Arizona State University-Tempe Top Questions

I would tell my high school self to enjoy the social interactions as they come. Being a freshman in a university is hard, and sometimes you can feel like you are just another face among the crowd. I wish I could have just set down the pencil and study guides in high school and enjoy the time I had with my friends and family while I was still an outgoing individual. I would also let myself know about some of the challenges that I could, and have, faced with hopes of preparing myself better for the future. Now that I am away from home and kind of doing this all on my own I have to figure alot of things out from my own experiences rather than relying on others.

If I could go back in time to have a conversation with the person I was back in my senior year of high school, I would tell myself to start developing "college-like" habits. Becoming independent has been a huge step for myself as a college student and learning what that meant has been one of the greatest yet most rewarding challenges. While all my professors and ASU faculty ingeneral, do like to see their students succeed, there is a clear, visible difference from college professors to high school teachers. Keeping myself on track with homework, assignments, projects and due dates is something that is extremely important and in college professors are not there to constantly remind you to do your work like high school teachers are. I would tell myself to begin preparing for what it truly means to be an active, engaged college student by holding myself accountable rather than letting someone do it for me until it was not possible for them to do so. I would tell myself to imintate healthy school habits that have worked for me in the past and practice them regularly in school and the real world.

I have yet to make it through a day without cursing the past me, the high school version. If I had just put in the time and effort during high school, then I would have made college life so much easier. The first step that I would take would be convincing myself that school is not that hard. The key to exceeding high school and having a successful future in college is to not take my classes for granted. Rather than complain that there is too much work for students, I should have used the vast amounts of resources that schools offer whether it's the teachers hosting study sessions or using the library for projects. And the most important advice that I could offer myself, is to apply for scholarships rather than wait for them to come to me. There are so many scholarships that go unused every year, and the only thing keeping me from getting some of that free money is a simple essay most of the time. So if I had the ability to talk to myself as a high school senior, I would prove to myself that hardwork is the key to being successful.

I would go back in time and tell myself to get used to studying. Being a high school student that never studied for any class it was hard to transition into having to study in order to get good grades. Also coming across the country and changing time zones I thought 9am classes were going to be easy to get up for. No. Once you adjust its like waking up for 9am in your original time zone. Other than that I would tell myself to stay calm because college is as hard as you make it. If you set up a bad schedule or take too many hard classes you are not going to enjoy that semester and you are going to stress yourself out. Take it easy the first semester so the transistion is not as rough. Also do not worry about making friends, someone you thought was cool first semester might not be so cool next. So worry about what you are going to school for and the good friends will come and stick around for the upcoming semesters just like they in high school.

If I could talk with my high school self I would tell her to be a weirdo instead of a popular kid. Forget about everything that you think is important and stop worrying about friends, boys, and social engagements. It doesn’t matter who you date, what parties you attend, or how many people like you. Once you get out of high school all of that background noise fades away and you are left with the aftermath of whatever decisions you made in high school. In high school it seems like the captian of the football team and the head cheerleader are set up for the rest of their lives. They are popular, they attend every important social event, and people talk about them all the time. Little do you know that they both peaked in high school and end up reliving these golden years rather than becoming uber successful adults. Can you guess which kids from high school did become the uber successful adults? The weirdoes and geeks that spent their time at home studying and did activities that other people thought were lame and uncool. They knew who they were then and they know how they are now.

Apply for all scholarships that you can, even if you think they don't apply to you. If you don't, you'll be forced to get a student loan, which is no fun to have to pay for right after you get out of college. Find an internship or job (off campus or not) to help with your resume and just help yourself financially. Get involved in community service and clubs early on. When doing school work, pour yourself into it, fun will always come later. Go to community college first, it's cheaper and you can finish your general education requirements there, then transfer over to a larger university. The larger university is always expensive and has hidden fees, so be sure to save up money and earn as much as you can.

Advising myself would greatly improve my effectiveness in the transition to college but to the question of what i would say, I would speak about the importantance of goal setting. Learning about how to set goals has greatly improved my ability to go from making baby steps in learning to makeing great leaps and strides to further my own understand of the world around me. It would allow me to truely see what i was worth only but a few years ago. As I graduated from high school i had the opportunity to serve a mission for my church which included moving to a foreign country and learning the language there. I was required to learn Japanese and through the prosess of learning Japanese i learned that if you have a goal that i can reach for then it greatly increases my ability to preform and to learn and grow. If i was to understand the importantance of this earlier on in life i feel that i would have begun to stretch myself much further during the past few years. That is what i feel would most benifit me to hear as a senior in high school.

There are a million things that I ran into as a high school senior and not knowing what I would get myself into. I would change the way I viewed college originally and know that it would be a pathway for the rest of my life. As a high school senior I did not have the right state of mind and thought college was needed because it was a social norm, a pathway to friendship. It took an entire year for my self-realization that I needed this in order to succeed in life. The most difficult hardship is planning for your financial stability. Every student talks about their struggle with finances but facing it first hand is the hardest thing you have to go through. Going back as a high school senior I would budget wisely rather than spending on items that marketing geniuses knew would be needed in my mind. In the end, I can’t go back and change anything but my last bit of advice would be to stay focused. No matter what happens in life, no matter what anyone can say, to always stay focuses until the end.

I would tell my younger self to not quit school no matter how tough it gets, because it will be so much tougher to finish a degree as an older adult than as a younger college student fresh out of high school.

The advise I would give myself about college is to find something that you will really enjoy and what will give you a good quality of life. Also, to be better prepared for classes and study harder. In addition, I would suggest to take different courses to better help open more opportunities such as a grant writing course. It is also important to have fun and do things that will give you great memories and experiences.