Advice to an undergrad

3. Good scientists are often bad teachers.

Remember who's doing the teaching in most science classes scientists. Now, that professor may have been hired because they published sixty papers in five years, but they may not be able to teach their way out of a paper bag. In short, a good researcher does not necessarily (and in fact, not usually) make a good teacher. This is good to keep in mind for some perspective when a class seems confusing or overly difficult. It's not that you don't have the capacity to learn quantum mechanics, it's just not being presented in a manner that gives you much chance of learning it. Ask the professor, during an office visit, to try and put things in a different way, or start from more basic principles. Try talking to a graduate student or a tutor, anyone who can communicate more effectively, instead.

4. Get under someone's wing.

Try hard to find some professor who can act as a mentor to you, even if you're not actually in one of their classes. I did a couple of individual research projects with some of the astronomers at Harvard, which turned out to be extremely worthwhile. Not only can they help you with questions or problems you may be having in class, but they will often become an advocate for you. Individual relationships are key. A faulty advisor, either formal or informal, can help you get help, provide emotional support, suggest resources, and provide advice. My advisor (still love you, Dave Latham!) even helped me apply and get into graduate school.

5. Take a minimum number of classes in your area of study.

This may seem like strange advice, but let me explain. In most colleges, there are prescribed courses that you need to take to fulfill a "major." I majored in astrophysics, so every semester there were two or three courses I had to take. There was also a smattering of required, general education courses, like writing, history, basic philosophy, and such. But then there were some unassigned credits, where I could take any class I liked. Most of my friends who were doing a physics major decided to take extra physics courses. I took Icelandic literature (no joke!), Japanese art, and human behavioral biology, among others. I can not tell you how much the random, extraneous classes I took in college enriched my life. Not only did these classes provide welcome variety to my education, they've also provided me with a good understanding of many different fields, and gotten me started on some wonderful, life-long hobbies. Believe me, in graduate school I had the opportunity to take any and every course in physics I could ever have wanted. In retrospect, I should have learned more languages, practiced more art and studied more history.

6. Mistakes and failures will not ruin your life.

Life in college feels overwhelmingly, painfully, latent. Your performance now, it seems, will set you on a path or either wild success or dismal disappointment for the rest of your life. Baloney. Don't delude yourself into making college such a be-all and end-all. Yes, work hard and get the best grades you can, but remember that nothing you do, even totally screwing up an exam or failing a class, will lead to a life of misery. For science students, I offer this small but significant statistic: everyone I know who wanted to go to graduate school did go to graduate school. No one, not even people who picked up a few bad grades (including myself) was left out in the cold. Doing well in college is no guarantee that your wildest dreams will come true, and conversely, making a few mistakes in college will not ruin the rest of your life.

7. This is not the best time of your life.

Our culture puts those "golden college days" on quite a pedestal. By all accounts, this is the time of our life when we are at our most beautiful, most promising, most talented. This is where we form friendships that will last the rest of our lives, find our mates, even find ourselves. Talk about stress! There are some truly unique joys about being in college. Living in the dorms and having a ready-made social life was a blast. Learning new things every day, burning the night oil in dusty old libraries, walking over the Charles River to the stadium on a gorgeous fall day to watch a football game. Great stuff. It would be fun to do it all again, but only with the confidence, strength, and wisdom that I've found long since my college days. Would I go back to that same time and be that same person? Not on your life.

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