COBBlog

I have an entire semester at Concordia under my belt now. It might not seem like much but the knowledge gained from that semester is much more than any other short period of time in my life.

I think that as a second semester freshman it is my duty to inform any corn seeds (prospective students) out there who don’t know what to expect when they take the plunge into college life of what exactly to expect, so I will take this chance to enlighten you.

The one thing that is going to take up the biggest chunk or your time is definitely going to be homework. I remember not completely understanding that specific aspect of college as a high school senior. I, like many others I know, skated through high school with minimal effort while still maintaining honor roll grades.
I thought college was going to be cake. I was going to come to school, hang out with friends, write a few papers, snatching a degree and run off to Harvard law. Well… after the first week of classes I found that assumption to be false. I have a few ideas for corn seeds to help guide them toward a smooth freshman year.

My suggestion, get glasses! Even if you don’t need them now, after a pizza and Mountain Dew driven study sessions that lasts well past one in the morning, with the essay test on how Hobbes and Locke differ in political philosophy in less than six hours, your going to want some.

Another suggestion is make sure that you schedule yourself a time to go eat at Dinning Services (DS) without any homework around you, no matter how busy you are. Not only will that time at DS keep you sane, but if you don’t actively force yourself to go you won’t eat therefore becoming hungry, angry, and unfit to do an adequate job on your homework.

Everyone says “learn to manage your time” and I don’t think that is something that you will have to work at because whether you want to or not, you will. Time management is a skill acquired quickly at school, and you can’t practice it, and it can’t be taught. Everyone has a different way of managing their time, I personally have to take frequent breaks to play guitar, eat, watch some CNN or C-SPAN or just not do homework.

While that way might take longer it keeps me sane. Other people I know can be much more effective and do straight homework for hours on end until it is finished. That’s another thing everyone has to keep in mind, sooner or later it will be finished.Once homework is finished the second, more fun consumer of your time comes about.

That consumer is, inevitably, boredom. A lot of people hate it, they have nothing to do. The good thing about college is that there is always going to be someone to do it (nothing) with. The abundance of people and scarcity of spare time leads to an interesting phenomenon, I call it boredom breaking.

Boredom breaking (or BB as I will now call it) is the process in which two or more people use their precise free time in an unproductive, sometimes silly way, inevitably to avoid boredom. These activities include picture taking, pizza buying, walk taking, more picture taking, accidental property damage, guitar playing and just about anything you can think of to pass the time.

Those are the times I love the lazy, crazy, anything goes times with your closest friends. The last two blogs I’ve written have had a “what have we learned section at the end. The first one was a hit; the second one kind of flopped. Personally I really enjoy the idea of a weekly section, so I’m going to give it one more shot, tell me what you think.

WHAT WE LEARNED: 1) If you’re a prospective student, I most likely don’t even know you and I still feel obligated to give you the nickname “corn seeds”
2) Whether or not I am going to Harvard law I will continue to make Harvard references throughout my blogs. Every college students should get some .75 grade reading glasses. Not only do you look studious but they might help you read once fatigue sets in.
4) You can’t practice time management, actually manage it. So don’t try. And if you do “practice” it after I advised you not to, your crazy.
5) I can make up theories in the middle of blogging.
6) I can also feel the need to come up with acronyms.

P.S. I cited accidental property damage for things to pass the time. I want to emphasize the ACCIDENTAL aspect of that particular activity.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Jake '11. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.