intensive classes.
For STEM subjects, practice as many exercises as you can that relate to the material for the exam. It’s not just about knowing what to do; it’s being able to apply the knowledge to actually problems.
Finally, make sure you sleep and eat before the exam. Cramming all-nighters happens, but it’s good to have a few hours of sleep or even a power nap so you don’t sleep during the test. The timing and amount of sleep is up to you, but you’ll do better with some rest.
Eating, however, is non-negotiable. There’s nothing worse than dealing with a growling stomach when you have to sit down and remember everything you studied the night before. Eat something that will sustain you for the exam time, but avoid taking too much sugar or caffeine as it could affect your ability to think properly.
Sorry, Latte, you’ll have to wait.
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Papers:
“The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry,” (Steinbeck, 1937). These plans may include but are not limited to: writing the majority of your paper long before the due date. If you’re trying to cram most of your work into the last one or two nights before it’s due, you should already know, it’s probably not going to look pretty. That said, let’s try to make it look presentable.
Before you start writing, you should have:
- A basic outline
- Notes of crucial information
- Organized references and/or a bibliography
Even if you have to change something, which is almost guaranteed to happen, it’s better to plan first and change late than to have no plan at all.
Now comes the deceptively simple part, the physical writing. It sounds simple, just cram it all down in one go, right? Well, some people can sit in front of a screen and type hours on end. Others, after about half an hour or so, will find they have to use the bathroom. Or eat a granola bar. Or just walk around and get the blood pumping. By now, you should know which way of writing works for you.
Do it.
But don’t get lazy. Don’t stare at your screen typing, erasing, and retyping the same thing. If you’re doing that, you probably need a break. And when you’re taking breaks, try not to surf social media or sneak in a Youtube video while you’re doing so. Small breaks are to give your brain a chance to rest, not to give it something new to latch onto.
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You’ve got your plan.
Now, do your best!