Manage the Academic Challenge

Many people make the mistake of beginning college as a blank slate. They have some idea of the way classes are structured and hopefully still retain some information from high school classes, but this is the extent of it. It really is no wonder that the traditional four-year degree now takes an average of five years, drop-out rates hover around one-fifth of students, and over one-fourth of drop-outs cite academic problems as the cause.

Advisers, especially at large universities, tend to take the cookie cutter approach to suggesting semester classes and electives. The syllabi are not offered until the first day, when it is too late to pick a new class. As a result, new students can easily become bogged down in coursework too difficult for their current skills.

The best idea for deciding on a major and then choosing courses is to take a look at the books attached to the class description sheet. Even when it comes to core classes that everyone must take, it may be that one professor is using a book more suited to students with a dominant spatial intelligence while another is using a book suited primarily for readers. It is wise to choose the professor with a more comprehensible text.

Of course, difficult coursework is inevitable. No one escapes having to sooner or later write a ten-page paper on an unfamiliar topic and solve a sheet of matrix functions that was gibberish a month earlier. Difficult courses don't have to be taken back-to-back, though.

To Use or Not to Use the Buyback Option
College-level courses will almost always have a text, piece of literature or both, that is necessary to fulfilling obligations. A good number of these, especially for the core curriculum, can be safely rented or sold back without worry of needing them for later classes. Algebra, US History, Western Civilization, and Introduction to Political Science textbooks all fall under this category. The information presented is general. Should the subject lead to a major, later texts will be more important to consider keeping. For lower level classes, rented textbooks will help save money and allow another student to use the book for the following semester.

Later courses will allow the student more choice and the opportunity to specialize in a given field. Whereas Introduction to Political Science textbooks will be more general, Legislative Process of the United States will be less so, and Environmental Law is quite specific. For a student considering a law degree, keeping the law book is probably a wise decision, and someone looking forward to a Master of Arts in Public Administration should hang on to any text detailing the functions of government branches.

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