Got advice for an adult returning to college?

[Maria]

So here's the deal. I'm a little over 30, and I'm going to school in January. I dropped out halfway through college, for a number of reasons. They all pretty much boil down to the fact that my family was totally screwed up, and thus I was unprepared to deal with college life. Now, though, my life is vastly different. I'm not that scared 16-year-old. I have two mentors who are in my dream career, one of whom is like a sister to me. I'm working to build a support network beyond those two people. I have a supportive spouse. The kiddos are more or less raised up. I have the luxury of not having to work, for the foreseeable future. This is the perfect time for me to finish that degree -- only this time, I'm majoring in aeronautical science instead of the hated English degree that my parent insisted I pursue.

I'm incredibly excited about every class I've got to take (except for English!) but I'm also freaking out a little bit. I'm not sure I remember how to do this "school" stuff. I'm feeling overwhelmed about being rusty on the academics, nervous about handling homework and housework, and even unsure of things like how to manage the security of my laptop and other valuables while I'm on campus. So, for anyone who's attended college in recent years, but especially those who were returning adults, what can I learn from you instead of figuring it out the hard way? I'm all ears!

[Lyse]

Well, I went back to school at 36 for my LPN and am starting my RN program in a week. Things I learned:

1) Have somewhere set aside for you to study and do homework. Reviewing and doing little things in the living room is one thing, but doesn't work out well in the long run for full on studying.
2) You are not at as big a disadvantage as you may think. Yes, it may have been years since you were in school, but you have experience with deadlines, prioritizing and getting things done even if you don't find them exciting or fun. Some of our best students weren't the kids straight out of high school - it was the people a few decades out of school.
3) Have a good quality and comfortable bag. You are going to want to be able to carry everything between classes, and don't want your back to suffer. I don't recommend leaving things in the class if you aren't there; lost over $100 in cash that way. Purse, computer, phone - all go with you.

That's what I think of immediately, off the top of my head.

[sms001]

I'll write tomorrow when I have a bit more time, but until then - what is your actual school like? Is there an evening program/adult studies, or will it be you and nothing but tweeners? Commuting? M-F or MWF/TTh classes? Etc. I did a BS in my mid thirties so I'll be back with what I figured out

[42_42_42]

I'm 33 and I just started back this semester. I'm in the pre-nursing program right now and hopefully my grades will be good enough to get me into the BSN program come summer '13. Considering I hadn't had math in 15 years or chemistry in 17 and I'm taking BOTH this semester, things are going better than I expected (I really need an A in both and I know I'll have one in the math and I think I'll have one in the chemistry).

Expect to spend a LOT more time studying than you did the first time round. Except for short breaks to do some laundry or housework all I seem to do with my waking hours is study study study. Of course, I do still manage to fit in some internet time and some tv time b/c my brain craps out on me and says "NO MORE! NEED BREAK!" I'm def. more serious about my work than I was when I was younger and that's part of the reason I study more, but it also just seems to take me so much longer to do the work than it did back when I was 18.

BTW, my mom went back in her early 30's, too, and she had kids (I don't). She managed to get her English degree and teaching cert and graduate suma cum laude. I don't know how she did it. I can't imagine having kids and being in school. Thank everything that is good my husband can support us while I'm in school and is pitching in around the house.

[Maria]

what is your actual school like? Is there an evening program/adult studies, or will it be you and nothing but tweeners? Commuting? M-F or MWF/TTh classes?

I'm attending a commuter campus, which seems mostly full of kids fresh out of high school, but I'm planning to do a lot of my math courses through the distance learning program. That's partly because I'm good at self-teaching math, and partly because I live in Phoenix, AZ right now, and I have no intention of driving anywhere in the summer if I can avoid it! This coming term, I'm just doing self defense two afternoons a week (counts for my health credit, and seemed like good sense) and ground school, which is a once-weekly night course that I've actually already taken privately with my mentors, but neither is currently certified, so that doesn't officially count. Although I have this sneaking suspicion that I may be overly-prepared for the class, given that my mentors' idea of basic ground school includes a ton of physics, and whatever other crap they think up.

Thanks so much, all of you so far, for the input. I'm feeling more calm and prepared already, just getting to listen to your perspectives!

[Seshat]

If your school has a student services area, or a student union, or any sort of study assistance program, take advantage of everything they offer.

Tips with study itself:
* using more than one sense improves retention. Read aloud. Read and take notes (tactile). Read and draw diagrams. (tactile + visual).
* teaching someone else improves retention. 'Teach' your mentors. Yes, they already know the stuff - that's not the point. The point is that the act of teaching forces YOU to understand it.
* If there's something you don't grasp, you probably are missing something that it relies on - some piece of knowledge or understanding. Go back to the basics and try to figure out what that is.

Tips with assignments:
* An assignment that's worth 5% of your grade doesn't matter nearly as much as one that's worth 50%. Allocate your time effectively.
* LOGIC. Ensure that everything is laid out logically. Make sure you have a single, clear 'main point'. Then make sure you have a justification for it.
Set out your main point, and the separate justifications, as bullet points. Use those bullet points as section headings. Tidy up the section headings in your final pass.
If you're supposed to do it in essay style, without section headings, remove them and make sure there are neat 'linking sentences' between the sections.

Tips with exams:
* Do some math. The exam has however-many points. You have however-many minutes. Therefore there's X minutes per point.
(I actually take five minutes out of that calculation, for calculation time, a final review, and a first-pass read of the exam.)
* If you allow yourself a first-pass read through of the exam, mark each question as 'easy', 'normal' and 'hard'. Consider doing easy, high-mark questions first.
* Don't give any question more than its allocated number of minutes the first time you attempt question-answering. DO show your note-taking. If you're abandoning a question unfinished, leave space for you to finish in later.
* Once you've hit the last question and given it the fair attempt at answering, go back to the highest-mark, easiest-to-finish questions you left unfinished, and try to finish them.
* Continue finishing unfinished answers until five minutes before the end of the exam. (Or you run out of unfinished answers.)
* Go through and double-check, triple-check, that you attempted every question. Even ones you 'know' you don't know the answer to.
* IF there is time left, spell-check and legibility-check and proofread your work.
* IF there is time left, take a moment or two to breathe and relax, and repeat the check of your work.
* Turn the exam in.

* NOTE: with essay questions, do a bullet-point outline of the essay you intend to write. You can get partial marks for the bullet points. You CAN'T get partial marks for thoughts you never wrote down.

[Lyse]

OMG - yes! I agree with Seshat, but especially about the teaching someone what you are learning. For some reason I had a hard time with insulin, so my clinical instructor had me do a presentation for my group. The project was completely worth it; by having to figure out how to teach it to someone else, the parts finally clicked in my own head. After that, my poor niece was subjected to several mini-presentations at home.

[sms001]

Can't disagree with a single thing said here so far. Random tidbits:

You're a customer. You're paying for a service, make sure you get your money's worth. Avail yourself of extra tutoring, guidance counselors, materials, etc.

Schedule schedule schedule. Point already made above, but critical to people in our situation. When your life is Sleep, School, Party, there's plenty of wiggle room if something (final essay, presentation, exam review...) slips your mind until the last minute. Not so much for grown-ups.

You probably remember more than you think. Even though math was a pretty strong suit of mine, I was nervous about "College Math" and wasted money on a remedial algebra credit. Once in it, I breezed through.

Make sure you understand the instructor's expectations, and how they give feedback for them. Sadly, one I didn't figure out until after the fact. I blew a 4.0 in my very first semester in a programming class. I would turn in homework assignments that ran bug free, did what was called for. Got them back with a 'check' mark on them. Fine and dandy, full credit, I thought. Turns out there was also a 'plus' mark. For what differences I don't know to this day, but the points were enough to get me my only B in four years.

Your guidance counselor, advocate, whatever may not always turn over every stone for you. I didn't find out until standing in line at graduation that I could have easily garnered a dual degree by switching a couple of electives for two more business courses.

Sit in front.

Establish a note taking routine and stick to it. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to review and wondering if you got everything salient or not. "Did I not write that down because I KNEW I would remember it, or because it doesn't matter?"

Spare Pens. GOOD ones.

Keep an eye on classmates in ALL your classes who show up early, pay attention, ask pertinent questions. It may not matter in English 101, but when you get into group projects in senior level courses you won't be scrambling to find people who will carry their share.

Start papers right away and finish them early. Cramming is bad enough, but few things in college are more stressful than typing on the last day a paper is due. I would especially recommend doing your first year's assignments this way. Not only will it establish a good routine, but the positive reinforcement will make it easier to continue.

OH! And really focus on the hated English. You'll be reluctant to do so, but the tools it gives you make every other class easier. Just understanding and becoming good at constructing and supporting a thesis makes any subject more clear.

[Seshat]

Just understanding and becoming good at constructing and supporting a thesis makes any subject more clear.

Basic structure of anything non-fiction follows. Shorter pieces might omit some sections, longer pieces - especially theses or books - should have this as a minimum.

Advanced writing breaks these rules. But as with all rule-breaking, do so only once you know and are comfortable with the rules.

Feel free to ask me the reason for any of these.


Introduction

Summary of the topic.
Summary of what portion of the topic you intend to cover.
Summary of the audience you are targetting. (VERY important! A piece aimed at the ordinary joe should be very different from a piece aimed at professors and researchers in the field.)
(Note: the above elements are also part of the 'abstract' for theses and other formal scientific articles.)

Optionally, a summary of how you intend to lay out your work.
Optionally, acknowledgements, dedications, etc.
Optionally, anecdotes or parables or other 'humanising' touches.


Tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em

This may or may not be covered in the introduction; depending on how large your document is and your choice of 'top down' or 'bottom up'.

Essentially, there are two major ways to lay out non-fiction. Top-down is giving your main point first, then laying out the supporting material. Newspapers are full of top-down articles - once you've read the headline and the first paragraph, you have the gist of it.
The most classic way to describe bottom-up is whodunits. All the supporting material is provided, then the final result is explained in detail. Extremely complex topics are usually best written bottom-up.

Even if you've chosen to write bottom-up, however, you should give a precis of what it's about at the start. Your introduction may be sufficient, but make sure of it.

If you're top-down, and writing an essay-length piece, the introduction will merge seamlessly into this. If writing a book-length piece, the introduction is going to tell people whether they want to pick up your book - and this is going to be chapter one.

Tell 'em

Separate your topic's justification/explanation/story/whatever into sections. If it's someone's life, a timeline is a good set of sections (childhood, teenage, early adult, mid adult, etc.). For a manual for a computer program, you might go for basic use, several chapters on different types of advanced use, a reference chapter.
For a piece analysing a flower, you might discuss the petals, stamen, pollen and calyx each in separate sections.

Split those sections into subsections.

Split split split until you're into sub-sub-subsections you can express in a paragraph.

Write your paragraphs. Each paragraph is a miniature "tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em, tell 'em, tell 'em what you told 'em": but look at the paragraph below for an example of doing it smoothly: I tell you the topic is bridging sentences, I explain what they are and how to do them, and then I give an example.

Now write bridging sentences between paragraphs, sticking them on the end of the paragraph before, or the start of the paragraph after. You won't need them in all cases, and sometimes you can just modify the initial or last sentence slightly: in the case of the flower, for instance, you can easily bridge between stamen and pollen by mentioning that the stamen produces it. And pollen and petals naturally go together, because the purpose of the petals is to attract pollinators... see?

If your piece is long enough, you may want bridging paragraphs between the sections.

Note that each section is also a "tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em, tell 'em, tell 'em what you told 'em."

Tell 'em what you told 'em

In a bottom-up piece, this is likely to be one of the longer sections you write.

Even in a top-down piece, you need to restate your main point; your purpose.

Some people learn best top-down. Some learn best bottom-up. By putting your main point at both ends of the piece, you satisfy both types' needs.

Additionally, by stating the same point two different ways, you give people who missed it the first time a chance to catch it the second.

Most crucially, from the point of view of writing for university professors: some prefer top-down, some prefer bottom-up, without even knowing it. And the ones who don't know it, unconsciously mark accordingly.
By stating your main purpose at both ends, you reduce the risk of unconscious marking errors!

(The ones who are conscious of it and are sensible will try to avoid mismarking, OR will inform you of their preference right from the start.)

Conclusion

You can let "tell 'em what you told 'em" be your conclusion.

Or you can write an additional conclusion: frequently something humanising. This is also an alternate location for acknowledgements, and is the traditional placement (here or in appendices) for citations.
IMPORTANT: Citations and the art of citing correctly is crucial for university work. If you don't get citations training from your English professor, consult the librarians, the student union, student services, etc.
But librarians know how to cite correctly for general academia. They may not know your specific professors' preferences, but they do know how to write citations that will allow anyone who reads your work to take it to a librarian and get a copy of your sources.

For more ideas on conclusions, google the phrase "strong conclusions".
(One type of strong conclusion is the 'call to action'. See how I just used it? <grin>)

[Buglady]

My biggest challenge as a returning adult student was resisting the urge to smack my classmates, or stuff their cell phones up their noses... ! You'll be fine. Congratulations on making such a big decision!

[Chanlin]

I went back to school in 2007 age of 26. You will have the advantage of most likely knowing what you are going to do.

Some tips from mistakes I made:

1: Talk to a program adviser at least once a year to make sure you are on the right track for graduating. Have them help you plan out your entire degree so you have a plan to follow. Most degrees are required courses and electives or a required core of courses. (assuming you know what you want to major in)

2: Having a class in the morning followed by a very long break and then a class at night SUCKS! Don't do it unless you absolutely have to. I've also found it is much easier to stick with it if you have at least one or two days midweek with no classes. IE try to plan your courses so they are all within the same two or three day block. My uni typically has courses that are Monday and Wednesday or Tuesday and Thursday. I try my best to make all my classes fit one of those two day blocks when I can.

3: The campus bookstore is a rip off. Find out the ISBN of the books you need for class and then shop online for used books. I buy all my books from amazon ahead of time and typically save $80 to $100+ from what the campus book store would charge me and that includes shipping.

4: 9 times out of 10 the E-book version of a book you need for class is the wrong edition. - On that note ask you instructors ahead of time if buying a previous edition of a book is acceptable for your classes. Those tend to be much much cheaper than the newer editions.

5: I know a bag was mentioned. If your going in an area with frequent rain get a waterproof bag. - Also if you in an area with harsh winters, go walk around campus and learn your way around going though as many buildings as possible. I know routes on my campus where I can get to most buildings without ever setting foot outdoors once I walk into the first building. But then my Uni has a lot of connected buildings. Makes for much warmer and much more pleasant walks between classes during the winter months.

6: Since your worried about English type classes check if your library has a writing help desk or the like. My uni has a writing center that (by appointment) will read through your paper and give you feedback. All they ask for is a copy of the assignment directions to go with what they read. Most of the people at the help desk are English grad students or English teachers.

7: If you are self disciplined enough taking classes online is a great way to save yourself some hassle of going to class. Nothing beats being able to take a class without ever having to leave home.

8: Most large universities have subscriptions to electronic journal databases that you can access from home through the university library website. Learn how to use this ASAP. You can do tons of research without ever leaving home this way. OR Don't hesitate to ask a librarian help you do research. That's part of what they are there for. Just be sure to have a specific question in mind when you go to ask for help.

That said you can find help on this site with papers too I'm sure. If you want I'm an undergrad in English Education so I would not mind helping you with papers now and then if you want. Just PM me if you think you will want the assistance and I can give you my e-mail.

[Seshat]

With bags:

Seriously consider getting a properly fitted hiking backpack. The difference is incredible.

[taxguykarl]

If your institution offer proficiency tests for any courses, take them all. What do you have to lose? Even if there is a fee for the test, chances are, it's less than tuition. Not to sound boastful, but I tested out of a semister.

[Chanlin]

Not to sound boastful, but I tested out of a semister.

And I found out I needed a refresher in High School algebra before taking it at the college level. This is actually a very good suggestion

[Greenday]

Just don't be that adult who acts like they know so much more about life than the younger students. Odds are you do, but I've dealt with people in their 30s and 40s who had an arrogant attitude because I was just a kid and hadn't deal with the real world.

Other than that, the main thing I'd say is just make sure not to procrastinate. I did okay in college, but I probably would have done better if I didn't nearly always wait until the last minute.