Date:        August 22, 2012

To:            Freshmen

From:       Winfield H. Rose, Professor of Political Science

The suggestions below are offered to you in the hope they will help you have a successful college career.  Please consider them.

• First and foremost, remember that you are responsible for your own destiny - not your parents, not your teachers, not your friends, but you.  Accepting responsibility is one of the most important parts of growing up.
• Study and learn the bulletin (catalog): requirements, deadlines, prerequisites, etc. Your advisor and professors may not remember to tell you every detail you need to know. Again, this is your responsibility.
• Start a file. You need a safe place to keep important MSU papers: information about scholarships, your MAP and grade reports, transcript, etc.
• Get to know your advisor. Your advisor can and should be your most important friend on campus. If he or she appears uninterested, you should get another one.
• Consider study abroad. There are several programs, KIIS and CCSA, for example that make study in other countries possible. Such study would be an excellent educational experience and also would look good on your resume.  
• Be sure to preregister during preregistration. If you wait until late registration, many if not most (if not all) of the classes you want or need will be closed; and, the later you wait, the worse the problem will be. Be sure to consult with your advisor and be sure to prepare a tentative schedule ahead of time. Never go to your advisor and expect him/her to prepare your schedule for you - that is your responsibility.
• Get involved in campus life but don’t overdo it. Your residential college is a good place to start and there are numerous social, professional, and honorary organizations on campus.  Remember, however, they are the icing, not the cake.
• Be sure to attend class the first day and every day after that. Some students get the strange notion that it is not necessary to attend class the first day. That is a terrible mistake because subjects will be addressed that day which will never be mentioned again - that is, until the deadline has passed and you are losing a grade letter a day for not having your term paper ready.  Other students attend the first day but become lackadaisical after that; they stay up too late and then oversleep, or they schedule doctor's and dentist's appointments during class time, or they decide to use the time to study for a test in another class, and so forth.  That is not good.  There is no substitute for class.  While occasional absences may be unavoidable, it is not right to expect your friends to take notes for you on a regular basis.
• Speaking of taking notes, you should always take good notes.  That goes without saying.  What is even better is recopying them after class as soon as possible.   This will enable you to insert points you remember but did not have time to record in class.
• Read the syllabus for each course carefully and thoroughly.  Each professor is supposed to give you a syllabus the first day of class; if you do not receive one, ask about it.  This syllabus is, in effect, a contract betrween you and the instructor and it should contain all the information you need to succeed in the class.  This syllabus will not do you any good if you do not read it and, surprisingly, some students do not bother to read it.  That is a big mistake!
• Consider the Bachelor of Arts degree. Yes, it requires study of a foreign language but  today’s world is very competitive and very interrelated. We often hear such terms as "international marketplace" and "global village." A European I once met apologetically stated that he was fluent in "only" three languages; yet many Americans are not really fluent even in their own. If nothing else, studying a foreign language is an excellent way to learn English.
• Don’t avoid the more rigorous courses and teachers. The grapevine may tell you that Dr. So-and-so is really hard and that he requires - of all things - a twenty-page paper!  In twenty years you will look back and remember you learned something in this class whereas the pushovers will have faded into oblivion.
• Don’t forget your minor.  In addition to a major, you will need a minor. You don’t have to make these choices the first day of school, but you will have to make them eventually.
• Go to the library and learn your way around in it. It is a nice place and contains lots of good books, the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of the ages. Consider checking one out and reading it.  The library also is a good place to meet studious friends.
• Another thing you need is to become computer literate, if you are not already.  It is the wave of the future and cannot be avoided.
• One of the most essential ingredients to success anywhere, anytime is learning to manage your time.  Don’t get behind in your work.  Buy a campus planner and use it faithfully!
• If you want to get a job after graduation, or to attend graduate or professional school, you will probably need letters of recommendation from professors and perhaps others.  If you want them to say something good about you, remember you will need to have done something good.  If your MSU career has been decidedly mediocre, what is there to say to cause an admissions committee or an employer to select you over someone else?  Life is competitive.  The Law School Admission Council recommendation form contains the following guidance for the recommender: "Law schools value your candid appraisal of the applicant's ability, academic and otherwise, to study law, including qualities of mind and character, dedication, responsibility, and readiness for the rigors of advanced academic study.  Evidence of overcoming adversity, rising to challenges, and achieving beyond expectations are helpful in assessing candidates for admission."
• ABOVE ALL ELSE, remember what you are here for. You are here to obtain a college education first and foremost, not to play sports, not to join a fraternity, and not to find a spouse. Even though you may also do one or all of these things, they should come second, third, or fourth, not first.  You should be different for having spent four or more years of your life here.  You should think, speak, and act better and you should know more than your high school friend who chose not to pursue advanced education.  If you do not, you have failed and we have failed.  Do not seek to do as little as you can to get by, but seek to do as much as you can to excel.  Work hard.  Learn and grow.  Make the most of your time here.  As the movie The Dead Poets' Society proclaimed, "Carpe diem!"  There are real and tangible differences between successful and unsuccessful people.  Put another way, you are here to acquire the "Characteristics of a Murray State University Graduate."
• One of the marks of an educated person is possessing a personal library of good books.  While not all books are of equal value, you should keep most, if not all, of the textbooks and other books you use while in college.  What little money you might get from selling them back to the bookstore will be far outweighed down through the years of your life by having those books available for future use.  Let them form the core of your personal library and then add others to them.  The same applies to renting your books.  If you rent, you cannot mark in them and you will obviously have to return them, so I do not recommend renting textbooks even though buying them often is very expensive.  (You can often get good buys on used copies on Amazon.com.)   And, remember what the quote below says about newspapers applies just as well to books.
• One final point.  Remember that learning must be a life-long process.  If you quit learning upon graduation, you will be obsolete almost immediately.  Benjamin Franklin said there were two certainties in life, death and taxes, but there is at least one more: change.  In this regard I submit something I found in a newspaper some time ago:

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Last updated August 20, 2012.
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