Cao Lin: College freshmen should avoid these 10 traps
2024-08-11
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author:Cao Lin (Professor of the School of Journalism and Communication, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, academic advisor of this journal)
source:WeChat public account of "Young Journalists Magazine"
Introduction:
By receiving complete general and professional training and having a solid knowledge foundation, we will be able to cope with the huge impacts of future waves.
After the college entrance examination, the dust has settled, and another wave of freshmen will enter the university campus with their dreams, starting the most beautiful, freest, and most confusing period of life. The reason why they are easily confused is that their lives seem very free, escaping the panoramic surveillance perspective of high school. There are no regulations, no external goals, but involution is everywhere, and the invisible mental consumption can easily make people exhausted. There is no direction, no standard answer, but the pros and cons are determined in the final race, and there are traps everywhere. Four years gives people the illusion that "time is very long", but when they realize that it is actually very short, it is too late, and they fall into backward-looking, irreversible regret.
I have previously written an article titled "Find what you love and are good at, 20 things you must do in college". As an elder brother who has graduated for more than 20 years, I have met countless outstanding graduates in Peking University, Renmin University, and Huazhong University of Science and Technology, witnessed countless joys of success, and listened to many frustrations. I shared some college growth experiences, including: First, develop the habit of exercising, and it is best to be good at a certain sport and make it an interest. Second, learn English well. In college, English is not only a language, a score, and a qualification certificate, but also a window to the world. Third, make friends across departments and disciplines. Fourth, keep the habit of writing. Fifth, cultivate a non-professional hobby so that you can spend your free time in a healthy way. Sixth, learn to think critically and don't worship professors. Every professor has different views. Seventh, improve the ability of independent learning. Don't expect professors to teach you. Professors are busy doing scientific research and writing papers, and they are more competitive than students. And so on. Continuing this topic, I will talk about the 10 traps that college freshmen should avoid falling into.
First, don’t set the goal of getting into graduate school as soon as you enter university, and lose your imagination about university life.
After entering university, many students regard being admitted to graduate school and taking the postgraduate entrance examination as the only goal of their university life. They only have GPA in their minds and strive for GPA in everything. Their university life is just rushing from one classroom to another, from one deadline to another, from one "tutorial" to that "principle" with textbooks in their arms. The concerns expressed by Professor Qian Yingyi in the article "Seven Phenomena and Seven Trade-offs in the Training of University Students" resonated with many educators. He summarized the status of many students today in three words: busy (busy), confused (confused), and blind (blind). This dominant goal is fatal to university professional training, and it makes the "graduate entrance examination thinking" dominate the entire university learning. Just like going straight to the college entrance examination when you are in middle school. This dominant goal of going straight to "graduate school" has hollowed out the ideological space for university professional training and alienated undergraduate education.
Second, don’t just read textbooks in your major, read more classics in the humanities and social sciences.
Don't confine yourself to a very narrow professional system that is "satisfied with finding a job" from the beginning. Don't believe in words like "crisis of liberal arts" and "uselessness of humanities". Many people often feel that they have lost their "sense of meaning" and have a spiritual crisis of meaning. Why? It is because of the lack of ideological practice in the humanities and social sciences. What is meaning? It is the belonging of the part to the whole, the sense of belonging of the individual life and survival to a certain overall structure. Humanistic influence is to let people who are "trapped in a certain system" and "split into daily fragments" see the whole to which their lives should belong.
Third, go to the library and sit on the bench to read classics. Don’t chase hot topics or think that you are out of date if you don’t go online for a few days.
There is a saying that goes, "If you don't go online for a day or two, you will feel that you have missed a lot of events and topics and can't keep up with the pace of topics; if you don't go online for a year, you will find that you have not missed anything." The core knowledge and ideas of a profession are in the library, in those old books covered with dust, not on the Internet. Metaverse, blockchain, artificial intelligence, new concepts are popular for a few days, and they have nothing to do with you. Don't read articles by Internet celebrities, don't regard online reading as learning, and don't look at hot searches, they are just entertainment.
Fourth, don’t listen to the “course selection guides” shared by seniors.
The so-called "course selection and avoidance guide" is full of practical utilitarian calculations such as "GPA first", "score first", "taking the least classes, writing the least homework, and getting the most cost-effective scores", etc., and is not aimed at "finding the best teachers, taking the best classes, undergoing the most solid training, and learning the most knowledge". Listen more, immerse yourself more, and focus more. Don't open your phone or computer during class, and make more eye contact with the teacher, and you will gain something. Be critical of the experience sharing of seniors, counselors, and elder brothers, including this article you are reading, which also contains your own experience limitations. Don't let the vision of these people (including the author) limit your imagination, and believe that you can surpass them.
Fifth, don’t crowd together. You don’t have to “fit in”. Develop the ability to work, learn, and solve problems independently.
Improve yourself and have what Lu Xun called "personal arrogance" instead of "gregarious arrogance". Don't care about what people in the virtual society and the online world think of you. Those strangers' comments do not belong to your life.
Sixth, don’t confine your mind to the campus and classroom.
Read newspapers and magazines, write letters to people far away, talk to people around you, and maintain a rich sense of connection with public affairs. Not only should we pay attention to the news, but we should also pay attention to the social structure behind the news. We should not rely on algorithm push to read the news, but take the initiative to read the news on authoritative and professional platforms, not be fed by others, and do not let other people's opinions fill our heads.
Seventh, don’t let short videos and games consume your time. Don’t let bad habits eat up your time.
Don’t take the freedom and relaxation of freshman year as a “compensation for the hard work of the previous ten years”, which will eventually turn the golden time into “garbage time”. It seems like four years, but in fact it goes by very quickly. You have to try hard in freshman year, open up the world through rich and diverse general reading, and see the direction of your efforts. Don’t look at your phone before going to bed and when you get up early, always carry a book with you, and cultivate concentration and self-discipline in reading.
8. Don’t be distracted by the pervasive “anxiety about finding a job”
On this issue, we need to have a strong "firewall" with society in spirit and psychology. We don't know what the situation will be like four years later. The technology and concepts that are popular today will inevitably be outdated four years later. The way to overcome anxiety is to do what you should do at this stage, and then you will be qualified to "let it go naturally without anxiety" three or four years later. Just like a reporter asked Olympic champion Pan Zhanle a question: "The (Paris) swimming pool is relatively shallow. Will its waves affect your performance?" Pan Zhanle replied: "As long as you swim fast, the waves will not affect you." Yes, receiving complete general and professional training and having a solid knowledge base can cope with the impact of future waves.
9. Don’t fill your time too full
Spend less time in the dormitory and browsing on your phone. Visit more famous scenic spots, mountains and rivers in your city. Climb up more often to see the sights. Step out of the familiar campus and integrate into the city and nature. Your mind and horizons will be broadened a lot.
10. Don’t skip classes
Don't do any practical work right from the beginning of your freshman year. Force yourself to sit in class. Don't deceive yourself by saying "skipping class to do what you like" or "skipping class to attend a better class." Even if it's a water class, even if the teacher is reading a PPT, if you really immerse yourself, chew it carefully, and enter the classroom knowledge field, you will gain something. Classroom learning is sometimes a screening of "boredom tolerance". If you always pursue fun, fun and relaxation and don't want to get involved, you will gradually be screened out.
