Experiences with College

[Adrameleck]

A question (or few) I'd like to ask the forum. What are your experiences with college?

- Have you been to college? Or a University?
- Has it been helpful?
- Are you currently enrolled?

Most importantly of all though, is the experience of it. How does one deal with college - especially full-time enrollment. It is truly difficult to be fully enrolled in a university and living off of scholarships, I believe (and two of my friends are about to be).

I'm also a college student, and my experience so far hasn't been so beautiful. Alot of what I learn, I can see use in; even when others see nothing, but I know it won't earn me money - which (for most people) is what college costs.

Another subject would be people that have NO experience with college - what do you think of it? I'd like to know!

[SilentPsycho]

I studied at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, for three years. I graduated September 2008. Overall, I think it is the best thing I have ever done. It's not the cure all and end all for money, as it's only has been less than a year that I have got a job, but I grew as a person and learnt how to deal with things myself.

I have ADHD, and to be honest my parents, especially my mother, have coddled me growing up. Going to University and succeeding not only taught myself that I am better than I think, but also that I can handle stuff like living on my own, doing my own chores, etc. I learned how to deal with the bad stuff, and made some friends that years later, I still talk to regularly over the phone. I can't even think of anyone that I was this close to in my entire life than some of my uni friends.

I learnt that I am stronger than I thought in my second year of study, when I had to live with an abusive housemate. While he never physically harmed me, I had to put up with insults about my race (white), my gender (female), my sexuality (bisexual), my ADHD, my hobbies (anime and manga), even my choice of course (Library and Information Studies). In time, I learned how to ignore him, and the one time he ever threatened me with physical violence, I was able to stand up for myself and made him back down.

University also helped me come to terms with my sexuality, and my hobbies. Before then I had never known anyone who was either bi or liked anime, so most of the times I hid these things. Any comment of mine that even related to Japan was rebuff by my 'friends' with the saying "Well, I'm not into Pokemon". Once I got to Uni, however, I was able to get over my lack of self-confidence and even find friends with the same hobbies I do after I joined both the local LGBT society and the Anime Society. Going to socials with these groups also taught me how to interact with society, and how to have fun with others.

My opinion is that nothing learned is ever wasted. The love of knowledge enriches a person, and makes them happier, healthier, and a better person. Who knows when the skills you learn may become useful. Just because you find joy in something that may not bring you money does not make it bad.

[Adrameleck]

Thanks for the response~

College could certainly be an enlightening experience - it certainly seems like it was for you. I'm surprised, too. I've ALWAYS had friends that are into manga and anime and Pokemon and the like (Generally more people are than one thinks at first - many people hide it). College always seems to throw many problems at once on someone, and force them to deal with all of them at once - make or break people, if you will.

I'm also surprised you had a housemate of the opposite gender - how safe is that, really? As offended when I become when men aren't trusted the same way as women are, it's easy to see why they're not in situations like that.

I'm still going to college while staying at home, so I don't get the 'full' experience that alot of people do - things like staying on campus, and having to make so many new friends all at once.

[SilentPsycho]

I'm also surprised you had a housemate of the opposite gender - how safe is that, really? As offended when I become when men aren't trusted the same way as women are, it's easy to see why they're not in situations like that.

The halls of residence at Uni were all made up of both genders. Everyone had their own room, though, and all the baths/showers/toilets were one unit lockables, so you didn't have to worry about people of the opposite gender walking in on you. The only thing that we really shared were the common areas like the TV room and the kitchen. I don't actually see why it's so surprising, really.

During second year I was in a house off-campus that I organised with two other girls who needed a housemate. Unfortunately, one had to leave Uni, and the other begged me to give this guy, who was her boyfriend, a chance. Big mistake.

[Adrameleck]

Oh, I see. I don't have alot of experience with room organizations and such - but that sounds efficient, to say the least. I'm sorry for you about that experience though, it's terrible to realize people get away acting like that - I would hope your friend didn't stay 'with' him, or at least that he treated her better.

I was saying earlier that it's surprising that men and women share any sort of quarters. Most of what I've seen shows anything they have access to as completely separated.

I would be hesitant to trust any couple that shares a house/apartment with me ... but I'm already planning on that with my friends when we all move to a more fitting college. I chose one in the same area that theirs is in. They're both close friends to me on their own merits, thankfully, so that helps.

[TxCat]

- Have you been to college? Or a University?

I went to a state college right out of high school and then transferred to another college further south in the same state when I married. I have not yet had the opportunity to go to a university but when I get my Associate's in Florida (long story and not particularly relevant to the thread) I will be eligible to attend any university in Florida.

My recommendation --- and no one likes hearing this --- is that unless you have good scholarships and can commute from home, you are better off getting a job and saving some money and getting some real life experience making your own decisions and living on your own. I went at age sixteen and while I might have intellectually been ready for it (my grades were well above expected standards) I wasn't emotionally ready for it. It's a sudden, hard change into a world that works somewhere between the adult and the high school. For a lot of folks, it's the first time any of them have had any sort of freedom and they overcompensate badly. If you're able to gradually build up to an adult role and responsibilities, you'll do better. You'll also have more freedom to focus on your studies without worrying about finances.

If you've got scholarships, it makes it a little easier. They may cover all or part of room, board, and tuition (they usually do not, however, cover books). If you've got a meal plan, use it but choose one which will best suit you. The more meals are covered, the more expensive the plan. If you never eat breakfast, then you don't want a full plan. Don't get plans that offer access to the quick meal places (pizza, sandwiches, burgers). You'll gain weight from the unhealthy food, it isn't filling, and add-ons like that are also expensive.

Don't, if you can at all help it, take out student loans or grants which require you to pay them back. No matter how well employed you are once you graduate, they're difficult if not impossible to pay back. The interest rates are incredible, they will garnish your wages if you fall behind, and they generally require large payments which leave you nothing on which to live. Mine were $500 a month back in the mid 1990s and my salary as a secondary school teacher was $16,000 yearly. It definitely didn't pay.

Look for work study; labs always need monitors and so does the library. You can work in the food service and have those wages applied to your bill. Some professors will offer internships grading papers or cleaning their offices too.

- Has it been helpful?

In general, people with a college education have a change to be better employed than those who do not go. It also depends heavily on the field, on your individual experiences, and on realistic expectations. If you think you're going to get a degree in art design and then become a game developer, you're probably going to remain unemployed and disappointed. If, however, you're willing to take an internship in the field which doesn't exactly match your interests then you might eventually be able to gain the experience you need to land your dream job.

I don't recommend going into education in the US; the demands are just too high, the rewards too low, and they want babysitters and folk who can teach the test not folk who can teach. At least in Florida, they want the teachers young and good looking too so that they'll hold the interests of the students longer.

It's helpful in terms of life experiences and getting the knowledge you need to do the work you want, but it isn't a guarantee. It may not be necessary for some professions. You should also look at technical schools or schools which specialize in particular subjects (such as cooking) if that is what interests you.

I'm really not the one to ask about course load. I love being an academic and my intelligence is above average. I love learning. Most semesters I had 18-21 credits. One semester, I made a special appeal to the Dean of Students and took 28. The average is about 12 for a full time load (usually three courses and a lab). Schedule your classes around your natural routine as much as possible. If you're not a morning person, it doesn't make much sense to have a class at 7:30 five days a week. Keep in mind when you take courses that you'll need to balance them around personal needs such as sleep, eating, relaxation, and possibly a job. Don't overreach. Not everyone finishes in four years or less and you should only take on what you can handle.

[Nexxie]

I am currently in college, and I find it to be one of the most fun experiences I have ever had. I dont think I'm finding it helpful yet, mainly because it's really hard to have a job and go to school, so I find myself lacking monetarily. But someday I will probably appreciate my higher education, at least, I really, really hope I can find some value in it.

Especially isnce I'm about 25000 dollars in debt right now.

But I'm very involved on campus and while I do get occasionally home sick, it's really nice to be able to sit back with some friends and cook up new ideas for programs and fun activities.

[TNHawke]

I went to college (technically University, since other places differentiate between the two). I didn't take any time off between graduating high school and starting college, just the summer break. I took one class my first semester, and 2 my second, then jumped into full time classes for the rest of the time I spent in school. I lived with my parents so I saved on cost of living, and I worked full time to pay bills and for tuition and books and stuff.
I did graduate, but it took me 7 years to do so. I have a Bachelors of Science in Psychology. It has done amazing things for my personal life, but it has done nothing for me financially, but leave me $30K in debt with an entry level job to try to pay for it.
If given the opportunity, would I do it again? No. Probably not.

So, what went wrong?

1st, I had no one to tell me what to expect or do or to guide me through it.
I was home schooled through high school. This was NOT a bad thing! If I could have home schooled for college, I would have (and would probably be a veterinarian by now). Because of that, I didn't have teachers or school counselors to tell me what to expect for college and help me design and plan or anything. In addition to this, I was the first one in my family to go to college. All the men (and some of the women) on both sides of the family were career military, and those that weren't were stay at home moms. The academic advisers at the university were a joke. I had friends while I was home schooled. Unfortunately, most of them either took time off of school, or went to other colleges, or hadn't graduated yet. So, I was left to sink or swim with virtually no support, and needless to say, I floundered.

2nd, I had classes out of order and wasn't prepared for others.
I was allowed to take 200 level courses before the 100 level prereq. This meant that I dove into botany (which ended up being ok) and zoology before taking biology 101. If I had taken Bio101 first, I wouldn't have struggled so much with zoology, and I likely would have known to take Zoology from Dr. Centani, not Dr. Fuller. There were other classes I had out of order, or I had to take again, or I had to go back and take a remedial version (or should have) to fully understand the material. This was partly due to the limitations of being home schooled (I'd never had a chemistry lab or foreign language class), and partly due to academic advisers encouraging me to sign up for classes I wasn't ready for, and me not knowing any better.

3rd- Dr. Fuller was a jackass who hated women and hated Christians and I dared be both and in his class. This man should have retired in the 70s, or been fired in the 80s, but was tenured and not going anywhere. He never came out and said it, but he made it clear that he thought women should be at home, in the kitchen, making dinner and babies. They had no business in the work force or trying to get an education. If a woman came late to class, they got a death glare, and he wouldn't pause his lecture. But if a man came in late, he would make sure they got what ever hand out there might have been, and gave a quick recap on what he had covered so far. Women lost points for tardiness, men did not. Men could screw around in class talking to each other and otherwise obviously not paying attention, but the young lady who came in after a 12 hour shift in the hospital, and dared to lay her head down on her desk and quietly rest her eyes for a moment had his hand slammed down on her desk and was loudly berated and told to go home and not bother coming back if she was going to sleep in his class. Then there was his favorite catch phrase, "It all points to evolution!" Which I found amusing that he would just get done talking about how amazingly designed some part of a body was, then claim no one had designed it. He also expounded on things like vestigial organs- which even then had already been completely thrown out by the scientific community. He would ask lecture questions in his lab tests, and lab questions in his lecture tests- so if you didn't have him for both, you were screwed (I did, which was probably the only fortunate thing about it) He would have a weekly 10 point lab quiz and the only person who consistently got a 9 or 10 on it said she studied for them for 3 hours the night before. Unfortunately, the rest of us had other classes and home work and jobs and families. On top of all of this, he tried to cram everything he knew about biology into this one class. Zoology should have been an overview of all the classes of animals. We skipped birds completely, and I'd been looking forward to them. We covered everything from embryology (and Dr. Fuller taught that all creatures go through the evolutionary stages during their fetal development, never mind that THAT was recognized as a hoax when it came out and has been officially thrown out YEARS ago), comparative anatomy, Anatomy and physiology, AND Greek and Latin lessons. I could go on, but I've rambled about him enough.
Needless to say, he is the #1 reason I am not a veterinarian today. He completely turned me off to biology. By the time I took Biology 101 with Dr. Centani, I was too far into the Psych major to change yet again.

4th - I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up, after Dr. Fuller single-handedly annoyed me out of the pre-vet med course of study. BSU's art program SUCKED. I will never EVER do another still life, if I can help it because all the art classes I took were either "Here, draw this book, draw this tea pot- oh, and pretend that it is pure white and not dented and dirty, today we have nude models!" or "I don't care what you do. Make some art, what ever you feel is art, to illustrate in 3 dimensions, this photo of a star scape. But don't make anything obviously stars out of it." There was not a single lesson to actually TEACH us about techniques, or shading, or anatomy or proportions or anything. That's actually why I ended up with psychology- it was interesting, and only one of the profs in the program should never have been a professor, and the psych program at BSU is probably among the best in the country.

5th - I started getting migraines in my 2nd to last year of school. I misses classes, I couldn't focus when I was in class, I had trouble getting assignments done and turned in, I had trouble studying for tests. They were partly physiological, and a lot based on stress. My last semester, I had a D in one of classes, but since it wasn't an F, I was allowed to graduate.


If all the rest is TL:DR, at least read this part-
6th - I didn't get involved. This is probably the #1 reason why college failed me. I didn't join the clubs, I didn't chat with my profs, or my classmates. I didn't make the extra effort to make sure I was known so that I could get letters of recommendation. I knew I should have, I at least had profs telling us that this was necessary to go on. I did nothing extracurricular. So, on paper, I had mediocre grades and no schmoosing (used in the best of lights, all my profs talked about doing it, but in a good way). Even if I could have aced the Psych GRE (which I probably could have, I KNEW the material) I had no chance of getting into grad school.

In this day and age, bachelor's degrees are a dime a dozen, just like high school diplomas were in the 90s. To get anywhere in the world, you have to get stupidly lucky, like my kid brother did and was in the right place at the right time and got an internship that 4 years later turned him into the head IT guy at his company, or you HAVE to have a master's degree, and lots and lots of extras. The letters of recommendation, the group, club, society, etc memberships, the experiences that come with those, other extracurricular activities, volunteer work, etc.
And, the hardest lesson I've had to learn- you have to have the RIGHT piece of paper. I COULD do a lot of different jobs with my degree and experience, but because I don't have the exact right qualifications, my resume won't be more than glanced at, and I can't get an interview to prove to them that I AM a good candidate.


Now... all that said, I AM considering going back to college. But to learn a trade. Something hands on, that will always be needed, like carpentry.

[Madd]

I'm a proud high school graduate. I like to walk into the local university and pretend to be a student. They've got this great big glass pillar of art that looks like a DNA strand. It's nice until you realize who paid for it.

[Rosenrot]

I recently graduated from college, and the experience was generally good for me. I learned a lot in my major and even more life lessons. I found my niche. I both gained and lost friends along the way.

My biggest learning experience came when I moved off campus. I lived in the dorms for my freshman and sophomore years. It wasn't too bad. Cramped. There I learned that I really needed to get organized because when two people are sharing a room meant for one, you really have to be on top of your game because just one day of dirty laundry on the floor makes your room look like a disaster zone.

My dorm roommate and I decided to get an apartment for our last two years. We also shared it with her boyfriend, my boyfriend, and another friend of ours. That was the worst experience in my life, but it taught me a lot of things. It made me see what kind of person my dorm roommate was. She was different from the woman I knew living in the dorms. She was slovenly, domineering, and stubborn. You never really do know someone until you live with them. But it opened my eyes to the kind of roommates I wanted and what kind of living conditions I wanted. After that year we went our separate ways. Lesson learned: good friends don't always make good roommates.

So those who are heading to college in the next year or two, the two best pieces of advice I can give you are live off campus for at least a year. It gives you a taste of running a household including bill paying, cleaning, and mitigating household disputes. And do internships. At least 2. The biggest and best doors were opened to me after I completed a summer internship. Not only did it give me confidence, but it shines so well on my resume.