Well I'm glad to see you're going to be in the dorms, hellish at times as dorm life can be, its a pretty important deal as it gives you a bunch of stuff that commuter students don't have:
- you really have to deal with a lot of people you ordinarily would not associate with. It's not only good for your character, its good professional training to work and deal with people you might not like so much (which is what real work is going to be like, unless you're the boss you don't get to pick your co-workers), it just might expand your horizons
- you have a ready source of people to study with, and a constant source of real information about the classes, which professors are worth taking, which are better off avoiding
-take advantage of all the free stuff. Guest lectures/speakers, music recitals, international programs, there is a lot of stuff going on at any school. It's a great way to expand your knowledge base. I learned a lot from being a lecture junkie.
- get involved in something. I was on the lecture committee in both undergrad and grad school, as a result of owning a car I often was sent to pick people up at the airport, including Ice-T, Michael Moore (it was during the Iowa primary season and I look like I could be his brother, for real, and he asked me if I knew were the state Republican HQ was, and if I minded stopping by there with him, it was just about the funniest thing I've ever done), Chuck Jones (director of the classic Warner Brothers cartoons), Mel Blanc (the voice of all those cartoons who almost make me crash the car doing that stuff for me, how can you put a price on having Mel Blanc sit with you and do Bugs and Daffy?), a Pulitzer Prize winning author, 2 different people who were on the Nixon Enemies List, and a Nobel Prize Laureate. Anyway it gives you a lot of experience at setting up events and real-world stuff, and future employees like to see outside stuff on the old resume.
-get in some face time and more with the professors you really like. Grades are only part of what you'll need when you graduate, letters of recommendation are the other half, and they will have to know you to write that. Not only that they might have jobs/internships in their pocket. I had a good grad school friend who worked at a major historical museum/research center and I could always send someone there on a summer intern deal. I never announced that, I picked people and tried to send those people I picked, sometimes I didn't send anyone, but a lot of that stuff is not announced, you have to know someone who likes you.
This is so good it's almost like cheating. But it works better than any other strategy I put to use (and I graduated undergrad on the President's List, Phi Betta Kappa) and has a ton of upside to it. Write the damn term paper in the first few weeks, not the last few weeks. You know you'll have one, because it's right there in the syllabus, they don't spring that on you half-way through the semester. So, as soon as you know you have to do one, do it. Pick a topic before the second class meeting and get it approved, and get to researching it and writing it. It does several great things.
1. Work piles up as the semester goes on, and trying to write that thing while studying for finals - well something has got to give. So write it right off while you have the most free time and the fewest pressing deadlines.
2. As the semester goes on, the books in the library tend to go away, the further into the semester, the fewer choices you'll really have when you go to the shelves. And given the way the card catalog is computerized, it's harder to figure out what's missing (the old physical cards could be grabbed by the fistful and sorted through) so your best research is done on day one when the library is going to have more stuff then it does on any other day.
3. OK, this is where it almost becomes cheating. If you turn your paper in early (no later than mid-terms) your paper will be graded in isolation, as opposed to being one paper in a huge stack that Mr/Ms Professor has to get through this weekend. I used to do it in stacks, I read one and put it up on the table above me, then the next one, and put it either higher or lower then the one before and over the course of a couple of days I'd have them all laid out in a line from best to worst. You get the picture. But the ones I got real early, well I wasn't as busy then so I'd get a cup of coffee and read it in leisure and not as part of a crunch. And I would not have a bunch of other stuff that it was better/worse than. It almost always works out better for you as the student to have the Prof grade it personally rather than as part of the group, and to do it when they are not stressed but more relaxed, and its good for a couple of major Brownie points to any professor to have your work done that early.
4. Now, here's the bomb. You can after its graded really talk to the professor (face time can be real important) about your work and get a real critique, and since your a pretty smart cookie, I'm sure you would ask how you could make it better, and he/she will tell you. Then, ask if you could rewrite it for him. It only takes a little time, and the end result is almost a guaranteed A. And while everyone else is sweating it, you're going into finals with that A already under your belt, a teacher who thinks your a go-getter, and you have nothing else to do but study for finals.
And don't tell people that you're doing this. It's a secret weapon. Sure those people are your classmates, study-mates and friends, but they are also your competition.
Now for the harsh part. You must be pretty smart there in your HS. But remember, all the doorknobs from your HS are parking cars and pumping gas. Now, EVERYONE ELSE there is going to be as smart as you are and you're going to have to work at it. So work hard.
