5 Skills You Should Learn Before You Go To College
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There are a lot of things you have to prepare for before you head off to college. For one thing, you have to get ready for the college admissions process, which requires boosting your grades, finishing AP courses, studying for your SATs and going on college tours. However, there is something else that you direly need to do before you head off to college and that is learn some basic and essential skills. These skills will help you live like a real adult in the modern world. If you don’t have these skills, it is critical to learn them as early as you can, because not only will you need them in college, you will also need them in the rest of your life too. Here are five skills you should learn before you go to college.
- Learn How to Get Your Finances on Track
One of the most valuable skills you can learn before you go to college is how to budget and get your financial life on track. Indeed, you will have a lot of finances to sort out – from your tuition, to your rent, to your phone bill and beyond. Not only do you want to be able to pay your bills – you also want to learn how to save.
- Learn How to Show Respect to Your Mentor
On top of learning how to save, you also want to learn how to show your respect and appreciation not only for your mentor, but also for elders. If you want to get ahead in this world, it is critical that you build this skill. Showing respect means listening, following directives and making sure that all of your responsibilities are met – from your homework to studying for exams.
- Learn How to Manage Your Time
In college, your time will be really important – more important than ever. You will have classes, study groups and other time constraints that will require you to get on a very tight schedule. Indeed, scheduling – and maintaining a schedule – are crucial when you are in college. If you don’t have this skill down to a science, you may be perpetually late, which could affect your interpersonal relationships, professional relationships and even your grade point average.
- Learn How to Set Your Long-term Goals
Setting goals for yourself is another crucial skill you want to learn before you head to college. Not only do you want to set goals for when you graduate for college, you also want to set goals for afterwards too. For instance, you want to create a five-year goal and a ten-year goal. This may be difficult to realize, but you want to at least get something on paper to start.
- Learn How to Clean Up After Yourself
For instance, you want to learn how to do your laundry, how to clean your dorm and more. This is of course, unless you are studying online with a school like UAB Online. If you are having difficulty with cleaning up and organizing your high school room, you’ll want to practice keeping it clean. In college, you will have roommates and other requirements to keep your dorm clean. In the end, you also want to be able to do your laundry on a weekly to bi-weekly basis.
