How to Fail College Your First Semester

Note from the editor: Much as it is a skill to be successful in college, (it is important for you to have the drive to succeed, be motivated, and work your butt off…) it is also a skill to fail out of college. This post discusses some techniques that you can use to fail out of college your first semester, if you have any other techniques that are useful in failing out of college please leave your comment at the bottom of this post

 

DISCLAIMER: Neither the author of this post nor We Compare Books condone failing out of college, this post is merely intended to be a guide as to what not to do

 

After being in elementary, middle, and high school for 12 years, you pick up some habits that can be difficult to undo. While good habits can undoubtedly benefit your college years, many students carry on their bad learning habits into their freshman year of college. After all, when you’ve been studying and doing homework for more than a decade, you inevitably pick up on ways to do the least amount of work possible in school. However, this can lead to an academic disaster, as college is no place for slacker behavior and a bare-minimum mindset, unless you want to demonstrate to others how one can fail college in the first semester.

Play hooky instead of going to class

In high school, you may have felt that attendance was voluntary. If you did not feel like waking up at 8:00 a.m. for class, you may have just played sick and spent the entire day lounging around in bed. The temptation to skip class when you had a car was even more difficult to avoid, as avoiding class and going to the mall only required you to drive right past the school parking lot. If you were a chronic class-skipper, you may find yourself falling back into those old habits once you are in college.

However, class attendance is a must for college students because it is incredibly difficult to catch up in coursework and lectures. Most college classes are at least an hour long, during which all students learn a great deal about the class topic as well as upcoming assignments. Missing one class could mean hours of make-up work later. To make matters worse, the more classes you skip, the more work you will find yourself needing to make up on your own time, as professors will not stop their lessons just for you to get back up to speed.

Daydream during class

You may have relied on your best friend’s notes after each class to study, but don’t count on encountering the same generosity when you are in college. Studying for class is stressful, and your classmates may not be as willing to share their notes if they see that you spend the entire lecture looking through Facebook.

Instead, learn to take good notes of your own and make sure that you are well-rested and well-fed before each class so that you will be less susceptible to distractions. Pay close attention to what your professor is saying and actively take notes to keep yourself engaged and interested. If necessary, move to the front of the classroom so that you have the added pressure of being close to your professor to prevent you from slacking off. You will thank yourself in the future for not only having a good study guide with your notes, but also for learning during class instead of just after it.

Procrastinate on assignments; do homework last minute, write essays day before the deadline

Procrastination is a bad habit that nearly all students fall into at least once during their studies. It is also one of the most detrimental ones to good grades. Putting things off until the last minute may have worked when you were in high school, but college professors (and their teaching assistants) are much tougher. An hastily written essay filled with long, flowery sentences that say nothing will not appease your English professor, and mathematical work that does not show how you got to your final answer will not make your calculus professor happy.

College work takes time to complete, and none of it is designed to fit within a single night’s worth of studying. In fact, you should count on spending at least two hours studying outside of class for every hour you are in class if you want to succeed in college. Do not even try to do all of your reading and assignments in a single all-night session chances are you simply will not be able to produce anything of quality in such a short amount of time. To prevent letting procrastination ruin your GPA, be sure to manage your time wisely to allow yourself plenty of time to get your work done.

There are numerous nasty habits that can carry over from your high school days into college, and these can ruin your first semester. Don’t let that happen and make sure that you buckle down and work hard from the beginning of your new college career.

 

This guest post was written by Alvina Lopez

Alvina Lopez is a freelance writer and blog junkie, who blogs about accredited online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: alvina.lopez @gmail.com.

Taken From We Compare Books