Isn’t this what everybody really wants to do when they sign up for the daunting, sleep-depriving, oftentimes stressful, but always unforgettable task of being an undergrad? Sure, you do it for the education, and you do it because you want to be independent from your parents, but college is really about you. It should be.
So why is it that so many of us have such a hard time of it during freshman year?
Speaking from experience, your first two semesters can be as emotionally ravaging and as brutally trying as anything you’ve had to push through up to this point in your life, and it’s rarely about the work. After all, work is something you’ve seen before. You worked in high school, and even if you’ve never had to do so much of it all at once, at least it’s familiar.
What you might not be so used to is living away from home. What you might not be so used to is waking up every morning in a bed that, at least in the beginning, isn’t yours. Even if you’re a commuter, you’re probably finding that, all of a sudden, home isn’t what it used to be. Contrary to popular belief, commuting to college isn't the same thing as leaving every morning to hop on the school bus, go to class, and then leave. What you might not be prepared for is learning that you’re not so much confirm what you’ve always believed in as discovering it all again from scratch.
For reasons you might not even be able to express, you might find college to be a whole lot more overwhelming than you expected, and not for the reasons you might have suspected. But fear not, for plenty have gone before you, and plenty will come after you. Clearly, your obstacles are surmountable. In fact, they just might be surmountable in five (kinda) easy steps:
1. Remember that there’s a reason you’re here.
It’s not like you can’t stop after high school. Maybe you’re here because you figure it’s the only way to get a job. There’s some unfortunate truth to that, and your parents “encouraged” you to apply. Maybe you’re here because you like to learn. Maybe it’s that you want to be a college professor yourself one day. But whatever the reason, the point is this: You are here for some reason. You’re in it now, and you need to keep your being here at the front of your mind, because you need to...
2. Stay present.
This might be the most valuable piece of advice I can give you, and it will serve you far beyond your college years. Let me put it this way: if you’re dealing with a tragedy, this is what you do you stay present. You focus on what you’re doing, on what you need to do, on what you want to do, and you do it because nothing else matters. You want to be here, and you want to get something out of it, so go on and get to it. Everything else, including your stress, can wait.
3. Meet new people.
This one might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s one of the reasons people most frequently cite for their college anxieties. Even if you can’t live on campus or, for whatever reason, don’t want to, you can always make friends if you put in the necessary work. I commuted my freshman year, and I spent my first semester in near total, self-imposed isolation.
My second semester, I changed my tune. I might not have lived in a dorm, but I had friends from class who did. So I visited. I visited so much that I practically did live in a dorm. I got cell phone numbers and texted and opened more doors than I knew were closed. You can and will find people at school that share your interests, who you can connect with on levels you’ve never connected on before.
There are a lot of college clichés based in absolute fallacy, but this isn’t one of them. So don’t lock yourself in your dorm room, and don’t assume that living off campus disqualifies you from legitimate social interaction, it’s the biggest mistake you can make. Take it from someone who made it.
4. Keep it touch with the oldies.
And while you’re meeting new people, it can do you a world of good to keep up with all the folks college freshmen have a tendency to think they’ve left behind. Sure, you might not be seeing your BFF from high school in person every day of the year, but that doesn’t mean he’s not still there.
It doesn’t mean she’s not feeling the same way as you and clicking away at the keypad the minute she sees a text from you. I know I can personally credit one of my oldest friends with keeping me sane my first semester, and college has, oddly enough, brought us closer together than we ever were in high school. So really, a familiar shoulder is always there for you to lean on, so long as you take the initiative.
5. Do what you want to do, not what you think you need to do.
I entered college with a strong passion for history and an even stronger passion for English. Granted, these are both pretty saturated fields, but I figured that history was at least the lesser of two evils, so I set English aside and settled in with the history department.
When university requirements pushed me back to a writing-intensive course my second semester, however, I had a change of heart. I decided that self-censorship, especially for the sake of job market conditions I’d yet to even experience, is an exercise in self-abasement.
As one of my favorite professors has said, working a job you hate is the only way you’ll find yourself looking forward to retirement. Experiment, find what it is you love, and put your concerns for a paycheck you’re not yet earning aside. College is about you and nothing else.
