College can be a great time filled with parties and adventure, new friends and (more importantly) new information. After about a week and a half of college, I think I'm pretty qualified to explain all of the inner workings of higher education. Well, not exactly, but I can explain five of the biggest life-long lessons I have learned outside of the textbook.

1. Don’t latch on to the first people you meet

I came into college knowing a whole lot of people; I had friends almost everywhere I turned. They were people I had met over the summer when we found that we would be rooming together. It is great to be friends with your roommates and it definitely makes the whole “living-together” situation much easier, but it is also imperative to make friends outside of your dorm. You’re going to get sick of seeing your roommates sometimes and you’re going to want to go out and do other things with other people. Also, give it more than a week to announce that you are “best friends” with your "roomies." It’s nice to think that you know who they are, but in reality you are only scratching the surface.

2. Athletes are always right, even if they’re not

It’s not just at my university, but that’s where I learned that athletes are the equivalent to a Messiah on a college campus. They can make something up on the spot and a school official will accept it as true with absolutely no proof. Although it might only take batting an eyelash and flashing their Olympic trials hat (though they only went to watch), it is even harder to disprove an athlete, even with documentation. By the time a tennis player has said her first word about a subject, she has the employees wrapped around her pinky finger.

3. Professors are human beings

I went into college thinking that professors were gods and their lessons were blessings that we, as scholars, used to navigate life. That being said, my first day of college was an absolute culture shock. The professors smiled and memorized names and laughed. They were human. What stuck me even more was the fact that they were understanding to each individual. While in high school, I was told that you usually don’t even get to talk with your professor let alone does he attempt to get to know you, but here I was having a full-on conversation for 45 minutes with mine about my favorite coffee shops and what I wanted to do after earning my bachelors. Professors are just people who continued on in their journeys to seek endless knowledge, remember that; they’re you and me in the future.

4. The library is a sanctuary

With all of the ups and downs that the first week of school has thrown at me, I have been finding myself staying at the library more and more. People tend to tell themselves that they’re going to be in the library 24/7 to study and get ahead in class, almost as if they’re trying to convince themselves, but when you make the library seem like just another job to do, it isn’t as enjoyable. The library has become the place I go to when I’m feeling overwhelmed, and it doesn’t just have to do with school. If I feel that I’m being treated unfairly or I just need a moment to clear my head, I’ll go to the top floor of my library, curl up with my new favorite novel of that week and read chapter after chapter until my eyelids start to droop or it’s time to let the librarians close. And though the library not be everyone’s place to go when they need to relax, there is a place for everyone somewhere on campus: the theater, a biology lecture hall, or maybe even a random park bench by a fountain.

5. Being impulsive is not the same as being adventurous

I’d like to think of myself as an adventurous person; I like to try new things and see different places around the world. I chose a college that could give me a great education and provide me with as many opportunities as I wanted to travel and have fun. The very first day all I wanted to do after my parents left was drive to the closest water reservoir and go cliff jumping with all of the friends. That hasn’t changed in the least, but what I decided is that I was going to wait a week and see if I could research a little more about what could possibly go wrong. I found out that at this particular location, there are microbes in the water that only 7 percent of the world population is allergic to. With my skin being so sensitive, I knew that there was a great chance I was a part of that 7 percent. After further research, and finding out that the reactions were not as severe, I decided that it was worth it. Being adventurous and trying new things is always fun, but impulsivity can be costly. Injury and illness can take attention away from your academics which is truly the main reason you’re attending a university. So go out and have fun, but think critically about what you are planning on doing and be safe.

College has been a blast so far, and though there have been a few bumps in the road and a few people I wish I would have never met, I can never regret the decisions I have made and the promise I swore to attend and succeed in college. Already, after almost two weeks, opportunities have opened up for me, relationships have been formed and some broken, and I have started to grow into the person I have always wanted to be. In college, it’s not just the lessons you learn in your textbook that are important, although they are, but it’s also the ones you experience outside of a classroom or lecture hall that dictate who you will be and where you will go.