Posts published on July 14, 2016

How to Use Your Time at College with Maximum Effect

BY MELISSA BURNS

All too often students get complacent after getting into the college of their choice. The underlying belief is that they’ve already done the hard part – securing a place there – and now education is going to somehow settle on them of its own volition, like dandruff. The problem is, education is an active process – in order to get a good one, you should go out and do it. Here are some ways for it.

1.    Reading

In the age when the acronym TL;DR becomes an all too popular answer to any text longer than two sentences, reading is certainly getting out of fashion – which is yet another reason to swim against the flow and set aside some time for it, especially at college, when you are going to have free and convenient access to numerous libraries, online databases and suchlike. In the long run, reading considerably improves the quality of your speech, both written and spoken, not to mention general knowledge.

2.    Study Online

Your college may offer a wide variety of courses; but then again, it may not. Or you may choose to major in one subject while retaining an interest in another one, and cannot combine them in your official academic schedule. Or you simply want to broaden your horizons and study something in addition one basic set of skills and proficiencies. In this case, online courses can prove to be of immense help. They are probably best suited for IT training, but today one can easily find online courses on anything from graphic design to engineering – an excellent way to become a versatile specialist.

3.    Mingle

For many people, college is the first time in their lives they get into an environment in which they are surrounded by people different from what they are used to. Which is especially marked today, when there are so many international students in American colleges. Getting in touch with them not only broadens your horizons and earns you potentially useful acquaintances, but is an excellent opportunity to learn foreign languages as well. More often than not, they will be happy to find local friends as well.

4.    Tutoring

Using tutoring opportunities provided on campus is a great way to improve your grades and actual knowledge. There are people who are better at certain subjects than you are, and a short study session with some of them can be worth many hours of trying to figure things out on your own. Vice versa, if you are particularly good at certain subjects, you may offer your own tutoring services (they may be paid or volunteer) – it will improve your knowledge and people skills, and will look greatly in a resume.

5.    Attend Extracurricular Activities

All colleges arrange lectures by guest speakers, seminars and similar things – and you will do yourself a very poor service if you neglect to use these unique opportunities. You may never get a chance to hear these people again.

As you may see, college education is not just the college’s job, but yours too. If you don’t make an effort to squeeze everything from your time at university, it isn’t going to happen on its own.

Melissa Burns graduated from the faculty of Journalism of Iowa State University in 2008. Nowadays she  is an entrepreneur and independent journalist. Her sphere of interests includes startups, information technologies and how these ones may be implemented.