Advice for freshmen entering college
cperciva: Two pieces of advice come to mind:1. If possible, don't think about what degree you're going to get until at least your 3rd year.  (This might be impossible, depending on your college -- some institutions require incoming students to declare a major promptly.)  Out of dozens of students I've dealt with, I'm only aware of one case where "spend four years taking whatever courses looked interesting each semester" didn't end up with a student meeting the requirements for a degree in something -- but I've seen lots of cases where students decided what degree they wanted before starting, carefully mapped out all the courses they'd have to take, and then changed their minds later.2. Read your textbooks before class.  Not five minutes before the lecture starts -- two weeks before the semester starts.  Learn the material before the instructor reaches it in class -- and then go to class and pay attention to how he/she teaches it.  Aside from cases where the instructor wrote the textbook, I always found that this approach, and consequentially hearing two different perspectives on the same material, resulted in my understanding the material far better than if I only went to the lectures or only read the textbook.  (Think you can't spare two weeks to read the textbooks before class?  Look at it this way -- if you spend those two weeks, you'll know the material well enough that you don't need to study at all at the end of the semester.)