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1.
So… you’re new to the U. You just left high school and are thrown into another four years of school. I’m sure this is exactly what you’ve been looking forward to all summer… books, tests, studying, fire drills…. Blah! But, it doesn’t have to be that way. Try to think of the next four years as a time to learn a lot of good stuff, meet some interesting people, get to know yourself a little bit better, and hopefully decide what you want to be when you grow up. In the next few months, you will have a lot of stuff thrown at you. Clubs, majors, schedules for next semester (believe it or not), social events, volunteering, CAS advising (which is always fun), preparing for AFTER college (already), parties, new friends, the list goes on and on. I’m going to try to address the biggies here, not so much as list of “dos and don’ts”, but more as a reflection of what helped me and a good majority of others along the way. First… get involved from the beginning. Whether you’re looking to go on to medical school, grad school, or just have a good time here, get involved. There are tons of clubs and volunteer opportunities available to you. Just because you’re a neuro major doesn’t mean you can only join SNS… you can join Math, Frisbee, Art Club… whatever makes you happy. This will also allow you to meet a diverse group of people outside of the sciency world. It’s nice to have friends who aren’t pulling their hair out over the upcoming Bio practical or who hide for a week because the Physio and Molecular tests are on the same day. If you like the club or want to see it go in a different direction, take charge. Officer positions allow you to make the club come alive. MD, DO, graduate schools, and job applications have spaces for extracurricular activities AND positions held… it looks very good to have these slots filled in, plus gives you something to talk about in interviews.  Dr.
Cannon will have you fill out four year schedules, which will seem like such a
pain, but will be very worth while: Don’t lose it! When other people have to
take summer classes or cannot graduate on time because they didn’t know about
prerequisites or “odd year spring-only classes”, you will have one up on them.
If CAS advisors cannot help you, ask anyone in the department of interest. If
you remain a Neuro person, Dr. Cannon will help you at anytime. He may speak
another language at times: don’t be intimidated, just ask him to speak English.
I double majored in Neuro and Bio, minored in Spanish and Biochemistry, and
graduated a semester early, so regardless of what people say, anything is
possible.
Prioritize. Prioritize. Prioritize. DON'T Procrastinate!!!!! Figuring out how to study is easy: If you plan on obtaining a future advanced degree and will need to know the information anyway, study that way. Flashcards are amazing for any subject. The 5th floor of the library has really comfortable green couches back by the fireplace. After your first semester, learn how to buy and sell your books on-line. Half.com is great for this. Just make sure you get the right edition; finding the ISBN number in the bookstore and seeing the cover of the book before on-line purchasing helps. You can usually sell them for almost as much as you paid for them, especially during the month most classes start. If you wait until the week before your classes start to sell, chances are most other schools started already and you’ll be stuck with the book. A great selling tip: list the edition number in the “comment” section. People are more likely to buy if they know for sure it’s the right one! If you’re pre-med, you can major in anything you want… just be sure to take the required classes, along with some advanced bio classes if you can. The U oddly doesn’t offer any human anatomy classes and the only thing closely related is not available to you. Physio will be your best bet, but I highly recommend giving yourself a crash course in human anatomy before starting medical school… or petitioning the U and bio department to add this to the curriculum. The U prepares you very well for medical school in basically all other areas. A little personal note… I was told to not even bother applying to medical schools because no one would even look at me… Acceptances to each of my top three schools by October proved that certain premedical advisor wrong; she didn’t know everything. No matter what ANYONE says, do NOT let them discourage you from accomplishing your dreams!!! If your grades and MCAT scores are not the “best of the best” (but still have to be good), showing in your applications that you also worked, volunteered, held leadership positions, and maybe some did research along the way are incredibly impressive. Having a 4.0 GPA and 32 MCAT with no social life = no personality, thus does not guarantee you a seat. (Regarding social life, most parties get busted quickly and underage citations really hurt your chances… be smart, you will be 21 soon.) The STRP externship is a great experience, especially the ER part. Overall, enjoy your time here!!! If you try to make the things you’re studying relevant to the world and your future, you will enjoy them much more. Although I’m supposed to remain anonymous, if you have any questions about anything I said, Dr. Cannon will gladly give you my contact information. Good luck!!! 2. Dear Freshperson[1], Closing in on two years ago, I was an incoming freshman. I didn't know quite what to expect from the school, the classes, or the professors. I did some things right and I did some things wrong. Two years later, I'm older, wiser, and sporting more than one academic battle scar to mark my hard-won victories over tests, papers, and projects. For absolutely no monetary compensation I am aware of, I am now sharing my experience and sage advice with you. I think it would be prudent to start off by saying to you what every single professor will tell you until the day you graduate and even beyond that point depending on what path your life takes: Study! I'm sorry, it sounds like I'm insulting your intelligence by telling you that you have to study in school, but it simply has to be said. I don't just mean cram the night before tests, though. That's a horse of such a different color that you'll need a specially trained team to root through paint swatches at Home Depot to track it down. Real studying is a multi-tiered process, not unlike a delicious cake stripped of all deliciousness and filled with a bland jelly of hard work. First, pick up your course syllabus. Your professor will have been silly enough to tell you in advance what chapters/topics will be covered, which opens the door for the best kind of cheating: Read this stuff in advance! Your teacher will never expect it. When it is covered in class, you'll know what the professor is talking about and the stuff will calcify in your head, forming knowledge-crystals which you can then break down during the test, releasing precious facts. You may be wondering whether or not that is how memory actually works. What am I, your teacher? Take a relevant biology/neuroscience course or something. Step two is also deviously simple: Pay attention in class! This involves more than just not talking in class. Fight the urge to daydream or zone out. Pay actual attention to what is being said, and write down actual notes. After your classes are over for the day, go back and review the notes you took, and the textbook if necessary. Why am I even bothering to tell you this time-involving studying process? Why, because it makes Step 3 so easy, of course! The third step is actually studying before a quiz or a test. If you do your homework and study as I described, you'll probably find that all you are doing is reviewing the material briefly instead of a nine hour cram session to compress entire chapters of the text into whatever neurons have survived the horrible devastation wrought by all of the stress you're putting yourself through. Even The Final Exam, ominous capital letters most definitely intended, won't be a big deal. You'll actually know all of the stuff that will be on The Exam and won't have to relearn the whole stinking mess. Yeah, it sounds like a great idea on paper, and it really does work, but it is tricky to stick to. I wish you the best of luck with it. What else do I have in the way of random advice? Well, let's see. Buy your books used if you can stand highlighting, and buy them from Half.com or an equivalent site if you aren't afraid of the Internet eating your pets or something. Just be smart and get your stuff from respectable buyers, and have someone who has gone through this process give some advice on what to look for if you're a bit leery. Also, utilize www.ratemyprofessor.com. It can give you an idea of what you'd be in for with any given professor, but you can't just accept these reviews at face value. Are these people saying that Dr. Whatsis is mean because the class is unreasonably difficult or because they were lobotomized baboons who didn't realize that literacy and higher brain functions were prerequisites for the course? Is the professor a jerk or does he or she just have standards? Eventually, you'll learn to filter out the nonsense from people who didn't expect to work and pay attention to the folks who had reasonable expectations and were delighted or disappointed by a course. With all that being said, I wish you good luck. Never be afraid to ask the sophomores, juniors, and seniors for help and advice. We love to hear ourselves talk and everyone likes to be useful. Verbosely yours, Anonymous Upperclassperson 3. Hey! Congratulations on your acceptance and matriculation. You are going to hear this many times, but these few years in college are going to be amazing. You are going to learn so much inside and outside of the classroom and have a great time doing it. As you start you are probably going to feel a bit overwhelmed. I know I did when I started. There is a lot to do right from the get-go. Try not to stress out at first. Take some time to walk around the campus and find the short-cuts. My favorite is the hidden walkway adjacent to Campion Hall. It saves you a full 10 minutes if you’re coming from Hyland! Visit downtown too. There are some great places to go to eat or just hang out. The new Thai place on Mulberry is really good. I highly recommend it. The Northern Light coffee shop is cool too. It’s a good place to grab a coffee and start working on your philosophy paper (it also has free wireless internet-Bonus!). If you are up late and very hungry (I assume from studying very hard) you can run up Mulberry to City Slice ($1 slices after Also try to get to know people on campus. All of the faculty and staff I have met are very approachable. They come from amazing educational backgrounds and are at So now that you know the city and campus like the back of your hand and have about a million names to remember, maybe you want to start thinking about getting an education. A great idea is to make a 4 year schedule. Dr. Cannon might make you do it for Freshman Seminar, if he doesn’t, remind him! It was a pain when I made it but looking back, I’m glad I did. A few of my friends forgot to fill required courses along the way and had to rush them into senior year or over the summer after graduation… not fun. So take this seriously and list your courses from the course catalogue that you would like to take to fulfill your requirements. Speaking of course catalogue, read it. It’s really key that you know how classes fit into your major/minor. For example, as a premed neuroscience major, you could (don’t know about now, that’s why you should check!) just take biochemistry 1 and 2 and get a minor in biochem. Just 2 classes for a minor! Another little loop was with the languages. If you wanted a minor in... let’s say Japanese you had to take 18 credits and start at intermediate level. But, if you minored in two languages you only had to take 12 in each and could start at beginner, very different, much easier. So one more time… READ THE COURSE CATALOGUE. Another good idea is to start shadowing a professor in the lab. She what type of stuff you like or even if you like research at all (what am I saying, of course you like research, you’re neuro J). So you may not know much about the research certain professors are doing, I understand, you’re new. A good resource is the Faculty Student Research Project pamphlet that you can find in the Office of Research Services in O’Hara. Skim through it, there is some really interesting stuff in there. If you are in AMH, stop by in Dr. Cannon’s lab. His door is always open and usually there is some pretty interesting research happening. Talk to the upperclassmen while you are in the lab. They are a great resource. Ask the stupid questions. Feel dumb. Better now than when you are a senior! They only thing I have to say about classes is to be sure to stay on-top of the information. I very quickly realized that I wasn’t in high school anymore. Some classes will be tough, but they are all doable. Just don’t let the work pile up! If you need to, go to the professor for help. They are always eager to assist. I could probably write another 15 pages about 4. Wide-eyed Freshman, The last days have probably been the biggest change any of you have ever faced. Maybe it was a bit of a shock. Stress (at least some) is good. If you are not stressed, it means things aren't changing much, and that means that you are either a genius, or you just don't care. Caring is a good thing, and so is being worried. College is way different- you probably noticed on your first day of classes, when you only had three or four hours of class time, compared to the standard high school regiment of 7. I'm going to split this up into two parts: the part where I tell you all the mistakes I made, and how to prevent them; and a part with nuggets common sense. So, the part about mistakes, and trying not to make them. First off: this isn't high school. In high school, most kids were just there to get though the day, and survive. Most kids want good grades, and do some work in their pursuit. But there's not much devotion. You don't care about your World Studies class any more than you might care about English- or any of your classes, for that matter. Fortunately, nobody else cared either. But things are different here. In college you should care--in fact, you must. This world is the big leagues, students here care about what they are doing, often passionately. You will be, in some cases, competing against your peer; and those battles can be decisive. In college, you (usually) take classes because you want to, because you care about the subject, and, ideally, because you want to spend your life doing it. You need to want to do what you are doing--otherwise, you shouldn't be doing it. Do what you like and do it damn well. Most importantly, though, do it because you want to. Otherwise, the crowd will blow right by. Study, please, for the love of god. Moreover, try to study everything you can. Don't study only for the classes you like, try to succeed in every endeavor. I've made my mistakes and not studied for some tests, and I paid. There are times I wish I could go back to and force myself to sit with the textbook. Try not to make that mistake. See the professors if you are having trouble. If you can show the professors that you care about their class, you'll come out of it okay. Don't entirely blow classes off; missing one here or there can be alright, but not when it's every week. I learn the most when I'm in class; most professors take test questions and topics directly from their lectures. Spend that time wisely. Group studying is an effective way to nail down some subjects. It allows you to pool your collective knowledge, and review with each other. Everyone has their high points and favourite topics—they are excellent for learning from and can help you with something you might be struggling on. I once had a twelve-hour-long study session for one of Dr. Cannon's courses, and I, along with the others I studied with, had among highest grades in the class; I even got to make up for an exam I previously had trouble with. Now for some morsels of information. Testbooks can be sold back for money- keep ones you might need for reference, you don't want to give away good information, especially in your major. Other books, however, are just waiting to turn into money. At the end of the semesters, there will be ways to pawn off your books; look at all of them and you can make a decent amount of money. Usually, there is a private buyer who comes to campus to get books, in addition to the bookstore. Find out who has the best resale. Amazon, eBay, and Half.com are excellent places to buy and sell your books online; some online stores even sell super-cheap International Editions which might cost less than half of the standard, for the same material. Be careful where and when you party, if you choose to do so. Some situations are safer than others. Drinking in an on-campus dorm is a surefire way to get caught, the RA's are trained to notice you and obligated to report you. Don't let drinking become a habit that gets in the way of your academics. Finally, and most importantly, give yourself some time everyday to do something you want to do. Take a nap, or read, or watch a movie, or sit in your room and listen to music. Make this aside from going to the caf or doing work—you need time for yourself, or you will hate school. It doesn't have to be long- just one or two hours that you dedicate to doing something relaxing. It will help you work much faster when you need to get things done. Good luck! --Anonymous Junior First of all, I’d like to start by welcoming you to the I know it can be daunting to start a new part of life in a completely new environment (if you’re not from the While you will be spending the next four years of your life growing, making friends, and developing interests, you will also be learning material that will affect your future, and hopefully direct you to whatever your career goals might be. Neuroscience is an interdisciplinary major, drawing from courses in psychology, biology, chemistry, physics, and even mathematics and even computer science. I decided to major in neuroscience because I have always been interested in how the brain works, not necessarily because I wanted to go to medical school or become a psychologist. What I particularly liked about the major was that, since it involved courses from so many areas, it didn’t really limit what I could do with it when I graduated. People seem to think that students should know exactly what they want to be “when they grow up” during high school or college. I didn’t decide what I wanted to do until the end of my junior year. Now I will start graduate school for scientific communication – this just goes to show that a background in neuroscience will prepare you for a variety of fields: medicine, psychology, as well as any area of science. As a neuroscience major not only will you learn all about the mechanisms of the brain and nervous system, but also to perform studies, write scientific research papers, and analyze data – which are extremely important in a scientific field. I can honestly say that I feel very prepared for my graduate coursework because of the background the faculty at As a member of a smaller major, you will have many great opportunities. Many of your labs and classes will have fewer than twenty students, which will allow you to have close interaction with your professors. If you choose, you will even have the chance to do research with a faculty member. You will find that college is so much different from high school. You will be held much more responsible for your actions. It’s up to you to find the right balance between academics and fun, and time management is really important. This is stressed in almost all curriculums but is almost even more important in an intense major like neuroscience. I think that having good time management and study skills is vital to not getting overwhelmed. Like I mentioned, everyone is helpful, and the professors want you to succeed and work to your highest potential. I couldn’t be happier that I decided to major in neuroscience. Over my four years at 6. Welcome
to the U! Don’t worry, everything you’re going through–the nerves, anxiety
fears–are all completely normal (and will dissipate, promise!). What you should
try to keep in mind is that there are many professors and students who have
experienced these same feelings. Because of this, they can be a great asset to
you and it would be advantageous for you to recognize them as valuable
resources as soon as possible! Well done to have chosen a major like
neuroscience; the small number of students enables close relationships to grow
as you find yourself forming study groups in which you will not only bond
during the times you struggle, you will also learn, benefitted by each others
company. The well-rounded curriculum designed for neuroscience
majors will allow for much growth and exploration. Having chosen this major,
you demonstrate a desire to learn the sciences and whether or not you have a
distinct career path in mind, you will be encouraged to select classes from a
variety of similar majors such that you may enhance your knowledge-base.
Personally, I found (and continue to find) this to be an incredibly worthwhile
experience. Through these classes, I have changed my projected career path
multiple times, each time because I had learned something more fascinating or
fulfilling than before. Breathe easy, my focus on classes does not mean you will
be unable to explore sports, hobbies, faith, or other interests. You’ll find
that some of your closest friendships won’t be found within your major because
there are so many clubs and activities to fill your free time. Fortunately,
commitments are unnecessary and you’ll find that whichever you try you’ll be
welcomed with open arms. Now for some final pieces of advice: Respect your roommate. You’re probably under the
impression that you already know everything about them because you’ve more than
once perused over their Facebook profile. Take the time to really get to know
them because I’m sure you want that fair chance as well. Don’t worry about
becoming best friends, just try to understand that you’re two very different
people and will both need to learn the importance of compromise as you
encounter the stresses of living in such confined spaces. Invest in shower shoes, a warm scarf and pair of gloves
(there’s a certain spot on the commons in front of the library that causes
blustery winds in the winter), and a comfortable pair of sneakers (for standing
in your 3-hour labs). These will become the most important and valuable
articles of clothing in your wardrobe! Your RA, or one of the others living in your dorm, can
tell you the most random but useful facts about the U, And finally... You’re here because a lot of people have faith in you and
your potential. They’ll always be more than happy to tell you too, something
you’ll realize whenever you ask for help or advice. Good luck and I’ll see you
on campus! |