College "Tips"

A friend of mine was accepted to, and has decided to attend UC Santa Cruz this fall. It's that time of year. I sent him my list of college "tips" just for fun. He didn't ask for them, but I had too much fun writing them up.

1. Don't let your roommate turn his closet into a hydroponics lab. We all know what that's about. It's an old story and it almost never ends well.
2. There is no alternative beverage at any party. If you think what you're drinking is non-alcoholic, be afraid, be very very afraid.
3. Pretty much any college class can be passed by spending an hour as soon as possible after class to go over/write up/clean up your notes, and then some time later on homework. Oh yeah, you have to take notes in college. There are exceptions to this rule. Turbulence class for example almost broke me working on it almost 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
4. Cereal is the one thing that the food service can't destroy. Cereal is your friend. It's ok to eat cereal for dinner.
5. You don't have to take any class from a bad professor. Typically the profs rotate through teaching duties so a class taught by a bad prof this semester may be taught by a good one next semester. All a bad class does is ruin your motivation, and your desire. Checking off a required class is not the goal. Load up on more classes than you can possibly take for the first week or two and then drop the crappy ones. I would even sit in on multiple sections of the same class to find the best one, and drop the others. It makes for a painful first week or two, but the payoff is over the whole rest of the semester. By the way, Good and Bad are not defined by when the class is scheduled (an 8am class doesn't make it Bad), or how easy/hard it is to get an X (where X is the grade you're trying to get).
6. Take everything you can from a good professor, once you find 'em. Good professors can make the study of basketweaving interesting. Take advantage of this.
7. You do have noise canceling headphones, right?
8. You will likely never have the luxury of this much time to pursue your passions ever again in your life. So, uh duh, pursue your passions. Sitting around drinking beer and playing video games: need I say how sad that is? Not that you would do this, but there will be a lot of people who will, and it's easy to get sucked in. UC Boulder was filled with students who just didn't want to be there. San Jose State was filled with students who just didn't want to be there. And I'm sure UCSC is filled with students who would rather be doing something else.
9. Hat and sweatpants. With a hat and sweatpants you can make an 8am class after waking up at 7:55am and still look mostly presentable. Why sweatpants? You can run in sweatpants.