hello everybody Welcome to welcome back to my channel my name is Aaliyah we're digging into some of the scariest parts of your life let's discuss go on to college I know college is such a big transition point and growing point for a lot of people but if you don't have a baseline of things you should and shouldn't be doing it's very hard to maneuver if you've never been in a situation or environment like that before I'm here to tell you all the college advice that I wish I knew before I graduated college at 20 years old so before we get into it I want to give you some aiyah lore when I was in high school I actually was in a dual enrollment program if you don't know I have some Vlogs when I was in high school so you can kind of see that transition into that type of Lifestyle but basically that meant I was taking college classes as a High School Junior and senior for completely free at my local Community College here in Charlotte and this lets me being able to get my associates and my high school diploma at the exact same time I usually don't say anything about my associates because my community college that I got it from try to make me pay for it and I graduated in 2020 but my senior year I was applying to colleges I thought I was going to apply to way more but I only applied to three universities I applied to North Carolina an UNCC Greensboro and UNCC Charlotte and I got accepted into all three of the schools things were really different when I applied to schools um for college but I picked Things based on how much the application was and how much their application was requiring of me because one thing about me baby I'm not writing essay for nobody if I don't have to so all my applications that I submitted didn't require essay they only really required test scores and transcripts so I went into college I started my freshman year at the University of North nor Carolina at Greensboro and I got all all my prerequisites done well majority of my prerequisites done in high school because of my dual enrollments that means I got to go right into majority of my major classes at 18 which is like very rare in a very special occasion I went into USCG as a Comm major because I wanted to do a lot of things in social media and PR and everything like that and that just made the most sense to me because Comm is really Broad and a lot of people say Comm is too broad but if you know you exactly what you want to do with your Comm major it's not as broad as you think you actually kind of know exactly what you need to do to get where you want to go and the reason picked dcg was because I wanted to get out of my home city which is charl North Carolina which is where I'm based now but also being so close to my family that I still had access to them and Greensboro is not even a full 2-hour drive from Charlotte so it just made sense and after a semester at UNCG it just wasn't really the school for me so I transferred to UNC Charlotte so I moved home after a semester and I went in as a pre-com major but I ended up switching my major because the com department at UNC at the time was just not the greatest so I switched my major to a writing rhetoric and digital Studies major which is words for short which I'll probably keep referencing in this video actually allowed me to shave off an entire year of my education because of my PRX and a lot of things that I did with my associates the Arts that I got in high school applied to my bachelor's in words so it really shaved off a lot of time I didn't know this was going to happen when I switched to that major but I'm very happy I did because girl I graduated a whole year early I was literally the youngest person in my graduating class at 20 years old with the bachelor's which is super crazy but I'm super grateful that I had the opportunity to graduate early because I saved a lot of money in the long run and a lot of that is because I did dual enrollment if I didn't do dual enrollment I would probably I probably would have just graduated I would have graduated just this year and a year doesn't really make a big difference but when it comes to paying for education it absolutely does when it comes to your pockets when it comes to going to college picking your major is one of the biggest things involving your college experience because babe this is literally what you're going to be focusing on for the next four to 6 years depending on what track you want to take and how long you want to take but when it comes to picking a major you need to pick something that you enjoy doing I was actually talking to my sister about this cuz she's about to go into her freshman year of college I think a lot of people pick Majors based on the outcomes that they are going to have with said Majors such as Financial stuff job opportunities but it doesn't make sense to put yourself through years of education if you don't even really like your major like there are three main things that you need to think about when it comes to picking a major I think you need to think about if you're actually going to enjoy it if you go a year into your major studies and you're like I actually hate this you need to switch I also think you need to think about are you okay with the possible outcomes of not doing so well in the job market after the fact and I feel like in this economy you also need to think about the financial situation you're putting yourself in to pay for that degree as well as what your financial situation is going to be like with that degree for example when it came to my major I didn't think about jobs after the fact which is my type of fault because girl I was just really doing what I liked but if I could go back I would pick a different major kind of was along the lines of the same thing that I did already it also had a bigger name for itself and it's more traditional cuz my major is kind of new at my school or at my alma moer and then I would have picked something else that I know could at least have a little bit higher of a stance of you know getting a job and like jobs that pay the type of money that I want to make you have to think about if you're going to enjoy it if you are comfortable with the idea of that the fact that you're going to be living off a salary like the average salary of that job and then you also have to think about the experience you can get through that major in the city that your college is at because a lot of people expect experience when it comes to entry level jobs and when they say that it's because they want you to have the internships they want you to have the many part-time jobs on campus and if you can't find many experiences to fund essentially future entry-level job which is a crazy statement but if you can't see yourself getting a lot of experience for something that you know you're going to have to require experience for when it comes to getting an entry level job babe I think we need to think a little bit further into the future you should never settle for a major but there's definitely a focus for everything and there is a job for everyone so I'd really analyze your interest the lifestyle you want to live where you want to live and if you're okay like with the average salary for that and then pick a major based off that so yeah I definitely recommend you picking a potential career path first maybe picking like three to five and then pick your major after that to kind of figure out what you should do to study in college to get ready for that and I think you just have to be super honest to yourself and about the direction of life that you want to go because me personally I have went through so many interest changes even since like high school I remember I wanted to be a teacher when I was little I wanted to be a biochemist I'm in high school I wanted to be a psychologist and therapist in high school as well but I was realistic with myself and I did not want to go through those levels well I didn't want to go through as well as pay for those levels of Education just to pursue something cuz I know how I am I was being brutally honest I was like like okay you want to do all these big things but you can barely realistically get through 3 years of college and I also didn't want to pay for it so it's like you got to be honest with yourself and truly just think about your work ethic if you're willing to work for it and if you're want to pay for that level of Education everybody's different being honest and picking stuff based on what you like as well as if it's going to match your lifestyle match your freak if you will it's the best way to pick a major and I know it's so hard to pick a job that you want to go into as a 18-year-old cuz I'm assuming you're going to college 18 to 22 I'm talking everybody going to college just not just for freshman honestly when it comes to switching Majors I'm going to talk about this really quickly you have to be able to look at your University and be like are you going to give me the top L education that I need if not get out my face like honestly it was so hard for me to switch Majors because I was so excited to go into Comm and do everything Communications I didn't think the communications major at my school was updated enough for it to appeal to and make sense to me for what I wanted to do because it's so social media marketing driven what I wanted to do and the stuff they have is really outdated like why are we talking about Facebook mind you this is like 2021 so it might be different now but but me switching did a lot more good than it did bad it saved me money I got to graduate a year early you have to be able to look at your school's quality of education and if you're willing to struggle a little bit to do it I always tell people please don't purposefully sabotage yourself if you don't have to so for example if your school doesn't have a good science like department but you want to be a nurse or a biochemist or a chemist are you willing to put up with the bad Department bad teachers and stuff like that to do what you want to do and if you are I love that for you if you're not nobody's going to blame you for it cuz you're at the end of the day somebody's paying for that education so you should be able to make your education as smooth as possible if you are able and that's just my opinion I'm not saying you shouldn't work hard for your education just because there's a few hurdles but you have to think this is going to be your setting and your lifestyle for the next couple years and if you truly love what you do it'll probably feel like nothing but if you're iffy about your major it's going to feel like something as somebody who went to a college for a semester made my little group of friends there and then moved girl I've been through it all I feel like every says join clubs and things like that but is somebody who was on eboard for a club at their University baby them clubs they're very clicky it was a very rare curse that somebody would come to my um student orgs meetings by themselves and if they did my eboard and I always made sure to talk to them introduce them to people do engaging things to make sure they don't feel by themselves but they're very clicky nine times out of 10 if you are going to a organization meeting people are going with their friend I don't want to say and continue the narrative that you just join claps and stuff like that and order to make friends this is going to be kind of like weird but I think what you should do is if you have at least one friend cuz this is how I did it um I had one good friend in college when I went to UNCC he brought me around to a lot of his um organization events and stuff like that and that's how I started meeting people he would go up and talk to people and of course I don't want to like not say anything I'm a chatter BRX I love to talk that's why I do what I do now he would bring me to these events and be like oh hi here's the updates on this oh and here's my friend Aaliyah like have you met her before and you know a lot of people are really nice and CLE for for the most part and they'll simply just like either com in your outfit or say like oh you're really pretty then you start talking the next thing you know you're walking down the sidewalk and you're saying hey how are you like do you want to do this later like hey I see you know why like where you headed I want to go with you you'd be surprised at how easy it is to meet people through someone else and I want to say this right now not all your college friendships are going to be super deep super close best of friends type of vibe because that's just not realistic but I will say if you do want to get closer with people in college it's going to be up to you to conscious take the next step to get closer to somebody if you want to my favorite thing was to run as people in the library hey what are you doing at this time are you free like Tuesday we can go to the library do some homework Vibes you want to go to the coffee shop on campus we get done to drink and this is come for somebody who doesn't do parties or outings or going to the club and going to the hookah lounge baby them study dates was my best friend let's discuss studying and note taking because as somebody who is notoriously known for her note taking an organization this is not a choice it's a lifestyle have to study and note take based on your major in class all study methods and no tiing methods are not going to work universally for the same class I was a writing major I was not doing much studying because I am writing the most studying I ever had to do was in like an intermediate Spanish class and in situations like that quiz it was my beste repetition was my best D working with student peers was also my best D repetition works a lot of the time for a lot of the subjects but you also have to realize your learning style also impacts that so I don't know if you ever heard of this but there's a bunch of different learning styles and BAS based on your learning style that's how you should study and of course like learn I'm going to link a quiz down below for you to take once you figure out your learning style you're studying and learning like experience is going to get so much better I promise so when it comes to supplies and materials I feel like a lot of people also just ignore the fact that everybody's experience is different it's always should I get a iPad or a Macbook for school and it's like girl you're architecture major the hell you doing with a Macbook based on your major in your era of study that should impact the type of technology and supplies that you get so for example as somebody who was a writing major I can get away with anything cuz Google Docs and can up was my best friend presentations writing essays and I also use my iPad use good notes and notability which are not taking apps that are actually pretty popular if you don't know what they are that's kind of a shock cuz they're kind of like huge I would take notes for my language arts and language classes such as Spanish and very early like grammar and then I would use my iPad to also Mark up like readings that we had to do but for writing essays and taking notes baby I was in in Google doc so my Mac and iPad work fine but one of my friends was going into architecture and he had a Mac and he literally had to get special software in order to use the software that they use in his architecture classes it really just depends on your major and the type of work you're going to be doing and that sucks but I'm being completely honest here don't listen to people on Tik Tok get what works for your major not what's aesthetic and cute you need to get what you're going to get your money's worth out of okay it's hard to pick things cuz there's so many options but going to your major and figuring out what you're going to be doing in your major should help you pick what you want and I know it hurts a lot of Apple girls Hearts because as somebody with the ecosystem the Macs can't do everything they can they're not built for everything and that's just completely honest and usually on a day-to-day basis when I person went to school I would usually bring my laptop my iPad and a few spare pencils it be surprised at how many uh professors actually still hand out like attendance sheets and you have to sign in and I a want to be that person who is asking for a pen or pencil every single like class cuz it's like girl you know that attendance she is coming around why the hell you ain't got no pencil like come on a few of my go-to apps once again notability good notes Google Docs was my besti and then I also really love my free word or a Microsoft account your student email you can actually get free Excel and Word and PowerPoint all that like for free and I still have it to this day they haven't gotten rid of my student email so let's discuss work life balance I was a full-time student the entire time I was in college as well as I did this full-time so I technically had a full-time job as well so this is going to be a very interesting part of the video because I feel like although I didn't have a traditional job where I clocked in baby I was clocked in elsewhere full-time student with a full-time job full-time interest full-time social life full-time family life fulltime relationships baby I was I was working over time let's talk about the elephant in the room let's talk about procrastination cuz I know a lot of y'all are sitting up here watching this video knowing good and well school about to start and your due dates are in canvas and they not your calendar for what oh okay yeah not procrastinating is so easy in theory but when it comes to execution baby you're going to suffer as somebody who literally their entire educational career I literally used to wait till the last minute to do work and as somebody who was like in honors and like the really smart parts of their schooling I used to wait and basically get rewarded because no matter what I did even if I half asked it I was rewarded with good grades and unlearning this started taking place after I left school getting good grades on stuff like projects papers just constantly being reinforced never gave us a reason soz I'm not the only one to do this but it never gave us a reason to try to break this habit because we're constantly rewarded with good grades why would we break a habit that's clearly working for us you know and I think the best thing that you could do is create a system system that hold you accountable for doing things earlier than what they need so for example thing I started doing postgrad and something I wish I did in college is forcing myself to start stuff early in order to enjoy my time later because I'm a very I want to Vibe right now type of girl then I'm like ripping my hair out and losing hair due to stress because I'm starting something three days before do when I could have just enjoyed my weekend leading ups that if I did it early so for example now when it comes to projects and stuff like that I will literally start them like a few days in advance and if I know I have something on a Friday I want to be done with it by Wednesday or Thursday the latest ready to turn in Friday morning so I can enjoy my Friday and not be scrambling last minute to reach a deadline and the same thing applies to being a student and I think another example of this is if you know you have an assignment that you can do right now that's do a little bit later but you know your your assignment volume is going to be picking up in a few days or weeks you might as well get stuff over with so you're not as scrambled and swamped with stuff because baby we all do it when midterms and finals come up I literally have never done as much work within the span of a week and a half than I did with midterms and finals even if you go back to watching my college Vlogs I have all of them still up as well is my like vlogmas where you can watch my vlogmas vlogmas ey vlogmas years whatever you can see me doing finals in a lot of those videos and I'm literally doing work every day for like two weeks straight and that's me planning ahead finals in midterms are hard so especially during those times if you know you have little tiny assignments that are due later around the same time midterms but you know midterms and finals are so hard you might as well do them early like don't even don't even do distress to yourself like it's not even worth it like just do it early another big thing that I personally loved was having dedicated study days or um assignment days I used to do a lot of my assignments on Mondays and Tuesdays and then as well as Thursdays and that seems like a big chunk of the week but when you really take into account how much time you're spending in the classroom it's really not that much and honestly I feel like having dedicated assignment days and days that you can not worry about school is honestly the best thing I used to give myself like 3 to 4 days of the week because I got so much work done at a time where I just got to chill if I had extra time I would definitely take it as somebody who literally used to crank out 8 to 20 Page papers every single week please take my word for time management because I know what I'm talking about I had a writing research class and it was a 4,000 level class so it was a senior level class and I was literally stressing like my life depended on it basically in this class we looked at different research methods to research writing and what that says about whatever we wanted to say and that sounds really broad because it was this was literally the hardest class I've ever taken in my life we had to basically produce eight to 20 Page papers every single week using a different research method to research writing and come to conclusions based on these pieces of writing every single week and a half awful Professor hated him oh my gosh it was beef it was beef self-d discipline is going to be your best friend when it comes to work life balance I love the girlies who do homework Monday to Thursday so they have nothing to do Friday Saturday and Sunday so they have time to go party do their errand meal prep and a lot of people do that method because it's the best way to have a good work life balance as a full-time student and I'm going to say this right now I'm just going to be honest if you're expecting to have a good school life social life romantic Life Family Life just be an academic weapon just expect to not get the best sleep all the time just expect it please cuz that I'm just I'm being for real like just expect to lose some sleep because it's hard to balance everything as an adult with no IAL obligations timely obligations in due dat and if I'm struggling imagine my college self college is a big culture shock if you have never experienced College imagine going from being micromanaged from ages 14 to 17 18 years old in high school and then you're basically like go and you're in charge of everything you literally have to make your own schedule based on your behaviors your timeliness and then you also have to be on top of all your due dates and your assignments you have to be responsible of what you eat on top of it it's so much it's so so much and honestly I 100% am so grateful for my dual and Roman experience because I was able to get a sort of Middle Ground between being a college student and still being young so I was eased into it a lot because when I was in high school in dual enrollment I was still going to my high school classes one or two times a day but also making a schedule around that based on what I needed to complete in order to get my degree and I was still figuring out how to deal with pockets of time and when I should do stuff and it was a nice and I was still at home cuz I was in high school it was a nice medium sometimes I do Wish I Still finished with traditional high school but it helped me literally so much and I think about it all the time because college is usually the first time A lot of people are not dependent on their families they're 100% dependent on themselves and that's why a lot of people struggle their freshman year because there's just so many changes without me being doing enrollment I don't know how I would have done in college like I really don't it helped me so much I will say the first week or two when it comes to college is literally so overwhelming cuz they're like culture fairs Club fairs organization fairs oh my gosh do you want to cross oh my gosh do you want to rush this sorority and fraternity and it's like can we please just just like be calm and I'm here to tell you it's okay to feel overwhelmed with all the new information that is thrown at you the first one two or even three weeks of college honestly I usually tell people your first semester of your year even if you're not a freshman first semester of your year is usually getting acclimated into being in school again after not being in school assuming you didn't take any summer classes like actually physically being in school again even though you do the same things every single year so I have to get readjusted to New schedules new people meet new people new professors it's okay if you need to take some time to get acclimated and feel okay in order to be the best student you can be taking your time focus on setting a routine and getting settled within yourself and feeling at peace with your routines how you're going to do your classes what your week is typically going to look like and then you can expand upon your world if you try to sett on into routine and then do all this stuff at the same time you're going to feel scatterbrain and overwhelmed and that is probably the worst need could do when it comes to going into college because girl you're going to struggle you're going to struggle it's a lot to juggle at once so taking it in small steps literally taking it a day to time is going to be your best friend like truly literally when my fall semesters would start I'm like okay I'm excited for this but every single time ID go into my fall semester I would have all my due dates in my Google Calendar already based on the first like week or two weeks I get a Vibe my professor to see like what I should expect from them and what they expect from me and based off that that's how I Bild my routine then after I got that settled I would go about and expend a little bit more and be like okay so when can I go to like my favorite offices or favorite parts of campus to meet people versus my favorite parts of campus to study versus am I going to do stuff at home or I going to stay here a lot depending on the week and depending how I feel so it really just helps when you focus on you first and then expand later it just it makes the most sense as somebody who's been graduated for a year now I do have some regrets about going to college one thing that I really do regret is not having a more positive attitude about going as somebody who was popping off in the social media realm in 2019 I didn't want to go to college at all and that really tainted my college experience from start to finish and this just me being fully transparent because I was like I really don't want to be here I'm being here because I made a commitment to myself and I want to prove to myself that I can do it telling myself that I can do something but then having the worst attitude about it and being miserable the whole time was just not it's just like at that point don't even do it you know so I wish I definitely had a better attitude in the beginning because it took me a really long time to shift my attitude after the fact my attitude about college was actually so bad my first semester at UNCC so it was the spring of 2021 after I transferred um from UNCG I literally I just stopped attending my online classes and classes period a little bit before midterms literally got on academic probation my second semester of college and I don't really say anything about that my attitude about it was just so bad cuz it's like I hate my professors I don't like this workload nobody knows how to do their job and it's like girl you're literally putting yourself through hell for no reason like at the end of the day you're an adult now you have to take all the responsibility for your education and after that for the rest of my college career so for fall 21 Spring 22 fall 22 spring 23 I think I only got three C's maybe four C's that entire rest of my college career because I was like it's a privilege to be here and you shouldn't throw that away just because you're not the biggest fan of your professor or like just because you don't want to get up early and it's just like as soon as I realize that I could potentially lose what I had that made me appreciate it more and realize I can handle this even though it's not easy and as somebody who is I don't want to say everything comes easy to me but as somebody who is pretty used to things not being a problem with me and when things don't come easy to me I'm like what the hell am I supposed to do now I get flustered but after literally being put on academic probation I was like you can do so much better than this like there's no reason that you are in this situation in predicament and after I changed that and realized it's a privilege for me to be where I am to even have the money and opportunity to go to a 4-year University a lot of people don't get that chance I'm not saying just because you're in college you shouldn't be able to complain or feel like it's really hard because it is really hard to be a student and it's like you wanted to be here if you really didn't want to go you don't have to go I mentioned it earlier but something else I regret I kind of wish that I took more time to see the options in regards to Majors that my school had to offer I feel like I kind of just saw digital studies and was like oh I want to do that but as I got older and I developed more of my interest and taste and hobbies I wish I minored in something as well and sometimes I even wish I majored in something else I think if I actually took the time and instead of being in a rush to get out and be focused on getting out I would have minored in something if I minored in something it probably still would have taken me like an extra semester or even extra year but at least I would have gotten more background in something I would have been interested in as well as my major so if I could go back I would minor in something and maybe even major in something else but I'm not sure UNC Charlotte had a bunch of majors and I barely looked at them cuz I was just like just put me somewhere with social media and I'm going to be happy which is terrible but like I literally could have minored in like Africana studies or or I could have minored in film I could have minored in photography or media studies but I was just like I don't want to attack on another year now you're sitting here wishing you did it I really hope I was able to help somebody even if it's one person because college is hard and it's definitely a learning curve and adjustment type of thing so if I was able to help even one person I'm so happy because this this shit is hard and yeah so if you have any questions for me let me know down below I'll be more than happy to answer them for you and with that being said I hope you have an amazing morning evening night wherever you're on the world and I will see you on the next one bye have a good year [Music]