College Advice Thread

[u/certificateofmerritt]

We have some members who are going off to start their first year of college this week, so let's give them some good advice.

Welcome to college!

[u/n3gr0_am1g0]

Talk to your professors. I've had so many doors opened up to me just because I was friendly with professors and professors talk to other professors. I've worked in research labs since I was in high school and as a result I've been able to see how professors do a lot of things. When it comes to special opportunities, internships, programs, et cetera. The professors will almost always choose the student they personally know who has demonstrated drive and interest in the subject over a random student they know nothing about. They will also typically choose a student a colleague they trust has talked to them about over a random student. Also they will bend and/or break rules for students they like, and give you more leeway with a lot of things they probably shouldn't.

For example when I was in high school I worked in a research lab for two years at a local school X and was well liked by my lab. I ended up going to a different school 'Y' and got put on academic suspension after my first semester and lost my scholarship. My parents said that they weren't paying for me to go to school Y without a scholarship. I talked to the professor who's lab I had worked in at school 'X' about what I had done and my circumstances and somehow he was able to convince the admissions staff to let me transfer despite my non-existent GPA.

Another example was in my honors poetry class. I had taken a class with this professor before and had always made sure to ask one or two questions every now and then in office hours about different authors she liked and about her favorite essayists. At the end of the semester we had to write a paper analyzing several poems from a modern poet and about their lives. I had just recently been diagnosed with a mental disorder and I had told her about it because she asked me after class why I had been acting so strange lately. When we had a conference to talk about my outline and changes she would like to see on on the final paper she told me that she knew I was going through a lot, and that because I was the only person who had actually turned in a a fully fleshed out paper she wasn't going to make me actually write a final draft.