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Bad advice sets freshmen up to fail

>>Sabrina Rodriguez
Contributing writer

Starting college is all fun and games until you realize all the advice you were given was terrible. From your mom telling you “Oh, just be yourself,” to your older brother telling you “Yeah, you can skip class,” you eventually find out how wrong they were. In a perfect world, the advice anyone offers would essentially lead you to success. However, our world is not so perfect, and people give advice according to what others would like to hear, or what worked best for them. Regardless, everyone receives and interprets advice differently, so what is bad advice?

When it comes to being a college freshman, just nip it in the bud and rely on instincts. Do not rely on anyone’s advice. What may be good advice for one person might not necessarily be the best for someone else.

“Don’t worry about it right now, you’ll see it again later,” was advice given to sophomore computer science major Nathaniel Rinehart. “[That] was the worst advice given to me because you never see it again,” Rinehart said.

People go to college to expand their education. When a professor tells a student not to worry about a problem they are having, it is the student’s responsibility to make sure they understand it.

“The worst advice I was given is that college is a joke and you do not have to show up for class and you can still get an A,” sophomore computer science major Samuel McMillan said.

People are under false pretenses when it comes to college. Once someone is done with high school, it is not mandatory to go to college. Even if someone goes to college, it is not mandatory to go to class.

Professors do not care whether or not someone attends their class because they get paid regardless. If a person does not go to class, they have a higher chance of failing it or having to withdraw from it. Just because skipping class works for some people does not mean it works for everyone.

Freshman radiology major Teresa Adams said she was given bad advice about priorities.

“The worst advice I was given was about where to put my focus,” Adams said.

There are a million and one things a college student has on their mind. There is not just one thing students have to focus on. If you focus more on school than your social life, you will more than likely not have many friends. However, if you only focus on friends, your grades will reflect that. It is better to keep everything balanced out than to put too much focus on one thing, and not enough on another.

College is a time to advance intellectually and find yourself. People cannot rely on advice because each person’s personal experiences are different. What was bad advice for a few students, might be good advice to others. So again, what is bad advice? Maybe it is just something that did not work for you.

About Lauren Cottle

Lauren Cottle is a senior English major and history minor at APSU. She is currently the Perspectives Editor at The All State. She is also involved in PELP, the Laurel Wreath Society and Phi Alpha Theta.

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