Welcome to the next chapter of your life. It’s going to be exciting, bittersweet, impactful—in other words, the wildest roller coaster ride in the world. You will learn things about yourself, others, everything really. I, a senior, would like to take the time out, and give you some tools to help develop yourself as a person, and a student.
First off, learn how to ask for help. If you don’t understand something the professor is saying, raise your hand, and ask them to repeat or clarify. The more you ask, the more you know; plus, everyone struggles with learning new materials, and how to deal with life, at one point. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to do this over the years; plus, I know more now then I did then, because I raised my hand and asked.
Secondly, know your limits. Striving for excellence, be it in academia, health, life, is admirable, and should be a goal for everyone. HOWEVER, if your life and health are jeopardized in the process, then maybe you should scale back, and reevaluate how to approach this goal, and if this goal is really so important. This is something I had to figure out the hard way; at one point, I focused so much on being the best at school and fitness, that I completely forgot about my mental health. It wasn’t until I started crying repeatedly, and withdrawing from everything, that I realized something was wrong; a therapy session later told me to relax, and that it was important to take some—maybe an hour or two a day—time off.
Thirdly, and lastly, don’t be afraid to experiment. No, I am not talking about drugs, or alcohol—those issues are for other articles. Join a club you never would have thought of joining, take a class you would not have been so interested in before. Last year, I took an introductory geological history course, even though I hated learning math and science with a passion; it didn’t help that my learning disability was math centered. I ended up really enjoying learning how rocks form, and how dinosaurs came to be.
While I do have some more advice, these three are the big umbrella topics that everything else falls under. Plus, these are skills you can use out of school too—at a job, at home, maybe even a little in your free time.
With that, I bid you all adieu.
Until the next article, that is.
Sincerely,
This college senior.