University of Maryland-College Park Top Questions

The advice I would give myself is to enjoy every moment because college years go by very fast. I would tell myself to be open to everything and take the chance to grow as an individual. The most important factor of attending a college is to take the opportunity of what is offered. There are thousands of clubs and other extracurricular activites to get involved in. Also to stay true to oneself and remember what the focus is. To focus on academics and to take everything you can from the unverisity you are attending.

If I could talk to my high school senior self, I would tell myself to not go to college but rather join the Air Force and pursue my dream of becoming a fighter pilot. College is for most people, but it is not for me. Everyone has a dream about their future and often that dream involves going to college to study and practice their passion. That was not my dream, yet I went to college anyway. I was told by my peers and family that college was the right path for me; they were wrong. This mistake gave me the worst year of my life. Throughout college I worked hard and achieved a high GPA, yet I was overcome with feelings of depression and lack of purpose. No matter how many clubs or activities I tried, I never seemed to fit in. In the end I realized that I did not belong there and suffered until the school year was over. Today I like to believe that had I followed my dream of being a fighter pilot I would be happier and that is why I would tell my past self to avoid college and follow my own path.

Dear Charlotte, you are about to become a college student. Mark my words, you absolutely will be poor. You will have spent most of your graduation money by the beginning of school, and be left with nothing to your name but $13. Do not panic. Technically, this is doing quite well for the way you will be living for the rest of the school year. You will get a biweekly allowance of $40, most of which, you will spend the first Saturday you get it. So relax. You will eventually get a job, so stop feeling sorry for yourself. It worked out in the end. Also, try not to spend so much time roleplaying on the computer. Yes it is fun, but there has been a significant decrease in your short term memory over the course of the year, caused by your insistence on being online. Several times, you have jumped out of bed, remembering something crucial, and you will become stressed out, and you will call Mother screaming and whining, overall, seeing a decrease in your participation grade. In short, get off the computer and get used to living on peanuts. Yours, Charlotte.

Make your schoolwork your number one priority. Even though you may have done well in high school, college is a whole new ballgame. You need to develop a different set of study habits in order to succeed. If there is something that you do not understand, make sure to ask for help as soon as you can before you fall even further behind. The area you decide to major in should be something that you want to do, not what someone else wants you to do. You are setting yourself up for disappointment if you force yourself into a certain field you do not enjoy and expect it to eventually get better. If your heart is not in it, move on to something different. You know yourself the best and you should listen to your gut instinct. Do not be afraid to try new things; find something that interests you. Take advantage of all the resources and opportunities when you have them. In the end, what matters is not what your GPA is or how many awards you have won, but what you have accomplished as a person and how you can contribute your talents and passion to the world.

Remember that you are investing in yourself. Your investment could pay dividends for a lifetime.

Freshman year is over and the summer has arrived. As I am laying in my bed, getting ready to take a nap, all of a sudden my mind spins and I end up back in my senior year in high school. I remember walking the halls and being so busy being the SGA Vice President and trying to get prom together. I see myself walking into my classes and talking to the counselors about school and scholarships, but when I get home all I do is homework. As I follow my senior path again, I realize that I should have studied and taken more AP and college classes. I was not as serious about the test so, I failed the class without college credit. I could have come to college with at least 9 credits on my transcript, but now I have to take summer classes to catch up. I also wish I would've applied for scholarships. I got so much money freshman year, but sophomore year, I got absolutely nothing. I can't do my senior year over, but I can definitely help the younger students to be on track, so they will not walk in my footsteps.

I would take college classes at a local community college and as much AP classes as I can to get ahead.

I would advise myself to improve my time management. I feel that college life is about learning how to budget all of the newfound free time that you have, compared to what you were accustomed to in high school. Knowing what I know now, I would advise my high school self to read a book or time management and prioritization before getting to college. I think it would help ease the jump between education lifestyles, and make for an easier transition. I would also suggest that I start keeping a daily planner to log my time and write down my homework assignments in. Too often, I relied on my tired memory and lost points on assignments because I had simply forgotten about them. If I had used a daily planner to schedule out my day and budget my study time, I think that I would have had a much less stressful transition to the independent ways of college life.

I would have worked harder as a HS senior. I did not really take my senior year seriously because I knew I got into the college I wanted to go to and I was so excited about prom and graduation and all the other senior activities that I did not give much attention to my school work. By working harder, It would have prepared me for trasitioning into College because I would have a had a more serious attitude compared to my lazy attitude this past freshman year at College Park. Balance, is also something I would advice myself about. I learned ( the hard way) that you have to learn to balance everything in College. You cannot have more of something, and less of another thing. If your prorities are not balanced then it will mess everything up. This past year I learned you have 3 choices, having a social life, sleeping or studying and you can only have 2 out of the 3. I would also advice myself to participate in extracurricular activities or clubs in college. And the most important advice is always work hard! Take college seriously because, its your life, its your career and your education.

Take every course serious, not to procrastinate and to focuss on school and put working aside.