What I wish I had known...

The following blog was written by Shelby Campbell a sophomore guard from Murfreesboro, TN

When I first started getting letters from Samford, people always told me how great of a school it was and how lucky I was to get this opportunity. My dad paints houses in Brentwood, Tennessee, and when he mentioned his daughter going to Samford, it seemed that almost every customer either went to Samford or had a relative that had been there. I heard so many positive things about the academic part of it and how it was a tough school though. Everyone would talk about how tough it was going to be with just school work at Samford, but I never really talked to people about how it was playing basketball and having to handle school work. That is what leads me to answer the question of what I wish I would have known before coming to Samford as a freshman. Two major areas I wish I had known were going to be so important in my future before moving here and starting school along with playing ball were an effective way to study and also being able to manage my time between school work and basketball.

Studying is imperative in order to become a successful college student. The type of studying required is nothing like studying for a high school test or exam either. College exams require a greater mastery of the subject by going into a lot more detail and each questions needs a great amount of thought. Coming in as a freshman for my first test, I prepared as if I was taking a high school test because that was all I had ever known. I would study off and on, but only knew the information on the surface and not the details of the subject. When it came test time I knew bits and pieces of the information, but not as much as I should have for the test. I learned very quickly that studying for college tests is very important and you do not want to wait till the night before to start. It is best to try and study a little bit of the information every day because the test are not over just one or two chapters. They usually have three to five chapters on a test so it is best to learn the topics as you go along and not just plan on learning them all in one night. Coming in as a freshman, I feel like it would be important to understand that studying is no joke in college courses. It is so important to find a certain method of studying that works for you in which you learn the information and can build upon it.

(Shelby, right, with teammate Hannah Dawson in New York City last season)

      Time management is another thing I wish I would have known and understood before coming in as a freshman. I never really knew how time consuming basketball was, along with having school work. It is very possible to handle, but you must know how to manage your time, that way you are not staying up late every single night after basketball practice trying to finish a paper or study for a test. I did struggle with this the first semester because I had no idea how to manage all my school work along with practice, games, and road trips for basketball. Being able to manage your time will help you get your work done earlier and hopefully, it will take stress off that can feel overbearing at times. You have to set time aside to eat, do homework, do laundry, have a good practice, and if all of this piles up, it can add a lot of stress. It is good to know before starting freshman year how important it is to be able to manage your time with other things you have to do along with basketball practice, games, and road trips.  I know that I have made this sound like a daunting, impossible task, but after the first semester the routine becomes pretty normal to the average college athlete.  Even though I might have come in initially unaware of the challenges ahead of me involving time management and the rigors of school work, there were lots of people who helped me make it through to insure that I would come out okay!