Back to School Guide: First day of Class

The Tuesday after Labor Day weekend signifies many beginnings across the U.S.A. The first week of September, the first week of regular season NFL football upcoming, and the first day of school for many elementary, junior high, high school, and college students. Along with all those young kids walking to school is those annoyingly slow crossing guards and 15 MPH flashing school zones signs that made me sit in traffic for an hour longer today! It is probably the first time that your appalling alarm clock went off before 8 AM and your mother or father screaming from the floor below for you to get up. I remember my father called me my first morning of college at 6 AM telling me to get a head start on my first college class, little did he know that I went right back to bed after I hung up!

With school starting here are a few tips for your first week of classes to help you get on that road towards your goals, whether its finishing with honors, summa cum laude, or just passing the damn class.

• Very simple! Make sure you have a pencil and paper for class to actually write down important announcements by the teacher. Note down with it is or is not mandatory to attend class and depending on that answer you can jump up and down.
• Get one of those accordion folder’s to keep all of your papers in one location. Who cares if you look like a nerd, who knows, maybe you will actually get good grades like them!
• Check out any websites or online class sites that your college may offer and become comfortable with them because many schools are moving towards heavy utilization of these tools! I used WebCT during undergrad and have an Angel account for grad school.
• Write down important dates! If you use one of those personal organizers, take each syllabus from your classes and write down all the major dates of exams, due dates, and days that the professor won’t be there so you can schedule some sort of late night activity the night before you don’t have class! I recommend using an online tool such as Google Calender!
• Learn how to use Google Docs! You always have those issues of sending yourself emails with your files and documents attached to them? Well if you use Google Docs your files will always be accessible as long as you have an Internet connection! It is pure genius, if I had this all during undergrad I would have done better in class! I am serious!

Anyways, I hope these things help and give some of them an honest shot. All kidding aside, the most important things to get off to a good start in school is begin good habits off the bat. Do the homework and readings ahead of time and do not be afraid to work ahead when you get stuff done early. Talk to your professors because they are actually getting paid to help you, if they are not open to help, then go talk to another teacher. Don’t start partying like Puff Daddy the first week, start of slow, kinda like maybe… I dunno… like John Stamos post Full House and then slowly party like you have gone triple platinum. Bottom line, get your work done first and have fun second, you will thank yourself a few years down the road when you have to go to work every day like me.