COLUMN: Habits you should graduate from before college

You did it! You’re finally done with four years of curfew, seven-hour school days and trying to fit all of your belongings in a locker. You’re excited to leave all of that in the past, so while you're at it, try to leave some of these bad habits behind too.

Waiting until the last-minute

In high school, it was easy to wait until the night before a big book report to throw something together with SparkNotes. It was easy to get close with your teacher, and you knew they’d let you use the book for the test. In college, however, that’s not the case. While in high school, you could scrape something like that together.

College professors expect more than that, and they WILL call you out when they know something is subpar. As lame as it sounds to you right now, college is a time to really start working on professionalism, so take time on your assignments, study with friends a little bit every day for a week before a test and put your best foot forward with everything you do.

Not helping in a group project

You know you’ve done it: gotten put into a group with one or two of the smarter kids in class who had a plan for the final product before the teacher even finished detailing the assignment. You let them take the reins and waited to read off of the PowerPoint come presentation day. They do the work. You get the A, and life goes on.

This won’t be the case here. Most professors will grade each member of the group based on their performance both during the completion of the project and when you present it.

Also, the projects will be a little more complex than making a trifold poster about Lewis and Clark, and, most importantly, none of your classmates in college will let that slide.

While in high school, you could let someone else do all the work; however, people here have too much to worry about in their own lives to pick up your slack.

Be a team player, do your portion of your project and maybe make a few friends along the way.

Ignoring class time

I’m sure you’ve heard this a million times from teachers and parents already, but it’s seriously one of the most important things I learned during my freshman year. While you can easily spend your class time doing anything but listening to the professor or joining in discussion, doing so will only hurt you and really is just a waste of your time.

Taking detailed notes, asking questions (really, most of your classmates are lost too) and actively commenting during class discussion will make your academic life so much easier. While in high school, you could ignore the lesson and catch up right before a test. College is a lot more engaging. You will have to do much less outside-of-class work if you just close Facebook, check the game’s score later and know that the memes will be waiting for you after the hour of learning.

Pulling all-nighters

Although it will be common for you to see Snapchat stories of your friends leaving RBD Library at 8 a.m., the caption reading “just leaving, ready for this test lol.”

This is a very ill-advised way to study. In fact, it’s not even usually studying that happens at those all-nighters; it’s more of a get together with whatever friends are also “studying” while watching episodes of “Grey’s Anatomy” and ordering pizza “because omg you can do that here!”

Although that may seem alluring, and you might have been able to pull it off in high school, do yourself a favor and study a little bit every night over the course of a week or two.

You’re only hurting yourself staying up all night before a test, as you won’t actually learn anything, and you’ll be falling asleep over your scantron.Leave these high school habits behind, and you’re sure to have a much better freshman year.