A college education is presented as a cure-all. The prevailing narrative is that anyone without one is doomed to forever sling fries at McDonald’s (which is a completely respectable job that could be more fiscally rewarding soon). But, while most people will tell you that you need a degree, few people take the time to tell you how to maximize its value. That’s a lot like telling you a flood is coming and that you need to swim without ever handing you a set of floaties.
Back in the day, Mark Shrayber and I were college instructors. I taught English and he taught psychology to undergrads. Back then, we were watched by the admin, now we’re fancy internet writers and can say whatever we want. So we thought that this would be a perfect time to drop some knowledge. Knowledge that will help you navigate college and the real world.
Revere The Syllabus
Chances are if you need to take a sick day from work, you will know the procedure for taking one. You won’t email your boss the night before with a list of questions and excuses. At least, you won’t do that more than once. In college, your class syllabus will be your first strong example of working with internal documentation. A syllabus is an employee handbook that has the added benefit of telling you exactly what to do to impress your boss, or in this case, your instructor.
Grades
Your grade is your responsibility. That’s why you should figure out exactly what you need to do to get your desired grade as early as possible in the semester. Often, I’d have people showing up to office hours late in the semester demanding I explain to them why they weren’t getting an A when they were only “three points away.” There’s no rounding up. I’ve never met one instructor — although I’m sure they’re out there — whose sole goal was to fail people and trick them into bad grades. We want to help you earn the A you feel you deserve, but that means putting in the work.
I know it sounds so very unhip and parent-like to say this, but being a student is your job and your grades are your pay. You wouldn’t go up to your boss and inform them that an early shift was unfair (a thing that has happened when I’ve taught 8 a.m. classes) and that’s why you weren’t going to show… but you still expected your pay. You probably shouldn’t do that in school either.
Don’t Count On Extra Credit
There are two kinds of people who tend to ask for extra credit: high achievers who already have an A and therefore don’t need it and slackers who are failing and trying to grab onto anything that will slow the death spiral of their grade. Stop. There literally will be no point after college when this crap will fly. “Hey, boss. I know that report was due today, but I haven’t finished it; do you have a few math problems I could do instead so I can keep my job?”
College is a place where you get weaned off of extra credit to get you ready for the working world. If you bomb a proposal, your employer isn’t going to devise a pop quiz for you to do in lieu of it. Get used to doing what is required with the original set of tasks given; it’s like putting together a piece of Ikea furniture correctly the first time, but for your life.
Attendance
Hate all you want, but you must show up to class, Ferris. That’s because you’re there to learn and we’re here to teach you all sorts of stuff that the book doesn’t cover.
“But I got an A on everything but attendance, so obviously I taught myself” you might be thinking. That’s usually completely misguided. You may have gotten an A on the test, but it doesn’t mean you actually learned anything except definitions.
And that’s literally how things are going to be from now on. If I’ve learned anything in my life (and I’ve learned at least two things, one of them being that those “dry clean only” labels really mean it), it’s that just showing up really is 90 percent of what you have to do to succeed. Show up and participate in a meaningful way that other people can get behind? It’s not going to be the only secret to your success, but it’ll certainly be a major part.
And here’s one more terrible secret: Sometimes your teachers will be boring and your classmates will say stuff that will drive you insane. Instead of disappearing, think of it as an exercise in frustration tolerance, which you’ll need a lot of in your life. Any practice helps.
Don’t Risk Plagiarizing
Should you cut corners and blatantly turn in an entire essay verbatim from an online source, you will get caught because of a series of tells or because someone else turned in the same plagiarized essay (Yep. That happened.) When you do this, you compromise not only your standing int the class and college, but your reputation. Do you know what you will need when you have a career: a strong body of work and a solid reputation. Get used to pushing yourself to learn from the production of your own work. In the words of 80s UK singer Howard Jones, “It can only get better.”
Office Hours
It always surprised me when students told me they didn’t want to come to office hours because it felt like they were bothering me. Not the case! Instructors love it when you come by to chat, but have an agenda and questions. You want to come talk to me about the latest assignment or what path you should take to make your grad school application stronger? Awesome. You want to stop by to make sure I wasn’t being serious when I told the class that I spent most of my time in the office crying? Great!
This will serve you well even outside the classroom. Before I decided to go to grad school, I never knew how important it was to do your own PR — which includes making yourself known to the important people around you. Showing up for office hours will not only help you be known, it’ll prepare you for the emotional struggle of making important personal and professional connections that will last you until your inevitable desire for a career change. But hey, at least then you’ll know what to do!
