10 THINGS I WISH I KNEW BEFORE COLLEGE

It was hard to all of a sudden change from school to college education. I know that most of you find it hard as well. The sudden change of everything. It takes time to adapt. It would have been so much better if someone told me it was going to be different.

It's not the life you see in movies. Sure it is fun! But at the same time, it requires a lot of commitment.

As everything else it has its own pros and cons.

Click below to see the pro's :)

Now I will tell you what I wish I had known before I started College. So that you, my friends, will find it easy to adapt.

1. NO ONE WILL PUSH YOU TO STUDY AND PASS EXAMS.

In school teachers were always behind. They made us study. It was as if they studied for us.

I am not complaining about college lecturers, but they don't care if you pass or not. It's up to you to study and get good grades. Sure some will motivate you. But you will witness a sudden drop of external motivation when you move straight from school to college.

2. YOU CAN'T COPY YOUR ASSIGNMENTS.

I remember assignments in school. They were so easy. Specially because everyone could do the same, changing a few words. 

At college it matters. Almost all of the assignments you have to submit, is submitted online. 

Plagarism checkers are my worst nightmare. It is a headache. You have to do a FRESH assignment.  

3. YOU HAVE TO DO A LOT OF EXTRA READING.

Until I finish college education my 'to -read' list of books will always be Psychology books. I have 7 big books and 2 small books lined up to finish up before April.

Sad right? When you know you can't finish it off but still you want to. If I ever could finish up those books, I would have been 200% more confident to sit for the exam.

Not just that. I have to surf the net and find GOOD, HIGH-QUALITY stuff to read.   

4. YOU HAVE TO BE THOROUGH WITH THE REFERENCING STYLE, YOUR COLLEGE USES. AND CONSTANTLY BE UPDATED.

Harvard referencing style, APA style, Vancouver style are some of the most popular one's. But there are others as well.

To make things worse, my college uses 'Harvard-Coventry' style. Urgh how much I hate it. 

One semester I went through the whole guide and did the assignments. The next semester (after just 3 months)  I had to go through the guide again because it was UPDATED. Not much of  a change, but complex-ed than before.

5. YOU ASSIGNMENTS REQUIRE {REAL} COMMITMENT.

School assignments were the best. You will feel it when you start doing college assignments. Most of the time it is 30% of your total grade for any subject.

You have to be thorough with the Referencing. You have to be alert on plagiarism. You have to read a lot of extra things.

And the best part of it is when it takes you about one whole week to read and understand the question. lol. You get the irony there right?

6. FRIENDS WILL NOT HELP YOU WHEN IT COMES TO STUDIES (MOST OF THEM)

"Anything else other than studies, I'll be there."

No friend will say so. But it is true. This is competition. As I said before, you'll have to do a lot ( I mean it, A LOT!) of extra reading. They'll share with you what extra materials they use. But most of them! They'll prefer keeping it to themselves.

Can't really blame them. But, they don't. You should help out yourself.

7. YOU WILL MAKE FRIENDS WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT YOUR AGE.

I had friends, who were only maybe 10 years younger than my mom. Not bad. But it's hard to blend in. You'll freak out when your needs totally differ from theirs.

For a group activity at college last week we had to make a list of our basic needs. Mine were so simple, like colorful stuff, food, family and boyfriend and my phone of course. One friend, said 'my need is to give good education to my children', another, 'I want to have my own children'. I was so freaked out.

There is nothing wrong with their needs, it's just that they are sooooooo complex than mine. So I am telling you, you have to, it's a MUST, expect friends of different ages. Sometimes all your friends will be so similar to you, but you could never say.

8. YOU REALLY HAVE TO STUDY.

I ended my school life, earning 3 A's. With the MINIMUM effort to study. I won't lie. I did study. But not much. I had lots of free time.

I studied and I enjoyed life. Enjoying both at the same time was the wonder of school life.

But once I started college I had to spend lots of time studying. Real time. To take down proper notes. To read those big books. To make short notes. And everything else required real commitment.

Expect spending most of your time to study.

9. IT'S A WHOLE DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENT.

It will take some time for you to adapt to the new college life. But after you do, it will be the best period in your life. But there are many college drop-out's just because they could not adapt to their new lives.

As they say, "After a storm comes a rainbow". Expect to spend about one whole stormy semester before having fun with the rainbow :) 

 
10. YOU ARE GOING TO FACE LOT'S OF DIFFERENT PEOPLE, WHO HAS MANY QUALITIES THAT YOU HATE.

I know school was the same. But college? It's WORSE! Believe me. Get ready to face many many people with so many different qualities.

These are the most challenging facts that troubled me in the start of my college life.
 
Hope you enjoyed my post. What about you? What troubled you when starting your college life? Or what are your greatest fears about going to college?

Comment below. Share with all of us :) I'd love to make your fears go away!

XOXO

Best Food To Eat Before Studying

1)      Water

2)      Green tea

3)      Coffee

4)      Milk

5)      Apple

6)      Orange

7)      Blackberry

8)      Avocado

9)      Blueberry

10)   Strawberry

11)   Tomato

12)   Banana

13)   Watermelon

14)   DARK chocolate

15)   Red cabbage

16)   Spinach

17)   Broccoli

18)   Lettuce

19)   Cauliflower

20)   Beans

21)   Cucumber

22)   Pumpkin seeds (I don’t know whether these go under nuts! But who cares when it’s a really good snack, and helps you memorize stuff?)

23)   Almonds

24)   Walnuts
 

25)   Salmon and any other 'small' fish

WHEN ASSIGNMENT IS DUE IN AN HOUR...

We all go through the phase in our lives, where we feel like we are doomed if we do not have more time to finish the assignment. One can say "you had time", but as a college student I am on your side. Don't worry we are all struggling!

Doesn't it feel good to know that others are struggling too? It always makes me feel good!

So here is a method that I have used once when I was stuck with two assignments and an exam as well. I try to NOT stick to this method, but what if you REALLY need more time? 


STEP 01- Open a MS Word document and paste a random article from anywhere..

STEP 02-Then open it using 'Notepad'. Remember, NOT 'Word Pad'. It only works if you do it with 'Notepad'.

And once opened in 'Notepad' the document will look like the one on the right hand side of the below image.

 

STEP 03 - The delete a random selection from the opened document. Save it and close.

You can then try opening the document in the Ms-word format. You'll get a message like the one below. You can never open the document again. You can mail this to your lecturer so that he will think you submitted the assignment on time. Now you have time until he mails you saying that there was an error and the file could not be opened. So then you can mail the finished assignment.

See? Now I bought you some time to finish the assignments.. Go finish it off & thank me later :) 

Have a nice time with the assignments guys !!!

SUPER-CHARGE MEMORY WITH CAFFEINE..

The BEST thing about studying for me, is a mug of strong black coffee…

Caffeine helps you stay awake and energized to study up all night if you want. But, that Is not all..

Through out the years many studies have been done, to find the relationship between studying and caffeine intake. Some believes that caffeine has negative effects on memory.

But, according to a very recent study done by researcher’s at John Hopkins university, a small amount of about 200mg of Caffeine a day enhances retention of memory. It enhances long term memory.

COFFEE IS CAFFEINE, BUT IS CAFFEINE COFFEE?

Once I was reading through a set of comments on a blog post regarding caffeine. And one person had commented saying ‘the article must have been paid by the coffee industry’.

Coffee, as many people mis-interpret, is NOT the only source of caffeine. There are many other sources of caffeine. If being sponsored, that article would have been sponsored even by tea industry or soft drink industry as both tea and soft drinks also has a fair amount of caffeine.

Would you believe me if I told you that your ‘mouth freshener’ had caffeine in it? (Now don’t just guzzle up the mouth fresher! Lol.. I hope you know that it is not a healthy thing, to drink mouth freshener..) Not just that according to health.com’s article there are 12 other weird sources of caffeine like ice-cream & chocolate.

CAFFEINE USE DISORDER?? Seriously??

But, unfortunately there is a disorder like that! It’s real.. According to statistics caffeine is one mostly abused drug all over the world.You become dependent on caffeine. Like, addicted? Yes! It’s being addicted to caffeine!! How much I love this.. I once had my phone wallpaper as ‘keep caffeinated and carry on’…

While some people, LIKE ME! shows not many negative effects due to caffeine overdose, for some people it may result in heart conditions and problems in conception. Of course, this will NOT come in if you overdose on caffeine very rarely. But, you get it right?

And, finally a little reminder on me,

Don’t drink more than 400mg a day of caffeine and specially make sure you get a good night’s sleep before exam day or you will not remember a thing! No matter how much the memory stimulants helped you gather up knowledge the whole time…

Hope you enjoyed the article.. Please feel free to share with us what your most preferred mode of caffeine is. Mine is and always will be coffee.. What is yours?

8 WAYS HOW YOUR SMARTPHONE AIDS YOUR STUDIES

As they say that a woman’s best friend is gold, I would say that a student’s best friend is her smart phone. True that technology is often criticized for its negative influence on the younger generation. But, it is equally important.

Too much of anything is always too much!

My smart phone helps me have a very organized and a peaceful student life. Here is how;

1) RECORD LECTURES

I started recording the lectures from this semester (the 2nd semester). In the 1st semester I was so out-of-this-world that I didn’t even know what the lecturer spoke about.

I find it so effective! It is impossible for my brain to hold all the stuff that the lecturer says. I know yours can’t too!

My college doesn’t let us record the lectures, but anyhow I do! I feel that it’s so unfair that they don’t let us record the lectures! Come on. We are not going to sell them right?

2) FOR QUICK INFORMATION

Most of the time I forget (or just don’t care) for the minute homework that the lecturer gives like,

“read up on flashbulb memories” or

“write a short essay on the 7 sins of memory”

My phone is my savior at such times. I simply Google it! In a matter of seconds I am equipped with all the bullet points to shoot at the lecturer. Lol. Seriously, this is why I love my phone, everyday!

3) ON-THE-GO DICTIONARY

A dictionary will come handy all the time when you are studying. Big text books, with big words are a night-mare for every student. I use dictionary.com. There are some other dictionary apps too. You can try those. But I am confident with dictionary.com.

4) E-MAIL

Usually in our college all the lecture slides and lecture schedules are mailed to us. So e-mail feature on my phone really helps me quickly browse through the schedule and get updated about assignments, get lecture notes and so on…

5) WHATSAPP

I just love whatsapp! No offence viber :) But I think whatsapp is more user friendly. True I like the big and lovely stickers on viber, but whatsapp has something more than viber which attracts me.

This is not just to stay in touch with friends, but also to stay updated with the “class-room-stuff”. We have a class group on whatsapp, where all the important notices are whatsapp-ed as and when anyone gets to know it.

This is a great way to stay in touch with the assignments, projects, case studies or anything. Just in case you forget, someone will remind you…

6) MEMO’S

As same as sticky notes (I love sticky notes btw!) the memo feature in my phone lets me make note of all the h/w and every little stuff that I have to do.

7) PHOTO COPYING NOTES

No, I don’t mean photocopying-photocopying! I mean, taking photos of notes. Like when I get absent for a lecture (or to be frank, when I decide to bunk a class) I don’t like to give-up my chit chatting time with friends, to take down notes. Or look like a 'you-know-who' by keeping my face plastered on the books all the time..

This where my smart phone comes in handy. I take photos of my friend’s notes. Simple!

This is also good if you ARE in the class, but just don’t feel like taking down notes. But don’t make it a habit. Taking down notes is a very effective method of studying.

8) PLAY SUDOKU OR DO CROSSWORDS

We need to have a break when studying and come on, who on earth would own a smart phone and NOT play games in it? Well I wouldn’t. I am not saying that you should ONLY play mind games like Sudoku or crosswords. But it really helps improve your vocabulary and analytical skills.

This is not a direct way in which my smart phone helps my studies. But Sudoku is a game that I really love and it helps me develop my focusing skills. Focus is very important in everything you do.

I do enjoy crosswords. But Sudoku is just a different thing. I LOVE IT!


P.S Don’t forget to let us know how your smart phone helps you in studies..


And, Oh! Don’t forget angry birds & cut-the-rope. They make you think too :)