Helping Us Survive Our First Year in College: Guest Speaker Dr. Waters

If asked about my first class on Friday, I would say I was very happy because I got to sleep in late! But besides that very nice detail, I really enjoyed listening to our guest speaker, Dr. Waters. He was a exceptionally interesting person to listen to, with his advice and wisdom on things at Penn State.

I really appreciated his guidance on how to succeed in college. He talked a lot about the importance of office hours. He stressed that when in need of help or just to study more, visit your professors. They are there for you specifically to give help during office hours! As I finish summer session here and begin my fall term I really hope to utilize office hours to my full advantage because I really do think it will help me.

Another interesting point he made was that in high school we all really got by with A’s and B’s by using certain skills throughout all four years of high school. But in college everything is very different, and eventually your old ways won’t work like they did in high school. To get the best grades and learn the most, you have to develop new study skills and have the discipline to push yourself. This also ties in with going to office hours, talking to your professor about what you don’t understand and asking them to help you comprehend the material will really influence your grades. Also, a studying rule of thumb is that for every one hour of class time, you need to study that material for two hours to really interpret it well. What are your study habits/techniques you used in college to succeed?

I really enjoyed listening to Dr. Water speak, he is very engaging and charismatic. I loved that he loves his job so much, and since he had sons who went to Penn State it made him seem so much more relatable. I really tried to take away as much as I could from him because I could tell the information he was giving to us is vital and will stay with us for all of our years at Penn State. Thank you again Dr. Waters!