Your Sophomore Year

Hey, are you in danger (dun dun dun) of FAILING YOUR SOPHOMORE YEAR (or, frankly, any year at college)? Then put down that Burger King application and see if there isn't a way to salvage what's left of the semester. Read on!

Tutors Are Angels with Calculators

Hey, does your college have any tutoring centers? Typically, colleges have a "math lab" stocked with the finest nerds, where the numerically challenged get help with the evils of trig and calc II. Or maybe it's English that's not your thing? Some colleges have a writing center that offers help. And some colleges even have physics and chemistry centers where tutors lurk, waiting to pounce on you and teach you something.

Here's how college tutoring works. Ask your instructor if there are tutoring centers on campus. If there are, swallow your pride and just GO. Tutoring centers are actually a great place to do your homework: When you have a problem, a fabulous nerd is right there to massage your mind until you can actually take the volume of a rotated solid all by yourself … and get the right answer (sometimes)!

If your sucky little college doesn't have tutors, call your local community college's tutoring center. They can usually help set you up with a tutor in math, science or a foreign language, although you or your parents will have to cough up the tutor's hourly rate. If you need a tutor for your theater arts class, A) you are really kind of pathetic, and B) you are also probably out of luck.

Is This Really What You Want to Do for the Rest of Your Life?

Now there's a question most 20-year-olds are totally ready for! If you're Clueless and In College, keep in mind that college is not only a place where you learn about a future profession, but also where you learn about yourself. Take the classes that interest you most. Let your education be about finding out what you love, not getting turned into a pediatrician because your dad says it pays a lot of money.

If you want to spend your life doing theater, maybe that's all you need to know (except, of course, how not to starve while doing theater for a living, which is a whole other article). Look, life is an improv from start to finish. All you can do is follow your heart. If you don't know what to study, study what moves you and interests you right now, today.

And what does this have to do with not failing your sophomore year? Only everything. Because nothing will drag your grades down like studying something your heart could care less about. You have a place in the world. Trust that you will find it if you spend your energy seeking it, not in disappearing into confusion and a crappy job at the coffee shop.

Studying: Just Do It Already

I really hate to talk nerdy to you. I really hate to repeat the same tired old lines that everybody throws at you. So I'll skip telling you that studying is important and tell you why so many people think it's important. No matter what you want to do with your life -- artist, athlete, lawyer, sex therapist -- you are, at some point, going to have to graduate college and move on into the rest of your life.

And after college, there won't be any magic bridge to cross that guarantees you an exciting, interesting job or an exciting, interesting life. The only "magic bridge" is what you've done with yourself that can help convince total strangers holding the keys to what you want that they should choose you for that exciting, interesting job. And when you litter your transcript with bad grades, you make it that much harder for your future self to get what it wants. Want to manage a chain bookstore? Don't sweat your grades too much. Want to be a geneticist studying prehistoric human migration in Central Asia? Good grades will make your life after graduation a lot easier.

College is the time to lose your high school mentality. The coasting? It's over. It's time to lay the foundation for the life you want. Please keep this in mind the next time you blow off studying to go to a Fall Out Boy concert, K? (And also please note that I didn't say don't party, I just said don't blow off studying to go party.)

Don't Do Too Much

Attention, overachievers! There are some people who know that not all college students are slackers, and I am one of them!

So, have I told you lately that your life is more than how you look on paper? Grades are great, and the fact that you take your academic life so seriously is wonderful. But don't forget that when it comes to trying to wow the world with an array of extracurricular activities that make Mother Theresa look like an underachieving little chump, enough is enough.

If your grades start suffering, cut back. Don't get involved in more than you can handle while still maintaining the GPA you want. When you try to do it all, you do many things, sure, but you do none of them well. Life isn't a competition, it's, well, a life. Grad schools and employers like successful people, but they prefer successful people who don't have a caffeine IV and aren’t obviously in the throes of the fourth straight hour of a full-blown panic attack.

So try out these tips. If they don't work, you can return them to me for a full refund.