Tufts Blogs

Freshman-year of college is just thirteenth grade. The American tradition of often moving away from home and attending a four-year university has evolved into a privileged right of passage, one that made me feel extremely nervous and confused. I had no idea what life and academics at college would be like. Do the seemingly unavoidable all-nighters start happening right away? Will my writing be good enough for my highly accomplished humanities professors? Will my STEM professors tolerate one sig fig too many on my homework assignments and tests? This is all to say, will I be okay?

At first, I rejected every study method that I have used in the past. I thought that everything I used to learn should stay in that past because college must call for different, more advanced approaches. I soon learned, however, that college is just a continuation of your education, not something completely foreign and separated from past studies. Remember that, no matter what anyone tells you, the academics in college often get harder gradually. College has challenging coursework, but you won’t be expected to write a dissertation or complete six-hour long problem sets right away. Additionally, here at Tufts, there are many support systems that have helped me with my transition to college-level work. In my first-semester, I regularly met with my pre-major advisor and time management tutor via the Academic Resource Center (ARC) to plan for all my classes and life needs.

In short, keep using the study methods that worked for you in the past and modify them as you go along. You made it to Tufts, so you had to be doing something right. It’s all a matter of adding and expanding to your knowledge, not completely scrapping it for something completely different and unfamiliar.