Keeping Up in College One of the most important things that you can do in the college setting is to make every effort to keep up and stay current. Classes often move along at a brisk pace, and those who do not stay with it may find themselves getting lost further down the road.
Attendance When it all comes down to it, classes are the way that teachers share a wealth of information over the course of the semester. When professors have a lot of students and need to keep a schedule, this means that students that are not in attendance or fully up to speed with everything may lag behind. It is quite difficult to catch up once you are behind in such academic settings. Along with needing to process and intake and understand current information, people also have to learn about what they have missed or fallen behind on. Therefore, falling behind can quickly turn into a very stressful ordeal, with students struggling to keep up with projects and homework in order to just stay up to speed. While there are obviously time during college which will lead to students having to struggle (such as in the case of sickness or family emergencies), the fact of the matter is that it is always better to not ever get to be in that particular situation. Therefore, it is very much in the best interest of students to attend every class they possibly can. Realistically speaking, the newfound freedom and autonomy that many students experience while at school can lead to a sizable temptation to skip class.
It won’t always be fun Not every day of school is fun, and there can be a real desire to miss out on it- after all, rationalization is easy. However, those who make the effort to go to class every time should find they have a sizable advantage over those who do not. In fact, even those who are gifted and very smart will still not be able to get the same test scores as those who have made the effort to be there. This is because in a classroom setting, a certain range of factors make learning easier and imprints the information better in the brain. For example, those who attend regularly will be able to
utilize the tips and tricks and examples used by professors in order to explain concepts, something that cannot be picked up merely by reading a book. There also is the real process of adding information to the brain through writing. Note taking helps to create a strong memory bond between the material and the mind, allowing for much better recall. Therefore, even the act of taking notes helps to solidify the information and make it more viable. This is especially important in fields which require a lot of math, such as accounting. Learning all of the necessary parts of accounting is a process which builds on itself, so missing out on it makes accounting markedly more difficult to keep up with. When it all comes down to it, making the effort to stay current by attending classes and doing homework on time gives students in this situation the boost that they need to learn new things every day and process them effectively. There really is no substitute to be found when it comes to catching up. Photo Credit: Illinois Springfield, Meekrok