Photo : Wohani

With the start of the academic year, it’s time to switch out of vacation mode—pronto. What you do the first week of classes can majorly impact your grades four months from now, so don’t skip these first week must-dos.


Editor’s note: This guest post originally appeared in an altered form at the Professors’ Guide blog at U.S. News & World Report.

Take charge:


At college there’s no one looking over your shoulder or holding your hand to make sure you get off on the right foot. It’s all up to you—and your feet. So do it.

Get your a** to class: In a class that meets 35 times in a semester, each lecture has about 3 percent of the content. Blow off the first week, and you’re already 8 percent behind. Disregard what your friends tell you about “drop/add” classes, because every professor’s on a different timeline. Grade the prof: At the first couple of meetings, make a careful assessment about whether the professor teaching your course is one you can actually learn from. Is he is she clear and organized? Can you make sense of what’s being taught? If not, drop the course (or courses) a.s.a.p. If you don’t like the teacher on day one, things will get really ugly by day 40. Be sure you’re in the right league: Some classes—especially in math, sciences, and foreign languages—are taught at many different levels. Be sure you haven’t signed up for a class that’s either too hard or too easy for you, given your prior training and abilities. Obvious? Not always. Placement tests and course numbers aren’t always right, so trust your own sense of the course. Avert disaster—make changes on week one. Scrutinize the syllabus:

Figure out immediately what counts and what doesn’t. Start figuring out the plot of the course—how it’s structured and the basic point of it. In some courses, the syllabus contains important clues about what will be on the tests, buried in the statement of the course’s goal and objectives. Be alert to these tip-offs about what the professor thinks is most important.


Get out your calendar (paper or electronic) and mark all the important dates: the dates and times of all your exams, your professors’ office hours, paper due dates, and university holidays and vacations. Be on the lookout for possible conflicts, which should be resolved right away. Now would be a really good time to familiarize yourself with calenderizing software for your PC or Mac. (Here’s Lifehacker readers’ five picks for the best calendar applications.)


Find yourself a cave: It’s not too early to scope out a quiet place where you’ll do your studying. And when you get there, turn off the gadgets. Texting, cell phones, IM, Facebook, and Twitter are responsible for more bad grades in college than all the parties combined. Get down to business: The preparation business. Most professors do assign homework for the first week of classes and actually expect you to do it, even if there’s no test or quiz until the fourth week. So get off to a good start, and keep in mind that you (or someone you know) will be paying for this college thing.


Dr. Lynn F. Jacobs and Jeremy S. Hyman are co-authors of the book Professors’ Guide to Getting Good Grades in College—tips that work from the ones who know. You can download a free chapter here, or email Lynn and Jeremy a question or comment here. They’d love to hear from you.