College isn't a race my friend. Without summer school, taking 12 hours a semester it would take you 5+ years to finish.
It depends on the person. Someone like me, I'm the total opposite of a type-A personality -- I'm an easygoing, take life one step at a time, completely carefree type of person. So I was never that disciplined to ALWAYS take good notes, go to 8 am classes, find old exams to practice on etc. My approach was more haphazard, but the bottom line is still that I knew I had to put in hard work to get good grades. Or at least I learned the lesson early enough. For a science/math/engineering student, this meant never giving up on a particular topic/concept until I had grasped and understood it to its core. Once I had "fathomed" it, I was home free, on to the next thing. My sister used to do something that impressed me. I was never disciplined enough to do it myself, but I knew that if I had done so I probably would have gotten better grades (not that I did shabbily myself when all was said and done though). She used to always read ahead of class. She would take time to read the chapter before every classroom lecture. When you do that the lectures are MUCH more effective for you and you'll find a lot less stuff going over your head. If you can get yourself to do that consistently, you're pretty much guaranteed to succeed. One more thing: take homework seriously. I hated doing homework. It was the single worst thing I hated about college. But I had to do it. And as much as I hated it, I knew that the more homework I did, the better I did on exams. Especially those non-compulsory/ungraded homework assignments. Think of those as pathways to an A. If you can figure out the homework, you can figure out the exams.
This. In an my undergrad life, this mattered so much with all my engineering classes. I remember spending hours and hours on homework assignments the last 2 years in college and it helped my grades so much. People really underestimate how important homework is. If you do it on time and really try hard to understand it, you will more than likely do good on a test.
I'm surprised I haven't heard this in the thread yet - but you have to realize that first year engineering (at least in Canada) is intentionally set to brutalize you. I watched my brother go through it - and he made it - even though it took him some extra years (University of Alberta). If you go back, you need to realize that they are deliberately trying to weed out those who aren't capable and extremely driven. Have an attitude that you aren't going to be one of them - you are going to excel. To do that, you need to stay on top of things from the start. Get your textbooks early and study them. You will get more from the lectures if you are ahead of the instructor instead of behind all the time. I was in your shoes - in engineering school, but not interested in the major and very poorly motivated. I dropped out after one year, went back to another school two years later (DeVry for you haters). I took something I was interested in (CIS), crushed it, and have had better jobs than my engineer brother ever since. :grin: The point is, do something that you are interested in, plan for success, and execute your plan. If you want the engineering degree, then work for it! Personally I think that IT and engineers have the most interesting white collar jobs - we actually get to work on real problems, fix things, and create things. It's good work if you can get it - the rest of the white collar world is almost all BS paper work.
Yeah seriously. I'm going to be finished by next school year, my 6th. It's pretty tough finishing within 4 years unless you take more than 15 hours every semester AND summer school, especially when you work all the time.
Thanks for the advice, one more thing: How do you guys get old exams? Ask the professor? It doesn't seem like they would let a student see that. And I know most professors never let students keep them for obvious reasons. I think seeing their exams would help me a ton though.
Get old exams by making friends, asking around, especially at the school library. That's how I've been able to get old exams for a majority of my classes, you just got to know the right people. People usually find ways to sneak out exams, snap pictures with camera phones, etc.
Eome professors keep them around, I know for some EE classes at UH the professors have tests dating back to the mid 90's on their course web site, for example: http://www.egr.uh.edu/courses/ece/Ece2300/Exams_Quizzes/ Even with the number of exams available this class has a near 60% repeat rate. Use of the exams doesn't guarantee success, but usually if you have no trouble with the tests you should do fine on the exams.
I use to ask around. I know at UT there was an organization that actually had an archive of old exams turned in by members throughout the year. There are plenty of way to get your hands on old exams for most classes. I never tried my luck with History, English, or Government classes, but the tests there weren't hard to begin with as long as you kept up with your readings and tried to take notes in class. I had plenty of friends that hooked me up with old exams just like I would help them out if they needed anything from me. Lab reports are the same things, at least within my major (civil engineering), they never changed it up a bit so it was always easy to get some old lab reports and get an idea of what you had to do. Overall man, if you want things in college, you'll more than likely have to meet people in order to help you out. I was always a person that studied on my own when tests would come around, but usually I would meet up with my friends and work on homework for hours and sometimes I would meet them a few hours before the exam to see if I grasped all the concepts.
This. If you're doing engineering, by the time you're done with your sophomore year, if you were never seriously motivated to do engineering to begin with, you'll have dropped out. It is intentional. On the first day of circuits class the prof told us, "Look on your right and on your left. One of those two people will not be here at the end of the semester." A few weeks later I met the guy who happened to be sitting on my left that very day, and I asked him why I hadn't seen him in class lately. "Dude, I changed majors." Yeah. Just stay motivated. For EE students, you just gotta survive Numerical Methods, Circuits and EM. For many students, the game there is just to survive. If you get out with a B you probably did pretty well. It gets better after that.
I had a similar experience, I did fine throughout most of college, until the semester I got accepted into PPA (5 year Acct program), I did horrible because I starting partying more, was interviewing, and was taking more difficult classes. I nearly failed out of the program but I stayed on top of my game the following semester and pulled a 3.5 College comes down to metal discipline and nothing else, it doesn't matter how smart you are, if you put in the time to prepare for exams, you will do well
