It's mid-August, which means the new academic year will be starting soon. At this time of year, the students are thinking about the next semester, faculty are frantically trying to finish the research and writing they had planned for the summer and bloggers are thinking about offering unsolicited advice.
I've written in the past about things prospective science majors should do before getting to college, so this time out, I'm going to offer some tips for things to do while actually in college. The following suggestions are based on my own experiences as a student and 16 years spent on the other side of the classroom teaching physics to college students. This will be skewed toward private college/university students, because that's my background both as a student and a faculty member, but I think it's fairly generally applicable.
So, you're a college student, planning to study science (most of this will work for other fields of study as well, with some tweaking, but I'm going to focus on prospective science majors). What are the best things you can do to help ensure success in your chosen major and future career?
1) Go To Class
This may seem like a screamingly obvious point, but it's remarkable how many students seem to need this said explicitly. Really, though, go to class.
Yes, you have a textbook, and since it's the 21st century you have access to the Internet and all the assembled wisdom thereon, but you should still go to class. A typical textbook will contain much more material than will actually be emphasized and tested in any particular course, and if nothing else, going to class will help you know which bits are most important.
(Historical aside: I took a computer science class back in college that was deadly boring. The professor had copious notes in Word format on a shared drive on the campus network, and his lectures consisted of pulling these up on a classroom computer and going over them point by point. I pretty much stopped going to that class, checking in only occasionally to pick up and hand in homework. At the end of the semester, one of the questions on the open-book-open-notes final exam asked "Explain the two methods of [doing a thing with seven methods in the notes] that we discussed in class.")
It's also good to go to class because any good instructor will know more than one way to explain the material being covered. So if the specific treatment in the textbook isn't clear to you, it's possible that the explanation given in class will be more helpful. And if it's not, you can move on to:
2) Ask Questions When You Don't Understand Something
There are going to be times when you don't understand something that the instructor says or does. Don't let these slide past on the assumption that you'll read about it in the book and figure it out later -- you may find that the book is even more cryptic. Raise your hand, ask the question, and get your confusion cleared up as quickly as possible.
Don't worry that you're wasting time or annoying the instructor -- answering student questions is a big part of what we're paid for. It's actually kind of unnerving as a professor to go over a point that I expect to be confusing, and not get student questions -- it makes me worry that students have just tuned out, and that never ends well.
Also, don't worry that asking questions will make you look dumb in front of your peers. As a general rule, if one student in the class is confused about some point, odds are that several others are as well. Your classmates aren't going to be thinking "What a dope, he doesn't understand ____..." they're going to be thinking "Oh, thank goodness somebody asked that, because I didn't understand _____, either..." Asking questions benefits everyone, not just the person who does the actual talking.
Asking questions in class will also help with:
3) Make Sure The Instructor Knows Who You Are
This is one that needs a little caution, because you don't want to be annoying about it, but you should make sure that whoever is teaching the class knows you as something other than a name on the grade roster.
This has some benefits within the context of a single class -- many grading schemes have a little bit of slack built in, usually with a percentage given for "class participation," or some such, and this comes into play when grades are near the borderline. A student who is right on the line between B+ and A- is much more likely to get bumped up a notch if they've been engaged in class.
The main benefit of this is longer-term, though: If the instructor knows who you are, that's likely to open doors for you. If you're someone a faculty member knows to be a good and engaged student, they're more likely to think of you when somebody needs a research assistant or a tutor, and they're more likely to respond positively if you ask them about research opportunities (either hiring you directly or steering you to another faculty member who is hiring).
And if nothing else, at some point, you're going to need references who can speak well of you to help you get a job or get into a graduate program. You're a lot more likely to get good letters if you've made sure that the professor knows who you are. There are few things worse, on the faculty side, than having to write a letter that says, essentially, "I know this student was in my class because I see grades for nearly all their assignments in my spreadsheet."
Speaking of which:
4) Do The Homework
This is another one that might seem too obvious to need including, but an alarming number of students need it spelled out. So, do the homework. Even if it's not graded or represents only a tiny fraction of the grade.
There's an old joke in faculty circles, about salaries in the profession: "I teach for free. They pay me to grade." Believe me when I tell you that faculty members are not assigning homework because we get a cheap thrill out of spilling red ink on your papers -- for most faculty outside of a Pink Floyd video, grading is a miserable slog. We do it because the only way to really learn science is by doing science, which means doing problems yourself. Which is what homework is for.
Yes, homework can be kind of tedious, and often confusing, but that's the point. I'm really fond of Rhett Allain's analogy between homework and working out: Confusion is the sweat of learning. You don't get in shape by reading the instruction booklet for a Stairmaster, you have to get on the damn thing and do the reps, getting sweaty and tired in the process. Homework is the intellectual analogue of that -- even the most tedious assignment helps you practice skills you'll need later on.
Of course, just like there are ways to make exercise more pleasant, there are things you can do to make homework more enjoyable, starting with:
5) Get To Know Your Fellow Students
If you're taking a class on a college or university campus, you're not going to be alone, you're going to be with other students. Get to know them, and unless it's expressly forbidden by the professor, get together with them to do homework and study.
At the very least, getting to know other students in the class will give you a resource to draw on if you have to miss a class or two -- somebody you can get notes from -- and someone to vent to about any especially unsatisfying lectures. More than that, though, working together on homework will have all sorts of benefits.
For one thing, having a group that you work with will help ensure that you actually do the homework, in the same way that having a workout partner will help ensure that you actually go to the gym on those days when you're not really sick, but don't quite feel like working out. A little peer pressure can be good. More importantly, different students tend to be confused about different things, and working with others can help you all get un-stuck. I got through my upper-level physics classes as an undergrad largely because I worked together with a bunch of my fellow students, and I firmly believe that you learn a lot more by getting all the way through to the end of a problem with a little help from your friends than you would be working on it entirely alone and getting stuck on part b of f.
Working with others also is a chance to practice:
6) Learn To Express Yourself Clearly
Contrary to stereotype, effective communication is an essential part of science, particularly when you're learning it.
When you do your coursework, with friends or on your own, make sure that whatever you hand in is as clear as you can make it, spelling out what you're doing, how you're doing it and most importantly why you're doing it.
Part of this is kind of mercenary and cynical: if whoever is grading your assignment can't read what you're doing, you're not going to be able to get partial credit for it. This may seem obvious, but you'd be amazed at the number of homework papers I get that seem to have been wadded up in the toe of the shoes their author wore to class. Scrawled equations with no explanation, crossed-out work replaced with scribbles in the margins, and no indication of which of the many numbers given is the final answer. Don't do that.
More importantly, though, there's a lot of truth to the old joke that you don't really understand a subject unless you can explain it to someone else. Explaining a topic in a way that makes sense requires a deep understanding and a certain clarity of thought, and those are worth cultivating. So, when you finish your assignment, go over it before you hand it in and make sure you've clearly explained what you're doing at each step of the process from question to answer. Bounce it off one of your friends, if you're not sure.
And because seven is a good number of items for a list of advice, let's end this with:
7) Take Advantage Of Your Environment
The previous items on the list have been rather narrowly focused on the specifics of a particular class, but I'm a faculty member at a liberal arts college, which means I'm obliged to remind you that there's a big world outside the classroom. And as important as your specific science classes are, it's also important to engage with the rest of your community.
If you're a student on a college campus, you're going to be surrounded by a wealth of opportunities to do things beyond just going to class and doing homework, the vast majority of them free, or at least very cheap. There will be lectures, and concerts, and clubs, and parties. Take advantage of those things. Go see famous people talk about what they do, or bands who aren't famous yet but someday will be. Look at art and listen to music from outside your normal comfort zone. Hang out with your classmates and BS about philosophy and politics and which recent films have the most quotable dialogue.
Unless you go on to a career in academia you will never again be surrounded by so many smart and interesting people, with so many opportunities to experience new things. And even if you do go on to work in academia, you'll never have as much free time to enjoy those things as you will when you're a student. Don't squander that opportunity.
It might seem odd for a faculty member to encourage outside interests, which might seem like distractions from classes and homework. But taking breaks from a single-minded focus on classes and grades is essential from a mental health standpoint. And in the long term, there's a lot more to success in life than just getting good grades in your science classes. Those outside activities may prove to be essential to long-term success in unexpected ways. A talk from outside your major field might inspire an interest in a new subject that will lead to a new research direction. An image at an art show might trigger a realization of how to solve a vexing problem. A barroom conversation about football might spark a friendship that will open doors, or a long-term relationship that will enrich your future life immeasurably.
So, step away from the books and notes from time to time, and take advantage of the extracurricular aspects of college. If nothing else, it'll make you a more interesting person than just "that guy who got really good grades."
