Academic Freedom

In College, No One's Forcing You to Study and Go to Class. But You Should Anyway.

BY HARLAN COHEN
SPECIAL TO THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Beep … beep … beep … beep … It's 6:38.

The alarm is going off. You can either get up for your 7:30 a.m. class or sleep through it. Easy choice. You switch off the alarm, roll over and decide to wake up just in time for lunch and your 1:30 p.m. class. It meets three times a week and you already missed it twice last week. Lunch runs long and you arrive late, but no one in the 150-seat lecture hall notices. You find a seat in the back and settle in. The first of four exams is weeks away, so you decide not to take notes today. Soon you let your eyelids drop for a short nap. Once class ends, it's back to the dorms to hang out with friends and stay up all night again. Then it's the same thing tomorrow.

The best part: Your parents don't know what you're doing and your professors won't know you well enough to care.

Welcome to college, where you're finally free to live the life you want, with no one around to bother you.

And enjoy it while it lasts. Because it will probably be the shortest college career of your life.

College gives you academic freedom of choice that you've likely never experienced before. Over the course of four years, you'll get to choose your major, choose your electives and, yes, choose whether or not to go to class.

But the choices have consequences. If you do skip too many classes and blow off studying, you'll get failing grades and get kicked off campus. And then you'll be back home, with your parents waking you up again.

Set a Routine

One big difference you'll notice about college is the structure-or, I should say, lack of structure. In high school, you've got a set schedule. You're up early and expected to stay in school all day, with teachers checking attendance in each class. If you stray from the schedule, you have to account for the lost time somehow, with a late pass or an absentee note.

College isn't like that. On a typical day, you might have as many as five classes or none at all, depending on how you schedule them. These classes meet at various times of day and in different buildings, often leaving you with odd blocks of time to kill. That's good, because you're free to use this time as you please, with no one checking on you. But it's bad, because with no one checking on you, it's easy to get lazy.

That's why it's so important to create a routine for yourself. Jennifer Reynick learned this the hard way during her freshman year at the University of Washington in Seattle. A straight-A student in high school, Jennifer assumed she could pull the same grades in college without much effort. But since she didn't budget time to study, she quickly found herself falling behind.

For the first time in her academic career, her grades plummeted. "When I went to high school, I didn't really study or work," says Jennifer, now a senior. "But here, you have to work."

Jennifer set out to put some structure back in her life. She now leaves for class in the morning and stays on campus all day. In between classes, she reads and studies. She treats college like a full-time job: Her days are devoted to academics, and her nights belong to her. As a result, she's back on top of her grades. Still, her GPA reflects the remnants of her floundering freshman year.

Stick With It

Once you've got your routine, you have to stick with it. You must get yourself up, get yourself motivated, and get yourself to class. Granted, it's not always easy to get motivated for a 7:30 a.m. class after a late night out with friends, especially if the professor doesn't take attendance. Even if he or she does, it's not like anyone is going to call home if you miss class, right?

So where do you find the motivation? In yourself. UW Freshman Tara Gates missed a lot of her classes the first quarter. "It's not like I have to go," she would tell herself. "Besides, I'm tired." (She had NEVER skipped a day of class in high school.)

While her professors weren't taking attendance, they were teaching things that Tara needed to know. Tara didn't realize that professors design exams based on their lectures, not just textbooks. In a college lecture, the teacher stands in the front of the classroom and reviews readings and materials. If you miss a lecture, you miss what's on the exams, and your grades suffer.

After a quick visit home with her parents for the holidays, Ms. Gates returned to campus reinvigorated. This quarter, she goes to all her classes. "I haven't missed one yet," she boasts. As a result, her grades have rebounded.

Get Help

So you've been to all the classes and read all the books. But you still don't get the material. Now what do you do?

Another big difference between high school and college is that you are the one who has to seek out help. "In high school, teachers are pushing you, but in college you have to push yourself," says UW freshman Matthew Schneider. And there is plenty of help available.

Every college professor has office hours. These are blocks of time professors set aside to meet students in their offices and offer help. Office hours are also a great way to allow your teacher to get to know you personally. In addition, there are usually teaching assistants (graduate students in the same department) who are available to help undergraduates. A lot of campuses even have free tutoring. If you need help, all you have to do is ask.

For Matthew, it made all the difference. "In Philosophy 160, I understood most of it, but a few paragraphs confused me," he says. "There were about 200 people in the class. I went to the professor's office hours. He was in the room with a dog at his feet. I thought that was kind of interesting. He read the paragraph to me and broke it down." Matthew got the help he needed, and an A.

As you progress throughout your college career, the classes will get smaller, professors will get to know you better, and you will be motivated because you want to work and succeed. But the first year can be tough. That's when it's easiest to slip academically, because it's the most confusing and unsettling. It's a combination of new routines, new classes, new teachers, a new home, new schedules and a new life. But try not to let it throw you.

When it comes to making the grade in college, choose to go to classes, choose to do your work, and choose to push yourself to get help. If you get in the habit of making the right choices from the start, not only can you graduate with honors, you'll set a path for success that goes far beyond the classroom.