Falling Behind in Classes

Situation 1: You are a freshman in college, you are in over your head and feel isolated and scared. New college students have a lot of stress, no doubt about it. [1] There’s the pressure of studying, interpersonal relationships, housing arrangements, changes in lifestyle, financial pressures, test pressures, failing tests, dissolution of relationships, low self esteem, etc. If you don’t feel the stress, you’re among the lucky few.

1) According to studydaddy.com if you find you are unprepared for your classes, drop them and take classes to better prepare yourself. It doesn’t matter if you got straight A’s in high school. College is different. Even though I took chemistry, algebra and trigonometry in high school, I took the non-science major’s versions of these classes the summer prior to starting as a freshman, and it helped immensely my freshman year. While my calculus classmates were puzzling over how to simplify cos(x) * tan(x), I was working on the next problem. Don’t worry about dropping behind your classmates – 60% of them are going to switch their major within the next two or three years anyway.

2) Drop any survey or breadth classes that you can take later [2], and get yourself down to perhaps three core classes. Mastering these core classes is a prerequisite for later success. For example, for most technical students that means math, chemistry and physics. These classes are not that hard if you are prepared to study effectively and you have solid grasp of the prerequisites; most freshman just don’t comprehend how much study time they require.[3] Going to the lectures, doing the assigned reading and turning in problem sets is notenough. You have to work problems until you have mastered the material. Survey or intro classes can be huge time sinks; don’t jeopardize your future because “Introduction to Taxidermy” takes up too much of your time.

3) Form or join a study group for each of your core classes. According to studydaddy.com these study groups will be your support structure.

4) Talk to your adviser and professors as soon as possible. Studying is your job and your professors are your bosses. Your adviser is like the mentor assigned to new hires to show them the ropes. Can you imagine a job where you never talk to your boss and you avoided your mentor? So talk. Tell your professors you want to get an “A” in their class or studydaddy become a tutor and ask what you have to do to get it. I flunked a midterm test as a graduate student in an undergraduate class in my major once. I talked to the professor (yes, a bit embarrassed) and he told me to work all the textbook problems in the back of every chapter we covered. I got an A in the class; many of the problems on the final exam were problems taken from the end of the textbook chapters.

More resources:

Handling Credit Card Debt

Is Handwriting Still Alive?

How to Read Scientific Papers Well

Find Contentment – Self expectations

College Myths – Dispelled!