College Advice

As a senior in college, over the years I've accrued a number of hacks that have helped me be lazy, save time, and otherwise cut corners on things I don't want to do. I can't share those with you, but I do have a couple which have actually helped me out a lot and made me become a better person.

Get rid of your desk chair

If you're like me, plopping yourself down at your desk and opening up a web browser destroys any semblance of an aspiration to get work done. A chairless desk forces me to go somewhere else to do work (e.g. the library) and keeps me from spending my free time reading unhealthy amounts of wikipedia articles.

Don't bike on campus

I've found that there is nothing that will do more harm to your social life than riding a bike everywhere you go on campus. When you bike you take a different route from those who are walking, ensuring that you will not run into any of your friends, meet someone new, or get pulled into something neat.

I give this to you with a caveat: if you go to a large university, not riding your bike will probably make you late for all your classes, which I do not advocate.

Go to office hours

This is less of a hack, and I may be echoing what many have said before me, but it's worth repeating. Go to your professors office hours and ask them about the homework. But more importantly, ask them about things that aren't the homework. Get to know your professors on a personal basis.

Professors probably won't mention this, but education is just as much about social assimilation as it is about fact-gathering. If you want to be a physicist, you need to know and act like other physicists.