Getting into college is a big step for high school graduates, and it comes with a lot of changes. For most students, it's the first time they're living away from home and managing their own life. Not surprisingly, adapting to this new lifestyle can be challenging. The following four tips will make high school graduates better prepared for college life.

Goal setting

When setting goals, whether they're academic, career, or personal, remember they should be attainable but not too easy, so that you really have to push yourself to achieve them, and feel rewarded when you do. Writing down your goals and breaking down each huge, long-term goal into smaller more practical ones can help make it feel more real, and writing out a plan for achieving it can give you a roadmap to success.

Interpersonal skills

At college, you will interact with fellow students, professors, librarians, and many others. Strong interpersonal skills will help you build relationships during this time, and get more out of them. If you feel that your interpersonal skills need some work, practice asking thoughtful questions and listening closely, develop your understanding by putting yourself in someone else's shoes, and enhance your self-confidence.

Studying

With fewer in-class hours and more on-your-own learning, you're required to really digest learning material rather than simply memorize facts. To be successful in college you'll need to learn how to integrate large amounts of information obtained through reading, do research, and write papers. Organization is the key, so if you are not someone who is naturally organized, set up your study schedule.

Budgeting

Managing money is a critical life skill, and for many, it is at college that they develop it for the first time. Start by estimating your financial balance. Then give high priority to the expenses on basic needs and determine how much money to set aside every month to cover those costs. Don't forget about savings … and the fun stuff(movies, dinners out), too.

With her first song on social media in 2019 and her first Grammy win in the best African Music Performance category four years later, Tyla has become the new face of African pop.

For many listeners, Tyla's 2023 hit song "Water" was their first taste of the sound of amapiano, which is a new musical movement that started in the towns of South Africa in the 2010s. Roughly translated from Zulu to mean "the pianos" or "piano people," amapiano is a mix-up of a few different types of music: jazz, deep house, kwaito and log drum percussives. "Amapiano is the mainstream music of South Africa's party scene," says Moma, a Sudanese-American DJ. "And it has become a lifestyle there."

Moma first heard amapiano in 2016 when he hopped in a taxi in South Africa. He tipped his driver $50 to let him download the music and took the sounds back to the US. As the music started to move around America, Tyla was perfecting her own version of it back home in South Africa.

She started singing on TikTok and dropped her first song, "Getting Late" in 2019, to show her parents that she was serious about pursuing a career in music after high school. Based on the track, they agreed to give her one year to make it happen.

It took a few months for Tyla and her team to shoot the video for "Getting Late", with no backing, no budget. But when they finally uploaded it to TikTok in early 2021, labels noticed.

In the video, Tyla's taken the building blocks of amapiano and added elements of pop made by stars like Rihanna (to whom critics and fans are now comparing her) and Justin Bieber. Her signature sound has been called "pop-iano".

After publishing "Water" in July 2023 and noticing it had become a piece of trending audio on the app, Tyla and her team created a dance challenge in August. Tyla's performance during the competition really made a____splash. "It introduced me to a wider audience than I had ever imagined," Tyla says. "It has positively changed my life."

After circling Earth for six months, the three crew members of China's Shenzhou XIII mission have departed from the Tiangong space station and returned to the mother planet on Saturday morning, finishing the nation's longest manned spaceflight.

Zhai Zhigang, who was the mission commander, Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu breathed fresh air for the first time after the half-year space journey as ground recovery staff opened the door of their reentry capsule (返回舱) at 10: 03 am.

Medical service workers on the site told China Central Television that the astronauts are in good condition. Carrying the mission crew, the Shenzhou XIII spacecraft left from the Tiangong station at 12: 44 am. In the last hours of their stay inside the Tiangong, the astronauts worked with ground controllers to adjust the station, sending some experimental data back to Earth and sorting out materials.

The crew has set a new record for China's longest spaceflight, almost doubling the previous record of 92 days created by their colleagues in the Shenzhou XII mission who travelled with Tiangong from mid-June to mid-September last year.

During the Shenzhou XIII mission, the astronauts carried out two spacewalks that totaled more than 12 hours. They tested components on the station's robotic arm and used it to practice spacewalk. Wang took part in the first spacewalk on Nov 7, becoming the first female Chinese spacewalker.

The crew members also carried out two science lectures from the space station for Chinese students. In one experiment, Wang used a Bing Dwen Dwen toy, the popular mascot (吉祥物) of the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games, to display how objects fly in weightless environment. The space-based lessons marked the start of the Tiangong Class series, China's first space lecture series that aims to popularize space science and inspire youngsters to pursue their "science and space dreams", according to the manned space agency.