As a senior, I tend to forget all the questions that come with being a freshman. I don’t need to walk around campus to find where my classrooms are. I don’t get stressed out when ordering my textbooks. I don’t even buy any notebooks or folders anymore. As we get further into our college careers, we are very quick to laugh at the freshman who travel in packs, quickly get annoyed at them for not knowing where they are, and automatically assume anyone sitting alone is a freshman with no friends. (We all do it, don’t deny.)
When remembering my first year as a freshman, I’m pretty embarrassed at my quick judgment. There was a point in time where I was absolutely terrified to eat lunch alone. I walked around the buildings on campus and was completely clueless as to where I was in relation to my dorm room. I didn’t know what it meant to be a college student, so how could I possibly know how to blend in with the upperclassman?
Luckily, colleges offer so many wonderful resources to help out freshman (and non-freshman, because we’re all lost here, honestly). One thing freshman don’t get enough, however, is advice on how to grow from being deer-in-headlights to confident, ring-leaders on campus. Here is my attempt on guiding the new students to become the strongest, most comfortable kids on the block:
1. Take your lanyard: throw it away.
Nothing screams “I just moved to college and bought everything in the bookstore!” more than a lanyard around the neck. Every upperclassman will be pointing and laughing. I repeat, everyone. By second semester that should be long gone. You can keep your student ID and your key to your room on a key-chain, like a normal person.
2. Join a student organization.
This is no longer high school: it doesn’t make you weird or a loser to be in a group. Find something that matches your interests or passions, whether that be a community service group or international women’s rights activists. Being a member of an organization not only provides you with friends and exciting things to do, it also looks killer on a resume. Athletics, Greek life, campus ministry, and major-specific organizations are all highly popular passions to get involved in. Universities offer hundreds of different organizations in every area of interest. If you can’t find something that interests you, guess what? You can create your own group! Crazy, right? Being an adult means you can do things like that!
3. Don’t print every single thing before classes start.
Maybe all of your slides are already online for the entire semester, but that doesn’t mean you have to use 173 pages of paper to print all of them off. You will make your life easier printing off assignments and readings once a week (for only what is needed right away), to avoid paper clutter and waste. Also, some professor don't even use everything that they post. You might even find that taking your own notes in a notebook or on your laptop are more useful for what your professor gives you. College is about figuring out how you learn, not how your professor likes to teach.
4. Avoid embarrassment and remove offensive slurs from your personal vocabulary.
College is place of growing up and realizing that the world is full of people who are different from you. People who are your superiors and even best friends. Being politically correct is not only the right way to speak, it is admired in society. You can go ahead and use the racial slurs that got you laughs in high school, but be prepared for a lot of dirty looks and maybe even getting called out.
5. Sit by people in class that will help you learn.
You aren’t paying thousands of dollars to sit in the back of the room and joke about how nasally the professor sounds. You are paying for an education, so act like it. Sit in the front. Make friends with people who care about the class. Get study groups together. If anyone makes fun of you, smile and think about all the student loans going to waste on their end.
6. Drinking every weekend will create a downward spiral.
Now that you have all this freedom to do whatever you want, that means you should go out to every fraternity party that you’re invited to, right? Wrong. While it’s important to have fun and relax on the weekends, you don’t need to get trashed Thursday through Saturday. Like everything good, drinking should be done in moderation. Have a girls’ nights watching old 80s movies, go to dinner with your friends in your dorm, or go to a local museum. You can still have fun without destroying your liver. Let’s be honest, how much of that midterm paper are you going to do on Sunday if you’re hung over?
7. Try new things.
Your 20s are a time to learn about yourself in every way possible. Go backpacking, even if you hate the outdoors. Try out Ethiopian food. Volunteer in another country instead of going to Panama City Beach for spring break. Go to a hot yoga session. Expand the way you think. If there’s any time to do it, do it now. Eventually, you’re going to have a life where you are responsible for other people besides yourself. Be selfish and don’t apologize for it.
8. Don’t declare a major right away.
Just because people pressure you to pick a major right away, doesn’t mean you should. Take significant time to think about what you want to do for the next 40 years of your life. That should scare you, and that’s okay. College is scary and deciding your future is even scarier. Take classes in a variety of different majors and figure out which classes interest you and which ones do not. You don’t want to be that senior who realizes you hate your field and have to switch your major (trust me).
9. Take pictures.
Lots of them. Make memories. Make sure you take time every day to laugh. Make mistakes and don’t apologize for them. Appreciate the people in your life and the places that they take you. You chose to attend a university to make the memories. Don’t take life so seriously. There will be plenty of time for that after graduation. Enjoy your time in college and make sure when relatives ask how school is treating you when you come home for summer, you have lots to tell them.
