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Passage
C
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College and
Reality
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In
34 years of college teaching I've taught and advised many freshmen,
probably several thousand of them.
Often the prospective newcomers visit the campus with their
families before classes begin. Our college insists that the
faculty
be available
during these visits, to help the students choose a major. 
The parents always ask most of the questions. They want to
be sure that their kids are safe away from home and that they
will have a job after four years. This is a perfectly normal
parental concern.
If the students don't ask many questions, I ask them a question:
"What is the most important thing you'll learn in college?"
Regardless of what they say, I usually suggest a different answer:
"You'll learn to get out of bed in the morning without
relying on your mother to wake you up and make your breakfast."
This answer always draws a laugh from the parents. Then I
tell the student that college is just like a job, except you
don't get paid. In fact, you pay for the privilege.
You're paying for the breakfast and the classes, or your parents
are, so you should try to get your money's worth. You can't
go to class if you're in bed, and your roommates
won't care if you turn off the alarm
clock and go back to sleep.
Regular attendance and regular
study are the two most prevalent
factors in college success, just as punctuality
and diligence are crucial
to most future careers. When employers
call me to ask about a former student,
the first question they usually ask is whether the student was
punctual and reliable.
Only later, if at all, do they ask about the student's grades
or extracurricular activities.
Woody Allen once said that the most important thing in life
is to show up. Humor
aside,
this is certainly true of college. But classes are not the only
places where the student should show up. Friendships and extracurricular
activities are also important, and  it's
a financial
reality that many students need to have part-time jobs. The
key is to balance
all these elements
in your life, and never lose sight of your academic
goals. They should always come first.
There are 168 hours in a week. It's hard to spend more than
half of that time eating and sleeping, so there are still almost
100 hours for other things. Except for the hours in classes,
the student decides how to spend most of that time. The quality
of these decisions is the key to the college experience. Students
with bad habits or irresponsible
friends often let those habits or friends make the decisions
for them.
This doesn't mean that college is no fun. In fact it's lots
of fun if you learn to balance work and pleasure, or even to
mix them together. There's plenty of time for both. But not
if you stay in bed until noon, miss your breakfast, and miss
your morning classes. Then you'll spend the rest of the day
trying to catch up, borrowing classmates' notes, and eating
unhealthy
snack food. Your mother would be very angry!
(521 words)
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