Eight Things I Wish I’d Learned in High School
Now that I’m in college, it’s easy to look back and wish I’d learned a few more things in high school. Between studying for midterms and meeting new people each day, I realize I’m playing catch up. There are some basic skills and habits I could’ve learned in high school that would’ve made my transition to college a little easier. It’s never too early to study the tricks of the college student trade.
I wish I’d learned how to:
- Manage time – I waste at least an hour a day checking my email and looking at Facebook. In high school, it felt like there was a lot more time in the day to squander. Now I try to manage my time by keeping a list of things to do. If I have my priorities in front of me, it’s easier to keep up with them.
- Write a college-style essay – Those days of five paragraph essays are over. I wish I’d broken from the high school essay mold and experimented with different structures, so I wouldn’t be so stuck in my ways now. Thank goodness for college writing tutors…
- Give a proper handshake – Meeting new people can be nerve wracking. I’ve shaken more hands in the past month than I’d ever imagined possible. After about the hundredth greeting, I realized that fishy handshakes just don’t quite do the trick.
- Skim reading – Sometimes it’s just not physically possible to do two hundred pages of reading, write and essay, go to rehearsal and eat and sleep all in one night. It’s been tricky for me to figure out how much reading I really need to do and how thoroughly I need to do it. I’m still doing a little trial and error testing on this one.
- Budget my money – I’ve been trying to follow my own advice on balancing my college budget, but this is a difficult one. Those runs to the convenience store in search of chocolate covered Oreos often sound like a good idea at one in the morning. I wish I’d watched my spending habits more closely in high school so I’d be more aware of just how fast cash seems to vanish. This month I’m writing down every penny I spend so I can see where it’s disappearing to.
- Give a presentation – In a couple weeks, I have to give an oral presentation in my Spanish class. Presentations never made me nervous in high school, but all the sudden I’m terrified. Luckily, my experience on my high school speech team should make this a little easier. I recommend joining a speech team just for the practice (and it’s a lot of fun).
- Write a resume – I didn’t pay much attention to the resume writing unit in my career education class freshman year of high school. Now I wish I had. I need a resume in order to apply for internships and even campus jobs.
- De-stress – It’s the beginning of midterm season and I can’t say I feel relaxed. All college students suffer from stress but I think it’s important to find some way to escape it. I’ve always had high levels of stress. I wish I’d learned to control stress sooner. It wasn’t healthy to spend four years in high school feeling like I could snap at any minute and I don’t plan to spend the next four years at college like that. I’ve tried to manage stress by eating well, exercising and attending meditation sessions a few times a week.
College will challenge everyone in new and unexpected ways, but high school students can get ahead by considering some of these things.
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