Tips for success as incoming freshmen

Welcome freshmen to Chadron State College! Here you will spend the next four years of your life learning, making new friends, and experiencing new things. There are so many new ideas and adventures that will be thrown your way, but here’s some advice to help you find success this year.
General Colin Powell said, “There is no secret to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.”
For many of you, this is your first time living away from home. That can be a difficult step to take. Living away from home can be a struggle for some and even a road block in some college careers. Whether you’ve traveled hundreds of miles or just a few to get here, it will still be hard.
It’s okay to miss your parents and get homesick, but don’t let it keep you from enjoying your college experience. Calling your parents is not a bad thing, just ensure you are still having a great college experience.
Navigating relationships, social lives and being away from home can be rough, but one of the biggest challenges you will experience this upcoming year will be classes.
College classes are a lot different than high school classes. There isn’t someone to check up on you and make sure that you’ve done your homework or even make you go to class in the morning.
Even if you went to high school every morning at 8 a.m., making yourself get up for those early morning class after staying out all night will still be difficult. All you want to do is sleep and your mom isn’t there to make you get up and go to class. You could just skip class and sleep in. Make yourself get up and go to class or find a friend to make you get up to go to class.
Professors will tell you how important attendance is the first week of classes and it is. You cannot learn the content if you are not in class. Skipping class will only make you fall behind which can lead to doing poorly on quizzes, tests and the overall class. In most of your classes, your professors will give you points simply for showing up.
Participation is another important aspect of college. You can just show up to class, sit in the back, and listen while the professors and other students talk, but you won’t learn as much as you would if you participate. When you engage in discussion with other students and the professor, you not only enhance your own learning, but you can help with other students learning and give everyone a better learning experience.
Chadron State College is a great school. It may seem small now, but that’s one of the best things about it.
A small student population gives you a more personal learning experience. You become close with the people in your major because you have the same people in your classes all four years. You also become close with your professors because you have the same professors for many classes in your major. They can be a huge resource for you that you need to use, whether that be for advice on life during college, after college or even if you just need a friend to talk to.
Chadron is a great town and a great place to spend the next four years of your life. CSC may be small, but that’s what makes it more like a family.