10 items to Survive College

10 items to Survive College (by Bryan Tan)

As a college student, you have to know what are the things that you need to bring to college. After studying for more than five months in a college, I have come up with my own list of items you will need to survive college. I believe they will certainly prove to be very useful.

1. Laptop – Every college student needs a laptop. It doesn’t have to be the most advanced model out there in the market; you just need a laptop good enough for you to complete your assignments and presentations (many lecturers prefer your assignments to be in both softcopy and hardcopy). However, IF YOU CAN AFFORD to buy a laptop with a powerful processor, a hard-disk with higher capacity and a longer battery life, why not? It certainly cost more, but it has better functions compared to the wallet-friendly (cheaper) laptops.

2. Mouse – Of course you can still use your laptop without a mouse, but don’t you think that using a mouse can enhance/speed up your performance when it comes to doing assignments?

3. USB flash drive – A USB flash drive/thumb-drive/pen-drive or whatever you call it is a must-have tool in college. You will need to use it for transferring and backing-up files. Besides, you can also use it to share music and videos with your classmates. An 8 or 16 GB thumb-drive will suffice.

4. External hard disk – Likewise, an external hard disk is also used for storing and transferring files. It has a bigger size, but its memory capacity is much larger than that of a thumb-drive (common external hard disks sold in market have 500GB to 1TB memory capacity).

5. Mobile phone – You will need a mobile phone to communicate with your parents, college friends, classmates and sometimes lecturers. You have two choices when you consider buying a mobile phone.
a) More affordable: A regular mobile phone that has all the basic communication tools you will need.
b) More expensive: A smart-phone (Apple iPhone, HTC etc) that can be a communication tool and also an entertainment tool.

6. Mp3 player – Long study hours in college can be really tiring. You can listen to songs with your mp3 player during recess or after classes to relax yourself. You can also listen to songs while reading books or doing assignments in the library, but remember to use earphones so that you will not disturb the others. A basic mp3 player that cost around RM100-150 can be easily found in the market.

7. Scientific Calculator – Most mobile phones nowadays have the calculator function in them; you can use them for simple calculation. However, a scientific calculator is needed when it comes to serious and complex calculation (especially for science students). Besides, you will not be allowed to bring in your mobile phone to the examination hall during exams; you will have no choice but to use a scientific calculator by then.

8. Notebook/Foolscap papers – Bring a few notebooks (not the computer notebook) and a set of foolscap papers to college, you will have to use them to copy down notes, do tutorials and so on. I strongly suggest you to take down lecture notes in a notebook instead of scribbling them down on foolscap papers. Why? That’s because you will most probably lose a few of them when you are trying to study for your tests. Well, if you really insist on using foolscap papers to take down notes, at least organize and keep them in a file to avoid losing them!

9. Cables, adaptors, chargers – Remember to bring the cables, adaptors and chargers you will need, you don’t want your mobile phone and laptop to run out of battery when you need to use them, right?

10. Power strip – Believe me, you really need a power strip, or else you and your classmates will be fighting for the few sockets you could find in class to plug in your laptop chargers.

The Extra no.11
11. Broadband modem – This is not really necessary, but if you are fed up with the extremely slow Wi-Fi connection in college, you may consider having a broadband modem to provide you a faster and smoother internet connection. Unlike the normal modem/router, a broadband modem is tiny (slightly bigger than a thumb-drive) and you can easily bring it to college.