By Ryan Weber
Opinions Editor

You are one of the lucky few if you start college knowing exactly the major you want to study and remain committed to it until you hear “Pomp and Circumstance” play during your processional.

Choosing what to study is by no means a simple task, but having some plan of action for your time here is essential, whether you have one, two or 20 majors in mind. Planning and staying organized is easy if you start early.

To those who are undecided, start by identifying at least five majors that seem most appealing or will lead to closest to meeting your goals. Once you do that, continue to Programs of Study, which can be found on the University’s website under “Student Self-Service.” There you will find the requirements necessary for a student to graduate in every major offered at the school.

From there, make a spreadsheet, one column for each semester you will be in attendance here, where you will start to write in the classes that you want to take based on your interests and what is required by the majors you have identified.

Doing so will at least give you an idea of the introductory classes necessary to start each course of study. A word of caution, though: An introductory class for a major is not always the best indicator of what to expect in a major; the classes that are representative of what you will be studying are generally found at the 200- or 300-level.

That being said, select courses that will be appropriate for your abilities but also informational, based on research you do about the classes either on the University website or from other web searches.

An additional benefit to doing this is that by taking these courses in other majors, you can simultaneously knock out some of the General Education courses, which the University requires every student to take.

By looking up the majors you are most considering, you can also see the prerequisites for the courses in those majors. By strategically mapping those out over the course of your undergraduate career, you can ensure that you don’t come up short in your last few semesters.

Additionally, by staying on top of things, you can avoid semesters where you would normally have to take three or four very difficult courses in your major in order to complete your degree on time. You will be able to spread the challenging courses out over your academic career, improving your grades and reducing your stress level.

For those of you that know exactly what major you want to study, planning ahead can also be useful.

College is not just about taking the courses that you need to complete to get your degree, it’s also about taking courses in subject areas and academic disciplines that are far out of your comfort zone or capture your interest. Take it from someone who thought taking only required courses was the way to do college: I’ve learned the most from the random classes I’ve taken outside of my major.

Don’t simply cast off a class because it seems useless — at the very minimum, it’s those courses that you will find most useful when you are schmoozing with a potential employer later.

As you progress through college and realize that your interests are changing, update your spreadsheet to reflect that. Since you’ve planned ahead, you’ll be able to switch your studies much more easily, assured that your switches can be completed on time.

If studying abroad is something that you think you may want to do, having a personal master plan of study will give you the foresight to arrange your schedule according to the semester or year you will be in another country.

While it’s a good idea to plan out what you want to study, use this technique to manage many parts of your life such as your homework and study time, work schedule, volunteer hours or extracurricular activities.

If you don’t do this until your junior year, you may feel the crunch of graduation quickly approaching, and you will wish you had started earlier.

Get organized, plan ahead, make plans — these are the foundations of a successful and fruitful academic career at your new university.

Ryan is a junior in LAS.

By Johnathan Hettinger
Assistant copy chief

Arriving at the University as a freshman can be very intimidating. With thousands of courses, it can be extremely difficult to choose the best ones.

Going into registration, many students don’t know which classes to take, and advisors have so many students that they can only be so helpful. In order to combat this problem, I compiled a guide to selecting classes.

Choose the classes you want

Waking up for an 8 a.m. class every Monday, Wednesday and Friday can be annoying and not having class on Friday can be fun, but the most satisfying thing is loving classes and being ecstatic to go to them.

In my experience, you will find life a lot more enjoyable if you like your classes than if you like your schedule. Fun classes are more memorable than sleeping in until 10 every day of the week.

Don’t be afraid to drop classes

Dropping a class can help you a lot. If you really don’t like a course or just don’t mesh with the professor or the class requires more work than it’s worth, just drop it.

Dropping a class can help save your GPA and it is easy to replace courses with second-eight-week courses.

Ask around

As a freshman, you may not know many people in your major, but as college progresses, find older major mates and ask them about their experiences with certain classes or professors. For now, use ratemyprofessor.com.

Although there are many conflicting reports about professors on the site, it gives you a general idea of what to expect from him or her and whether you want to take a class from that professor.

Graduation requirements

Check your major’s graduation requirements. This may seem simple, but, with close attention to requirements, it is easy to graduate in four years or less.

Have fun

College is supposed to be fun. Don’t overload yourself every single semester. It’s good to take a semester with a lower amount of hours so you don’t get overwhelmed. Make sure you build time for activities.

College is a one-time experience. Plan accordingly.

Johnathan is a sophomore in media.

By Marty Malone
Managing editor for online

Every student has that significant moment in their lives when they truly feel like an Illini for the first time.

For some, it was when they opened that thick envelope to discover they were accepted to this school. For others, it may have been the first night in their dorm rooms, or maybe after they signed up for their first class. Many, I’m sure, truly felt the start of a lifelong connection at their first Fighting Illini football game.

Call me a nerd, but I remember not really feeling like an Illini until I signed into my @illinois.edu account for the first time.

It all felt so official. My own NetID and a password. Those two little keys of information unlocked an online portal where I could email anyone and they would know I was among some of the best and brightest people at the University of Illinois.

As a huge fan of everything Google-related, I was also super excited that my class — the Class of 2013 — was the first class to take advantage of Illinois’ new partnership with Google Apps.

I decided I wanted to share all the information I could about how to make the most of your new account.

1. In addition to your new @illinois.edu account, you’re going to want to make yourself a new, professional Gmail account. Sorry, but that means it’s time to delete your F00tballALLSTAR2011@gmail.com and prettyinpink90210@gmail.com accounts.

A good rule of thumb for your new account would be (first initial last name)@gmail.com, or (first name last name)@gmail.com. For the John Smith’s of the world, the addition of a couple of numbers is totally acceptable.

This may sound a bit weird, since I just talked about being excited with my new @illinois.edu account, but I say make a professional Gmail account because after graduation, you’ll no longer have access to your @illinois.edu account.

By using a personal Gmail account, you’ll have guaranteed access to all of your old emails.

2. Once you make your new professional Gmail account, set up your @illinois.edu account to forward all your email to your new Gmail. This way you’ll only have to log into one account to get email from multiple ones.

3. Download Google Drive onto your computer. By saving your files into your Google Drive, that means you’ll have access to them every single computer on campus ­— since they’re all online.

4. In addition to saving finalized Word documents of my essays and other classwork, I write my rough drafts in Google Docs. I do that because I once lost an eight-page paper in the Garner Hall computer lab when the computer I was on decided it wanted to reboot out of nowhere.

If I had been writing in Google Docs, all of that work would have been automatically saved online. Learn from my mistake!

Also, sharing a Google Doc with people in your class is a great way to organize notes. If everyone does a little work, you could have a great set of notes in no time.

5. In addition to email and document storage, Google also builds some of the best calendar software. It would be very smart to schedule all of your classes, exams, meetings and everything in between onto the calendar.

And if you have a smartphone, they all have great Google calendar syncing capabilities.

6. Take advantage of your @illinois.edu address. I signed up right away for Amazon Student. You save a lot of money by getting free two day shipping on all orders for an entire year. You could also get a lot of deals on software by using your .edu email address.

So go ahead, poke around your new Google account. By acquainting yourself with all of the capabilities of your new account before starting classes, you’ll be ahead of the pack when it comes to keeping all of your things organized.

Marty is a senior in media.

Easy classes freshman year can definitely be confidence boosters. Or they can be lost opportunities.

These classes are meant to boost your GPA and give you extra free time to relax or explore the campus. Read More »

Say goodbye to five days a week, seven hours of class a day. When you start out in college, you will be amazed at how much free time you have.  There might be days when you only have one class, and there might be days when you don’t have to get up until 11 a.m. (or if
you’re like me, you shoot for as late as possible).  All this extra time may lure you into a false sense of security because, while that assignment may not be due until two weeks later, you’ll be surprised at how quickly time goes by before the deadline is looming before you. Read More »

Christy Kim, freshman in LAS, studies for finals with coffee at the ready in the Undergraduate Library. Photo by Chong Jiang, the Daily Illini.

University homework can be a daunting task. It seems like from Day One, all of it piles up, and before it can be all done, Day Two ends; and there is even more of it to do. And very soon, finals are here, and it’s cramming time. Read More »

A few students study on the second floor of Grainger Engineering Library on Thursday, July 7. Photo by William Shi, the Daily Illini.

Surprise! It’s already time for your first exam. The first few weeks have been filled with meeting new people, exploring the campus and having a good time, but now it’s time to do actually do some work. Read More »

Students use their laptops during class in Foellinger Auditorium. Photo by Michael Stein, the Daily Illini.

To some, going from high school to college may seem like getting seized from that comfortable pond and thrown into a much bigger ocean. Large classes, which are characteristic of the freshman experience, can be daunting for someone who has never been in a situation where the instructor might not know his or her name. Read More »

Purchasing textbooks does not have to be the same burden as it was years ago; but then again, they are relatively more expensive today. With the increased price, there are also three local bookstores and endless online services that compete for students’ business, each with advantages.

Here are some of your options for purchasing textbooks: Read More »

We all thought that those days of taking mortifying pictures for the school yearbook and our driver’s license had ended.  No more opportunities to permanently capture our bad hair days, our strange inclinations to wear black turtle necks or our oh-so-awkward braces phase.  Yet here you are on your orientation day, being asked to take a picture for your i-card.  One piece of advice:  smile big and smile pretty, because unlike your yearbook photo, this baby cannot be shoved into a box in your closet — your i-card has to stay with you at all times.  If you fail to comply to this simple rule, the following unfortunate situations can occur: Read More »