College Adaptation gone awful

[Old Hippie]

The worst part is thinking about how much you paid and then you didn't do the work.

That would really bother me, unless I didn't pay for it.

 

[Old Hippie]

Get rid of your distractions (parties, high-maintenance girls, computer games, porn, whatever).

:shocked:

 

[Dr. Detroit]

For me:

Never do group study, always study by yourself.

Rework the homework problems by going through the class examples - over and over and over again.

Always do the homework

I'm way more alert in the late afternoons so I did my best to pick classes that started at noon or later. I think I was forced into only 2 8am classes in college.

Attend the professors cram session prior to the test

If you don't understand, ask one of your classmates for help, still not getting it, head to the professors office for office hours.

Oh, and study. I closed the library down at midnight 2-3x a week and during finals it was 7x a week!

I had a huge motivator, I needed a job, bad! Having a family in college sucks but it helped me prioritize.

 

[chusteczka]

Originally posted by: Mokmo418
Ok, so here's what changes next semester:

-1.5 hours/day less spent on transportation, i finally got a room at the dorm. (yes short bus ride but it's not on all day and you always have to get back early)
-I'll be able to make the library my full time study room because of this

That will not make me magically go through semesters, but it's a start in the right direction.

These are very beneficial changes that you will make.

Some things that worked for me:

1. Read the first three chapters of the book before the semester starts.
2. If my reading was not ahead of the class lecture, then I was actually behind schedule.
3. Arrive to class early, sit and read the last lecture notes, and read through the coming lecture material.
4. Sleep, eat, and study. Social activities are only for Friday and Saturday evenings. The rest of the time is spent studying, except maybe for lunch.
5. Find people to study with or to compare notes with. Every morning in my Calc2 class, I compared notes on the latest assignment with two or three friends. This motivated me to stay up late and get the homework finished every night so I would not be behind the next morning when I compared notes with my friends. Every morning was a status update that embarrassed me if I was behind.
6. Try for an easy course load. Do not overextend yourself. One math, one science, one english, one other class.
7. Start working on the homework as soon as it is assigned. There is always a desire to wait on the homework until there have been more lectures to better understand the material. However, there will always come a point where the material is still not understood and steps need to be taken to push through these difficulties and still get the work done. Learning how to identify the unknown factors, learn them, and complete the project is probably one of the best lessons to master for life.

EDIT:
The "reading" I performed ahead of the lecture was really just quickly browsing through the main points. This was my first exposure to the material so very little of it ever made any sense and I needed to push myself through it. However, I knew the direction the lecture would take and the main points of the lecture would seem "familiar" to me. My second reading of the text material, after the lecture, would then be more thorough and understandable. Before an exam, I would browse through all the material again, stopping to read the topics I did not thoroughly understand.

Repetition is necessary for retention.

Added #7.

 

[SludgeFactory]

I would be curious to see how you actually are spending your time. That's not a tremendously heavy load. I know this has been mentioned several times, but I just assume you're attending all classes and taking notes. Right?

The reality in engineering is that you have to do the homework. The homework and projects are why engineering is a bitch of a major, but it's essentially how you study for the tests over the course of the semester. If that means locking yourself down in the library for 8 hours a day after class, then that's what you do. Unlike some other majors where you can sit back and do little or nothing for weeks between exams, there's homework to do most nights of the week. It's structured and regimented and is a lot of work, but it also keeps you from ever getting too far behind. Cramming tends not to work in engineering. The night or two before the test, I'd go back and review the graded homeworks, refresh my memory on stuff that had been covered 3 weeks ago, be sure I knew how to set up the problems, and rework some of them until I was relatively confident that I could handle an exam.

That said, I don't really know if homework is your problem or not. I'm not sure why you're bombing the tests without more explanation from you.

Not reaching out for some help when you know you're sinking is pretty much a guarantee that you're going to drown. Most universities offer free tutoring for the intro level maths and physics, use it. Find a small group of students you can work with on some of these assignments. Make yourself known to professors, visit their office, ask intelligent questions about the assignments. Some of them will help you out. A few may even throw you a few points if you're borderline on a grade. If you're an anonymous name on the page who didn't even show up for the final, you'll get a big fat F (or E) every time.

I would *never* give up on classes like you're doing and just simply stop showing up, at least drop them. You're permanently destroying your GPA. Sounds to me like you got overwhelmed and threw in the towel. That started to happen to me in a semester, and I made the decision to bail on an engineering programming class that I knew was going to gobble up my time (taught by my advisor, kind of embarrassing to drop that.) But at least I didn't go down with the ship entirely.

In your situation, realizing that next semester is the last chance, I'd schedule mostly morning classes if possible, then lock it down in the library *every* afternoon, regardless of whether something is due the next day or not. With focus and with purpose, not with a laptop, texting, gaming, chatting, listening to music, etc. Treat it like an 8-5, or 8-midnight if that's what it takes.

It almost sounds like you're not even motivated to make this work. I've been there too. You might need to spend some serious time questioning why you're doing this, what your goals in life are, and look at different majors, within engineering, or perhaps entirely outside of it. Good luck to you.

 

[Old Hippie]

Wow, I wish I had you guys to talk to when I was going to school! :thumbsup:

 

[gorcorps]

You probably were used to never studying beforehand. So now that you need to you have no idea how. You re-read your notes and feel good enough, but come test time you get raped. You need to find out what works for you studying-wise. My freshman year sucked ass for this very reason. But now I'm in the harder classes but doing even better because I know how to study. Don't give up, it'll click eventually.