Advice For My First Semester at ASU

If I could go back to my first semester at ASU and give myself a piece of advice it would be to work less so I could make it to professor's office hours, and create a solid study group. During my first semester I had to work in order to try to be able to pay off some of my ASU tuition, along with other things. However this impeded me from going to my professor's office hours. I was tremendously struggling with the material in most of my classes. Had I gone to my professor's office hours this would have also helped me create a sense of community at West. However my days just looked like, I go to work, I get out of work, I go to class, and straight from class, go home. Over the next semesters I tried to take a lighter work load but it wasn't until I received the TRAIN scholarship that I was able to truly cut down how many hours I worked and actually focus on my classes. The unfortunate thing is by then, I was already burned out, and I was finishing up my senior year. Creating a study group would have tremendously helped as well. Although it was rather difficult creating one, given that most of the math courses had at most 7 students and most of the students had conflicting course and work schedules. I was able to study with 1 friend that I made with in one of my classes. It turned out we took almost all of our math courses together. Had it not been for her, I seriously doubt I would have even continued the program at West. Thus it is important that one builds a sense of community at their university. At the community college it may have seemed simpler, however this may have been due to the "large" class sizes (20-25 students). I would say that the attitude of instructors at the community college is different from the attitude of a university professor. Instructors at the community college overall seem to be happier and more welcoming and willing to help. However I would argue that the level of responsibility of a community college instructor is less than a university professor. The sole responsibility of an instructor at the community college is the students, which in turn may explain the ability to easily approach your instructor. While university professors have to balance their time between research, the courses they teach, working on tenure, attending and coordinating conferences, etc. University professors are more likely stressed out, and in turn may lead to them coming off as snobby or that they do not care. However they really do care, and it is not their intention to seem unapproachable, it's just they have a lot more going on than you think.

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