Almost two semesters of being a studio art major and some things I have learned:
-quality of your materials matters-buy nice paper, even if it is expensive, it is so much nicer and easier to use. I almost want to never use anything other than nice paper now, even for sketches, I just love touching the nice paper.
-Derwent pencils are the best, buy those if you want a nice set of sketching pencils, and buy a GOOD pencil sharpener, the ones that are made out of solid metal usually are best, especially the golden/brassy one that is really heavy. If you don't the pencil sharpener just chews up the pencils and you go through them really fast and never can get them truly sharp.
-Draw people every day, it makes you smart.Also draw people in public, even if you suck at it, after a week, even, you can see the difference.
-learn art history, you can't be truly creative if you are ignorant of history. And it makes it easier, because then you do not need to reinvent the wheel. Derivative works of classical masters is okay, even good, if you make quality work. I especially like to learn about ancient art.
-Quality work-meaning never never give less than what seems impossible at first.no.
-Learn from other artists. duh.
-work cross-major, take some classes in something you know nothing about. More knowledge about the world only increases how well you are able to represent things in the world.(same goes for universe, but it sounded weird when i exchanged it)

also:
-boring is a state of mind, if you are aware of being bored, you can change that
-embroidery, i do not like doing it, but somehow i decided i wanted that to be the media of my final project.dumb.
-drawing eggs is really really hard, i mean really hard. especially if you are using paper that is impossible to erase on without destroying it. My drawing teacher likes to make things difficult so we can learn how to do things properly.(FYI the paper name is Arches 88, if you wanted to try that sort of thing)
-cooking properly is an art form, which leaves you with delicious results. I also want to master this and never have to eat a box of hamburger helper again.
-natural light is incomparably better than fluorescent light.also duh, but sometimes you don't think about it when you are drawing something, so turn off that light and use the lovely, natural light when you can.