First Year Experience Classes/Seminars

I heard this quite a bit when I would hand out schedules to students at orientation: "WHY do I have to take College Success?" (College Success was what the school I was at called the freshman class everyone had to take.) It became the class that everyone loved to hate.

But, from my point of view as an administrator it was a very useful class. Sure, almost every incoming freshman now knows how to write an email- but what about using and providing attachments? Or, how to write to a faculty member or an administrator? Unfortunately I learned I wasn't very cool when I often had to reply to the email asking the student to please re-write the email because I couldn't read it due to the acronyms that I didn't understand or the misspellings/grammatical errors.

Yep, they should be common sense, but sometimes, unfortunately, they aren't. That's just one aspect of the college success class or first year seminar or whatever it is at the college you've chosen.

They would also learn the whereabouts of campus resources, such as the library (and get to meet the head librarian who was super approachable and a fantastic resource), the student services office (with, of course, the most awesome staff ever... *ahem*) learn how to use the student portal to check financial aid, check the school announcements (handy in Minnesota and there is a snowstorm), check their student email, find and print their schedules... all kinds of things that are important to know how to do well when you're a college student.

And you can laugh, sure, who can't figure out how to use those tools? Well, every quarter I had many, many students who didn't know how to check their student email coming into my office for help because they were missing assignments (professors rarely send them to personal Hotmail or Yahoo accounts), they didn't know what their schedule for the next quarter was... you name it. All things covered in College Success.

So, moral of the story? The class might seem boring or trivial, but you'll not only meet some classmates since most include some type of networking activities, but you'll also get to know the resources the school has to offer which may be a huge help to you down the line.