How to Flourish in College

Hard work and careful planning go a long way

Education

HOW TO FLOURISH IN COLLEGE

Hard work and careful planning go a long way

Michael Creswell

Editors’ note: The fall semester has started! This essay, which we hope will be helpful to new college students and those who love and worry about them, is Part II of a three-part series. Part I, “How to Prepare Your Child for College,” is available here. Part III, “How to Apply to Graduate and Professional School,” will follow soon.

It’s a sad fact that not all students perform well in college. Moreover, many of them don’t know why they did poorly. This can be true for students who are the first in their family to go to college and have no one to turn to for guidance. Non-traditional learners—students who start college at age 25 or older or those who went to college previously but did not complete their degree—can also be unsure about how to succeed in college. What follows are recommendations to help all students avoid common mistakes and reach their full academic potential.

Attend class and do the reading

The first recommendation is fundamental: attend class regularly. Simply reading the book and attending class only on the day of the quiz or exam is unwise because the quizzes and exams often require knowledge of not just the readings, but the class lectures as well. This point leads to another recommendation: keep up with the readings. Unless you are taking an overload, or the professor has given the class an extra heavy reading load, or you are saddled with heavy outside responsibilities like holding down a job, there should be few obstacles to staying current. Failure to do the readings can lead to failure in the course.

Pay attention and take notes

While attending class regularly and keeping up with the readings are crucial, you must go a step further. You need to remain awake and attentive in class to earn a good grade. Daydreaming, doing homework for another course, surfing the internet, or listening to music are all, needless to say, unhelpful. To ensure that you remember what was said in class, take notes. Good note taking is essential for academic success. If you happen to miss class, get notes from a classmate. Finally, just as with a sporting event, sitting in the back row puts you far away from the action and increases the odds you will miss something important. Stay intellectually engaged!

Participate

Engagement can, and should, take the form of oral participation. Raise your hand if the professor asks the class a question, though only if you have something useful to say. If you’ve been attending class regularly, staying attentive, and keeping up with the readings, you should have little difficulty finding something useful to say. And even if you don’t know the answer, there’s nothing wrong with making a well-reasoned, educated guess.

You should ask questions if the professor says something you don’t understand. Don’t be embarrassed to ask. Chances are if you don’t understand something, one or more of your classmates are in the same boat.

If you just can’t seem to participate actively for whatever reason, at least stay attentive. Whatever you do, don’t withdraw into activities unrelated to class. Sleeping, eating, game playing, surfing the internet, and carrying on excessive side-conversations in class can put you in the professor’s bad graces. For these reasons, it would also be prudent to switch off your cell phone and put away your outside reading material once class begins. Creating distractions in class hurts you and everybody else.

Read the syllabus

One of the first things to do when considering enrolling in a certain course is to read the syllabus carefully. Few things irk professors more than students who ask questions that have already been answered in the syllabus. If you have a simple question about the course schedule, grading, the midterm exam date, or the how many papers the course requires, check the syllabus before asking.

Prepare strategically for exams and papers

Although it’s important to follow these recommendations, your efforts will go for naught unless you can communicate what you have learned. The first step is to make sure that you understand and answer exam questions or paper prompts that are posed to you. How well written your work is doesn’t matter if you fail to respond directly to the question or prompt—a poor grade will be the result.

Before you write an essay for an exam or a paper, take time to make an outline that helps you organize your thoughts. After you have outlined the structure of your essay, you must then communicate your ideas in a clear, concise, and grammatical manner. Organize your response to include an introduction, body, and conclusion. The introduction should state your thesis and tell the reader where you are headed. The body of the essay should support your thesis with logic and evidence. Concentrate on principles, concepts, and the broad themes that unite the elements of your essay. Focus on comprehensiveness, analysis, and synthesis. Lastly, the conclusion should flow logically from the preceding material. Before handing in your exam or paper, be sure that you have fully addressed the question that was asked or the prompt that was posed.

Manage your time wisely

Don’t commit to extracurricular activities to the same extent that you did in high school. College is not thirteenth grade. The workload is likely to be much heavier than in high school, and the material will be much more complex. Managing this workload takes time and effort, and participating in too many extracurricular activities can prevent you from succeeding.

Think strategically

Develop a program of study and update it as time passes. Make sure to take all the required courses at the right time so that you will graduate on time. The best time to take the required courses is . . . sooner rather than later. Don’t place yourself in a situation where you need a required course to graduate, but that course isn’t offered because the professor who teaches it is on leave or has retired.

Meet often with a guidance counselor or advisor

Success in college requires checking a lot of boxes—meeting deadlines, ensuring you have taken all your required courses, having the necessary number of credit hours, etc. A guidance counselor is trained to determine if a student is meeting all the requirements. Meet with a guidance counselor or academic advisor at least once a semester to make sure you are on the right track. Alternatively or even additionally, check in with the undergraduate coordinator for the department(s) in which you think you want to major and/or minor. This will sometimes be a designated faculty member and sometimes a dedicated staffer. They can help catch anything the counselor or advisor missed, let you know of special opportunities available in the department, and make sure you are on track. This is what they are there for, so don’t be shy.

Get to Know Your Professors

Don’t remain a stranger to your professors. The more they know about you and your interests and previous experiences, the better. Indeed, you may end up asking this professor to write a letter of recommendation for a job or graduate school someday. Thus, in addition to attending class, it’s a good idea to sign up for office hours. It’s best to have a specific agenda to discuss, but even if you don’t, it’s worth stopping by just to introduce yourself and to get to know the professor beyond the classroom, and to give them a chance to get to know you. But pay attention to the professor’s cues. If the professor enjoys chatting at length, he or she will make that known to you. If he or she has a tightly packed schedule of meetings and needs to keep it brief, he or she will no doubt make that clear, too. Honor those signals.

Join study groups

Joining forces with your classmates can be good way to prepare for quizzes and exams. Make sure your study group doesn’t devolve into a purely social one. The goal is to do work, not catch up on non-academic matters.

Mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing

You will find it hard to learn if you are suffering from mental, emotional, or physical problems. Learn about the mental health services on and off campus. Even if a breakdown isn’t waiting around the corner, visit the counseling center and meet with a counselor. It’s better to investigate the mental health services available while you are feeling well, just to learn about what’s available. Waiting until you experience a mental health crisis is too late to figure out who you should call. Listen and ask lots of questions. Visit the gym regularly and avoid the infamous freshman fifteen by eating right. Try to get enough sleep.

If you keep up with the readings, attend class regularly, and start assignments sooner rather than later, there is no need for all-nighters. If you have been prescribed medication, take it as recommended by your doctor. You will have difficulty doing well in school if you are not feeling your best.

Even if you do everything I’ve recommended here, the results will vary according to your ability, academic preparation, desire, and motivation. Unfortunately, following these recommendations will not guarantee you an “A.” Nor will ignoring them guarantee you an “F.” But experience has shown that there is a strong correlation between hard work, careful planning, and good grades. There is also an equally strong correlation between slacking, bad planning, and poor grades. So choose wisely.

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Michael H. Creswell is Associate Professor of History at Florida State University, the author of A Question of Balance: How France and the United States Created Cold War Europe, and an executive editor at History: Reviews of New Books. A specialist on the Cold War, Creswell is currently writing a book that examines the increasing difficulties Americans have in communicating in socially and politically productive ways. He has published several essays in the Journal of Free Black Thought, including “Closing the Racial Academic Achievement Gap,” “Why Black Americans Should Care More About Foreign Affairs,” “How Would Black America Fare if Progressives Got Their Way?,” “The Price of the Game,” “The End of Affirmative Action is an Opportunity,” “To Forgive or Not to Forgive?” and “How to Prepare Your Child for College.”