Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College Top Questions

What should every freshman at your school know before they start?

Amanda

Probably the best advise I could give myself would be to worry less about finding a group to fit in with, and focus more on my classes and organization. You are going to college for an education not a social experience. Why pay all that money if you are just going to focus on socializing. I learned the hard way that college professors do not care what is going on in your life. You are in their class, so pay attention and do your work. Being promt and organized is key. The days of shuffling through handfuls of papers, and having books scttered about are over. Get it togethor find your binders, the sticky notes, and highlighters. Get serious quick, and the rest of the semester will flow nicely. Please know that I am not a total bore now that I am serious. I just have my priorities in the right order. You will make friends and hang out, but school comes first. You will be grateful in the end because you will not be stressing over grades at end of term or worrying about keeping grants. Which makes life a lot easier. I wish you the best of luck!

clefira

Apply to as many colleges and scholarships as possible. Don't just accept the first good scholarship that comes to you, you're a smart kid, you are gonna get a ton of cach. All you need to do is apply. Also, dont leave the applications until last minute, or thats really gonna come back and bite you in the rear.

Julia

If I could go back in time to give myself advice, I would tell myself that I need to talk to new people as often as I can and get involved with as many activities on campus as I can. Why? Because I am a very shy person and I tend to keep away from anything that will get me noticed. I have now discovered in college, that being noticed is not so bad, I actually enjoy it. If I could go back in time, I would definitely tell myself to get more involved with my high school.

Jolene

I would definitely tell myself to work harder and get better grades. The fulfillment you get from achieving high grades it tremendous. You’ll feel better about yourself and the chances of you doing better in college are much greater if you work hard at it. The other thing I would tell myself is not to wait so long before going to college. I wish I would have gone to college as a young adult instead of waiting. You have so much more going for you at a younger age. For instance, you have your youth. You will be able to do more and you will not need as much help. You will be able to start your career sooner. If I had started college as a young adult, I would have been in the Nursing profession almost twenty years already. Instead, I am just starting out. It will be much harder now because hospitals and doctors will expect so much more from me simply because of my age. But getting good grades is the number one thing I would tell myself to do.

Maria

If I assume to go back in time and talk to myself as a high school senior, my advice shall be to wait a little bit to go to college. While I wait I could have found myself a full time job so I can help my grandmother with bill payments from her clinic and for her medicine that she can’t buy. School to me right now is to expensive. I had wish to have waited a little bit more. When I know I’m fully ready for my future career, I would go and enroll for school and study what I’m studying now, which is medical assisting. I had made a decision right after high school, to go straight to college when I graduate, which was at the age 17. I didn’t think It would be this challenging, but with hope I know I can do this and when I’m finish with school, I will start working and help my grandmother with all her needs because after all she had done for me when I was a child, to pay her back with thankfulness I will take fully responsibility of her and all her needs.

Guillermo

If I could go back in time and talk myself as a high school senior, I would tell myself that college is very different from high school. Teachers won't baby you and give you extra time for an assignment. You would really have to work hard to get good grades and don't slack off. Also, even though you wonder why you are spending all this kind of money, it will pay off in the long run.

Taylor

Looking back at myself in high school there are a few things I would have told myself if I would have been able to. I would have said to get started on filling out as many scholarships as possible because once it comes time you will get so busy with everything else your not going to have as much time to complete them as you do then. Also I would have mentioned that I need to start looking for a job near the location of my college because by the time you move in and go out to search for a job there won't be any because many of the college students have already taken them up and you will be left unemployed. The last thing I would have mentioned to my highschool self is to make sure you find the right people to hang out with because some people will lead you down the wrong path and get you in trouble. Learning all this the hard way has given me a good look at what I need to continue to do if I want to further my education.

Kaitlyn

The first piece of advice I would give to myself would be to look for a school that is small enough to comfort the country girl in myself. I would also tell myself to choice a course that I am very passionate about. I've always loved math and now I am in a field that revolves around math. When I first started college, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer because everyone knows they make a lot of money. I quickly found out that was not the course for me. Because I wasn't surre what I wanted to do when I began, I wasted a year of school on courses I didn't need. The final advice I would give to myself would be to go to a school where I would have to live on campus. Young ones have to grow up sometime. The sooner, the better.

Patricia

College for me is considered a means to an end because I have been wanting to be a child psychologist for 12 years. I postponed my dreams because I became a mother and I wanted to be their for my children. Now my children are in school and I made the decision to go back and accomplish these dreams. I see the classes as an experience to expand my knowledge in many various fields which allows me to become smarter and more determined to finish college.

Danielle

My college experience has been great so far. Especially since I started out at a smaller school. I really and truly believe that starting small is the best bet. There are smaller classes and more one on one time with the profesor. I've gotten a lot of great study habits from our free tutoring center here. Before I had no idea how to go about even preparing for a test. Being here is also a major change from my enviroment, and I've always looked at myself as adjusting to any situation. Going from a busy urban area to an extremely calm rural area was a huge obstacle I was glad to be able to overcome.

Michelle

I often thought ofcollege as being one of two types of places, either a place to broaden my horizon, to discover who I was on my own, or a place to go because my parents never went and I needed to be the one to make a move to better my life. Now that I am in my second semester, and even though I can only afford to attend a community college for now, I have realized that my initial views were not so obscure from reality. While college does present you with tasks that you may not enjoy, many of them are just build-offs from high school, suh as writing long research papers and taking lab tests. And yet college allows you to define yourself more than anwhere else- you start off fresh, a new set of people, a blank transcript, a blank canvas waiting for you to make the moes you want, whether it is to go from that outcast in high school to the party rockstar in college, or to allow yourself to stand up from your beliefs, your goals, and ultimately your future.

Diana

That you need to get used to studying. I never had to study in high school and when I got to college it was a big wake up. To keep an open mind. Coming for a high school of 500 people where everyone knows every one, college is a whole different world. There are many people who have completely different than those who I went to high school with. Learn to make friends out of your comfort zone. The people I grew up with are all at different schools so I would tell myself to learn how to not be so shy and make more friends especially if they are planning to go to the same college.

Lauren

"Wake up! Your life starts in just a few months and every single decision you make is going to affect your future.", I would tell myself if I had the opportunity to tell my naive self as a high school senior. Although I have been at college now for five months, it still is so surreal that I am out on my own. I am forced to comtemplate every single decision put in front of me and weigh its pros and cons so that I can be sure that I make the right one and so that it will help me in the future. From things like picking out my classes, the work load I want to take on, and the even what field of study I want to go into requires much thinking and planning because these choices mold my future in ways that I never would have guessed. I wish that I had the chance to tell myselft this as a senior in high school so that i could start planning ahead and determining things such as these earlier. That way I would have known my very first sememster and would had taken only the necesarry classes first.

Elisha

I would tell myself that the decisions I make in high school really affects me. Because when I decide to just get by in class it hurts because you have to take a compass test. The test decides where I start. If I do well I can graduate on time but if I don?t I will graduate a semester or two behind. Next I would tell myself that studying is more important than ever, and that the parties and social life will be there when I finish. Also that now you have to pay to get this education so don?t let your money go to waste. The most important this is getting your degree. This is what I would tell myself.

shanteria

Many high school students who are starting college for the first time, think that it is like high school. They play and joke around. That is until grades come out, and to their knowledge the either barely passed the class or failed all together. This will effect their GPA average. You must be dedicated and willing to take all the time you need for your classes. You must be willing to sacrifice some of your "me" time and study. Knowing the information I know now, I would say I did a superb job in both high school and college. Although I am a freshman, I am dedicated to school. The transition from high school to college is extremely different. In high school, there are people who are very immature. In college, you are in a very mature setting. The advise i would give myself is, good job in high school, because it paid of when i got in college.

Kimberly

The advice I would be to myself, would be to develop my study habits. As I have moved through the years; i have realized that my studying skills aren't polished as they should be. I would also tell myself to be a more active reader, and not a passive reader. I'm just learning now, in my second year of college, how to become more involved in what I'm reading and studying. I would also tell myself to learn how to become better at not procrastinating, and avoiding my school work.