So I just completed my freshman year of college and boy was it different than high school. I learned a lot about myself, made new friends, and experienced what college is really like. Here are some lessons I learned along the way that I wanted to share with all of you.
There is no one type of professor. You have those that have their lecture from their notes. You have those that prepare nothing but go instead by premade Powerpoints. You even have those that can walk into the room and just talk for thirty minutes. So don’t expect that just because you have always been taught one way, that that is the way you will be taught in college. And don’t think that just because one professor teaches one way, that all others will teach the same. The hardest thing for me in college was trying to figure out the best way to take notes for my classes. For World Civilization, I ended up practically writing everything Professor Chambers said. However for Computer Science I and Political Science 101H, I was just fine with the Powerpoints provided.
The professors are not required to care about you. One of my Computer Science professors last year was, let’s just say, not the best teacher. You could tell he knew the stuff but could not for the life of him teach it to you coherently. Case in point: he called one aspect of the language “magical”. His main thing was to wave a laser pointer around whatever point he was talking about and repeat the information on the Powerpoint. Pbbt. Now for his class we had programming assignments. And on one assignment I made an 80, his reasoning being “The program works, but the result is incorrect.” I emailed him asking him what string of characters he had used and what the output was. I wasn’t arguing with him that I had it wrong; I simply wanted to know what I had done wrong so I could not do it next time. I have yet to receive a response back from him.
The good professors learn your name. So far, with the exception of that CompSci prof, every professor has attempted to learn who I was. Of course, this is understandably hard for my classes where I have 100 or so other students with me, but they all have tried. And most have succeeded. It’s always quite nice to walk into class and have the man\/woman say “Jacob?” and know they are talking to\/about me. So I’m glad that, at least at Southern, you’re not just a number (you are a number, but they also see you are a person).
