FIRST YEAR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

If you want to improve your concentration and efficiency as a student, identify a place where you study, and use that location only to study. A good study space has

While studying in your room is convenient, your room is a poor study location. Your room has an abundance of distractions including the phone, video games, friends down the hall, and an inviting bed. Use your room as a place to sleep, socialize, and relax. Find an appropriate work location. The campus is full of good study spots including Pickler Memorial Library and the Quiet Lounge in the Student Union.

The benefits of exercising are numerous, and what you do this decade will affect your health next decade. Match your activity to your fitness level; make it something you enjoy; vary your routine; recruit a workout partner; keep an exercise log; and gradually increase the duration, frequency, and intensity of your workouts. Regular exercise:

Boosts energy levels.
Increases ability to cope with stress.
Improves blood circulation.
Helps keep body weight under control.
Releases tension.
Can improve blood cholesterol levels.
Increases muscular strength.
Improves ability to fall asleep.
Helps decrease feelings of anxiety and depression.

For more information, visit the Student Recreation Center's website at http://recreation.truman.edu; the American Heart Association website at www.americanheart.org; or the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports website at www.fitness.gov.

With a degree from Truman, you will be ready to begin your journey into the career or graduate school of your choice. As a graduate with a foundation in the liberal arts and sciences, you will be well prepared to pursue any number of career opportunities. Although your major represents one path to skills development, it is not the only path. Your extracurricular activities, summer and part-time jobs, internships, and volunteer activities also contribute to your total professional profile.

Many graduates enter career fields which relate only indirectly to their majors. There are definitely more careers available than those "simply related to one's major," and there are many ways of pursuing them. Choosing a career field is an involved process, and although the Career Center has no crystal ball to tell you which job might be best for you, it can be a useful resource in learning more about yourself and the world of work, about setting career goals and achieving them.

Remember, it is never too late to start planning your future. The Career Center is not just for seniors. Specifically, the Career Center suggests that during your first year of college, you

Explore your interests and career options by using the resource books and computer programs available in the Career Center.
Take an interest and personality inventory to discover more about yourself.
Conduct informational interviews and job shadow with professionals in your field of interest.

The Career Center is located in the McKinney Center or check out the website at http://career.truman.edu

"What should you ask of your professors? (1) Don't tell me things; let me find out for myself. (2) But when I need help, give it to me. (3) And when my work is poor, don't tell me it's good. Many professors would rather be liked than be understood; not a few find it easier to indulge students than teach them. Don't accept from professors compliments when they owe you criticism. And love them when they're tough. Proverbs says, 'Rebuke a wise person, and you'll be loved, rebuke a fool and you'll be hated.' Show yourselves wise, and you'll get professors who care about what you know.

"What should your professor ask of you? (1) Don't ask me to sell you my subject; let me explain it to you. Once you're in the the classroom, relevance is a settled question: this is what you want to know; now let me teach it. (2) Don't stop work in the middle of the semester. It's easy to start with enthusiasm, and it's easy to end with commitment. But in the middle of a course, it's hard to sustain your work; the beginning is out of sight, the end and goal and purpose of the course not yet on the horizon. Do your best when the weather looks bleak. (3) Don't sit back and wait to be told things; stay with me and allow the logic of the course to guide us both; join me, think with me. ...

"Your imagination is our richest national resource; an open and active mind, our most precious intangible treasure. That's what we try to do at our universities and colleges in this country: teach people to teach themselves, which is what life is all about--during the coming year, and during all the years of your lives and mine."