College Survival 101
21 comments | PermalinkJohn Mark Reynolds has a helpful column here offering 10 tips for college students getting ready for Fall.
What follows is the barebones outline, but if the topic is of interest, you'll want to read the whole thing.
1. Ignore advice to “remake” yourself the first day you get to college.
2. Do something each week that puts you in contact with people older and younger than your peer group.
3. If you have a decent relationship with your parents keep it up.
4. If you are going to college, then go. You are in college to learn. In America, education often includes getting a job skill, but should also be about becoming a good, civilized citizen.
5. Find a faculty mentor during your first year.
6. Take classes that are hard from full-time professors that love to teach.
7. Secretaries and support staff are overworked, underpaid, and very powerful. You should be good to them out of virtue, but you must do it to thrive. The friendship you make with the department secretary now will pay dividends over the years. (One way I judge the character of a student is by how they treat the support staff.)8. Books are not yet antiques. Go to the library. Talk to librarians. They are faculty members that are often under-utilized.
9. Don’t be too quick to pick a major, but try to do so by the end of the first year.10. Live like an adult in college which includes moderating your passions.
posted by JT at Sunday, September 07, 2008
21 Comments:
11. Buy a Mac and not a PC
12. Buy and Ipod to walk to classes
13. Buy a kindle so that you can carry one book to class and not tons!
Get involved with what Jesus is doing on campus. Use your time there to be missional and see people meet Jesus, and do it with others
14. Take a year off and do short-term overseas missions.
find a church
find a church
find a church
don't cling to your home church out of loyalty! Find a church abd be accountable to it.
If you move back home in 4 years, rejoin your home church.
while campus ministry is great, it should not substitute for the church.
Kevin B:don't cling to your home church out of loyalty! Find a church abd be accountable to it.
That doesn't make any sense. Your advice is to shrug off loyalty to one's home church, as long as you can find a different church and be loyal to it? And does loyalty to church come before loyalty to Christ?
Michael Dewalt: 11. Buy a Mac and not a PC
And then immediately install Ubuntu Linux on the Mac.
I would guess Kevin's point is - join a church where you are, rather than just occasionally getting back to a church back home. It's good advice.
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Best advice I ever got from college came from Erik Thoennes, Prof at the same school as John Mark Reynolds:
Visit a few churches, but make a commitment to yourself that by the end of the first semester you will be part of a local church body ... and then actually be part of that church body. There is such a temptation not to, especially at Christian colleges, but I am very thankful for this bit of advice I received my first semester.
Amen to Kevin B and Mike Garner. I don't think Kevin B was saying "be disloyal to your home church". I think he just meant don't use the "I'm already a member of my home church" as an excuse to put your college years in a parenthesis, thinking, "When I'm done with school, THEN I'll reconnect with a church body."
BTW, "Hi Mike!" We miss you down here.
"11. Buy a Mac and not a PC"
so you can be sure your university IT staff (me) will have to spend hours trying to get it to work with the campus network ;)
But seriously, I can't stress enough being friendly and sociable with the university staff and faculty. I guarantee anyone who thinks that university learning only goes on in classes is missing 90% of the learning and opportunities available.
Justin Gunter said...
"11. Buy a Mac and not a PC"
so you can be sure your university IT staff (me) will have to spend hours trying to get it to work with the campus network ;)
Go to a university that has enough money and you'll not have that problem.
- Find out what and when the work requirements are. Too many students loose track of what they are meant to be doing only to discover they have lots of work due the next week
- Join clubs. Of course join a christian one but also find at least one or 2 more to join that give you a chance to interact with people you wouldn't normally. Doesn't have to be anything too serious- i'm in the chocolate club.
-Get to know some of the international/exchange students. It helps them fit into your culture and can teach you a lot about theirs.
-Keep in the word. You'll be exposed to lots of new ideas so you really need to make sure you are getting to know what the bible says well.
Re the Mac/PC thing ... unless you're concerned with being "hip" among the college/uni crowd, choose which you buy (Mac or PC) based on what you want to use it for and how it fits your needs. Macs are (usually/often) more expensive than the equivalent PC, so unless there's a good reason why you want a Mac why not consider a PC instead.
Certainly there can be valid reasons why a person would get a Mac instead, but PCs will work just fine for a lot of people, and given that uni students generally don't have a lot of $$$ to throw around, most would be fine getting a (cheaper) PC. (And as someone else pointed out, if a person's real beef is with Windows, you can always install Linux.)
1. Start classes having read the first two weeks of material thoroughly.
2. Stay two weeks ahead throughout the semester.
3. Sit in the front row.
You should never have to cram for an exam.
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15. Figure out how long it takes you to read and to write a page of text, round up dramatically, and use this information to determine when you must start a project. This reduces--and can eliminate--all nighters.
Also, as a member of university staff, I can vouch for #7--and can report than too many students fail on this one. It's not pretty.
Regarding # 9. Many colleges are now requiring you to select a major as a part of the application process which is really unfortunate. It took me a year and a half to find my major.
Steve
How about get a copy and read "Redeeming The Time" by Leland Ryken?
a helpful article. i'm going to share this with the graduates of our youth ministry this year. thanks.
Don't believe everything your professor says. Look into scripture to see if it lines up with God's Word. Be very discerning and call a trusted pastor or friend if you still have questions.
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