I'm sure you've all heard it before. Before you head off to college everybody warns you that it's going to be different from high school, that the classes are going to be more challenging and rigorous than any you've ever experienced before. Maybe these warnings made you scared and paranoid or maybe you brushed them off like I did. Either way, you were in for a surprise when classes started.
I feel like the thing that made me the most unprepared for college classes was my confidence. Graduating as co-valedictorian with a 4.0 and college classes under my belt made me feel prepared for anything. Taking some of the more rigorous courses my high school offered surely made me prepared for college right? Wrong. The harsh reality of it was I wasn't prepared and I wasn't the smartest person in my classes, sometimes not even close. Needless to say, that took my confidence down a few notches.
I realized within the first few weeks of college that not everything was going to come easy to me. I'm used to being able to learn things pretty quickly without much studying or outside assistance. However, after sitting through a couple sessions of my Calculus and Analytic Geometry class I realized that wasn't going to be the case. The last math class I had taken was Algebra II my junior year, so as my teacher rapidly worked through problems on the board I would feel absolutely lost. There were so many times I was relieved that I sat towards the back of the classroom so he couldn't look at my work and see that I had no idea what was going on.
It can make you feel unbelievably stupid to not be able to pick up on things right away when that's what you're used to. And because I wasn't used to rigorously studying for tests or finals in high school, I carried that mentality into college. This resulted in some the worst test scores of my life and I sat there wondering how I could've let this happen to me.
What's my advice for surviving through this kind of experience? Well, my first piece of advice would be admitting when you need help. Find somebody else in the class that can tutor you and help you study. It makes all the difference in the world to have somebody sit down and work through problems with you at your pace. My second piece of advice would be to study! Although it can be tedious and annoying it will improve your scores on tests (I still haven't completely learned this so don't sweat it if you have a bad test score or two). Finally, don't beat yourself up about it. You might not be top of the class anymore and might have a B or two, but it's not the end of the world. Work towards bettering yourself and doing the best that you can and you'll survive, take it from me.
