"I am thankful to the one and only Prof. Harold Scheub of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Department of African Languages and Literature, for giving me the permission to publish online these suggestions that he gave us during the Orientation. I believe these tips are invaluable guidelines for any student experiencing University life, and they will provide an infinite source of inspiration and motivation to them." - Anand V. Chhatpar.
Ten suggestions for success at this University, from this teacher's point of
view.
- By Prof. Harold Scheub.
1. Do the basic ABCs of university life responsibly and with commitment. Go to class religiously. Do your reading. Learn the use of the library. Know that education is more than mastering concepts and accumulating facts, though it certainly is that. But it is primarily ideas: that is the proper realm of your sons and daughters for the next four or five years. Fit your courses into broader contexts. Integrate your new experiences into the broader and broadening texture of your expanding life. Do no wait until the night before an exam to bring the course together. Do that regularly, so that students understand the parts of the course and how they are related.
2. Master the nitty-gritty: Learn how to take notes, to read quickly and with understanding. Do more than the bare necessities for courses: allow them to open your lives and your minds. If you have problems, make sue of the writing lab, of reading clinics, of the various offices on the campus meant to assist in the intellectual and social lives of the students.
3. Know your professors. Talk to them, discuss ideas with them. And when you have having difficulties, seek them out.
4. Develop and sustain an intellectual curiosity: this is not a trade school, it is a place where one receives a broad, liberal or liberating education. Students will never again in their lives be pulled and challenged in as many directions as they are during these undergraduate years. You should not be perplexed by this, but should instead take advantage, looking into and examining and studying life's nooks and crannies.
5. Become disciplined, if you are not already. Take painstaking responsibility for your courses, for your lives at this institution. Intellectually and personally and socially, get your life in order, give it a focus, sharply and keenly, and work purposefully and energetically to give your ideals and dreams fulfillment.
6. Read: everything and anything. And if you emerge from this institution without having read Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and Garcia Marquez's A Hundred Years of Solitude, know that your education is not complete.
7. Write: when you have an opportunity, you should write -- papers, essays, and the like. Students should learn to express themselves clearly and persuasively, orally and in writing. It is clear to me that students do not do enough writing.
8. Know that there is more to University life than social life. And allow your social life to broaden. Get to know students from backgrounds other than their own. Take advantages of the many students from other lands. Go to concerts, lectures, performances. And read, read, read.
9. Know what is going on in the world. Read responsible newspapers and journals. A student should not become a recluse for these years. You should sharpen your knowledge of the world and its politics. What goes on in the classroom should not be divorced from the student's developing knowledge of the world and its peoples and cultures.
10. Develop a love of live, of people, and a responsibility for your world. Do not allow yourself to become wholly preoccupied with your own selfish needs. See beyond yourself, to your fellows, to other peoples and cultures: see yourself within the context of the wider world, and hone the joys and obligations that this entails.
- PROFESSOR HAROLD SCHEUB, UNDERGRADUATE INTERNATIONAL STUDENT ORIENTATION, 08/24/2001.