To Undergraduate Students

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Preparing for and attending College is both exciting and somewhat stressful. New friends, new experiences, new freedom!  With this new setting, there will be new demands placed on your abilities and skills.  Strategies that worked for you in high school may not be up to the challenges of a college environment.  From the tool you use to organize your day and plan out your work to the strategies you use to get your readings done or take notes in a lecture.
The first step may be to explore how you learn.  What are your strengths and challenges in the classroom, working on your homework, and even, dealing with a roommate?  As you identify your strengths and challenges, you will be in a better position to focus on building skills and upgrading tools to help you reach your potential and succeed at the college level.
Like swimming or playing tennis, these     skills need to be learned and practiced.  Just like most other skills, you may need a coach to help you learn and practice them.  No one would expect a person to swim in the deep end after an hour swim lesson but that’s exactly what people expect of college students all the time.  Take for example time management.  Most high schools structure a student’s time.  Class schedule, study halls, extra-curricular events;  everything is externally structured.  But then you get to college and everything must be internally structured.  You must get yourself up in the morning, get to class, plan your day, schedule study time and sleep time, balance your academics with your extra-curricular activities and social life.  If not overwhelming, this can certainly be stressful to a student who is used to most everything structured, using tools that worked in high school.  My job is to work with you to identify your strengths and challenges while working on skills and tools needed to succeed at the college level.  Just as you might need to upgrade your computer when you head to college, you will definitely need to upgrade your skills and tools.