There are a few things I needed to know when entering college. I felt that I was completely prepared. I had done the dorm shopping, I had packed up my room and maps of campus were printed. I had always been motivated and on top of the ball thus far in life. As far as I was concerned, I was completely prepared. I was wrong. There are things you learn through the process of college. They are the aspects no one things to tell you because no one had ever passed the information along to them prior to college. No one told me, so I'm telling you.
Moving in is an experience like none other.
The day you move in, expect to ride in on the hot mess express, have that be freshman year in the dorms, or senior year to a run down house with friends. The upperclassmen will hang profane banners on their houses across from the street and harass your parents as you unpack the vehicle that was tetris packed the night prior. The real treat will be getting used to your freshman roommate. Nothing compares to this experience. You live in a too-small space with a person you have never met. You'll grow together and drive each other nuts, but in the end, this person will teach you all you need to know on how to survive with roommates from here on out. Moving out of the dorms will come with a whole new experience: leases for houses. The house that looks like a palace in your eyes will seem uninhabitable to your parents. Leases you sign in October for the following August will have a 10 percent success rate. More than likely you will be looking for subleasers, aka saviors from the friends on your lease who turned into enemies throughout the year.
General education classes are death.
When you decided to attend college, the dreams of the classes revolving around your passions are quickly crushed by your very first class. As a freshman, with zero seniority for class options, this class is more than likely taking place at the crack of dawn. You will wake up, basically able to hear the roosters crowing, and roll out of bed. All the showers will be taken and you realize that not only will you have to go without a shower, but you will also have to wake up even earlier the next day. The walk to class is much further than you thought so you're basically sprinting to find your room, let alone an empty seat. Your dreams are further demolished when you realize that you must push yourself through (and pay for) two entire years of classes that feel like a complete waste of time before you get to anything remotely interesting. Furthermore, the professors who teach these classes are profoundly interested in their craft and seem to believe you are as well . . . leading to quite the experience. The exams will be intense. My advice? Monkey up with the anthropology professor and learn all you can about bones because he's going to expect you know absolutely all of it. These two years are a base point and huge contributing factor to your GPA. This is your golden ticket to the real classes you're interested in. Keep your eyes on the prize.
Eating the food will seem like a glorious feast. Until two days later.
Food that isn't the same rotation as mom's pork roast will seem magical. The options are endless. The buffet offers pasta, pizza, burgers, fries, a main course menu, stir fry and on different nights there are different options. It appears as though you could never get sick of this food. But week three, when you're rushing to class and yet again you aren't sure if you should expect scrambled eggs that run off your plate, or crust to the sides of the pan they are being served in, you realize that you were wrong. Simultaneously, your intestines decide they are not made of steel. And after this realization, the cafeteria no longer makes you excited, but rather you dread the rest of the afternoon simply after one bite. The moral of the story here? Stick to the sandwiches, they're safe. Your stomach will thank you.
Working in school is an unavoidable necessity.
You'll ignore the idea for as long as you can. The years you spent working fast food in high school seem far behind and since your parents aren't hovering close by, it appears that you can slide by without a college side job. Wrong. You will eventually find out that textbooks won't buy themselves and without them you'll have to retake classes that burst your brain cells the first time around. Additionally, the $8,000 that is withdrawn from your $9,000 savings account is a huge wake up call. If you don't want to be in debt for the rest of your life, you'll pick up a side job that will at least cover your weekly trips to Starbucks and the mall. As for the time management aspect, you'll figure it out. You have enough time for class, friends and a job. Sleeping? Not so much. But you can do that when you're in that silk lined box, amirite?
Drinking isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Your first week of your freshman year will seem like a whirlwind. The first sentence you'll hear on repeat is, "Where's the party?" Addresses are passed to and fro. If you look out your window between the hours of 9 p.m. and 2 a.m., mass crowds of 20-30 freshman will be walking around like kindergarten classes, searching blindly in awe for parties. What they don't realize is that during the first six weeks, these groups of students are walking quotas for underage fines. If they happen to arrive ticket free to a party, what they will discover will be less than pleasing. First, the house will be an utter disaster. The types of people who let massive amounts of strangers enter their homes, won't be they type of people who like to clean. The basement will be so packed they can't move, the floor so sticky they'll almost lose a shoe and they won't be able to hear a thing over the music. Basically, they will become immobile and deaf. Freshman have yet to appreciate, understand or discover the true potential and appreciation of a quality night in. Being able to bond late nights with your closest friends is where it's at. Some of my best memories from college are the ones that were shared in a too small room, with a few too many friends. While a good night out can make for some quality time (and stories), nights in are truly underrated in the freshmen college agenda.
Social media is a black hole.
Social media will without a doubt suck you in. It isn't limited here though. With college classes comes the demand to be online more. That may come in the form of an online class, or checking the D2L site and email daily. Because of this, social media is lurking. Everyone wants to be in the loop of who is with who and who is doing what. Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram can suck you for hours. Lets not forget about social media's black hole sidekick, YouTube. It's like a vacuum. You log into your email at 8 p.m. and by 2 a.m., you're watching videos on how expectant mothers inform their significant other that he is a father. In no figment of your imagination do you plan on having children in the next ten years, yet here you are surrounded by balled up tissues as your email sits in hiatus since 8:02 p.m. It takes a lot of willpower to pull yourself from the black hole to sift through emails before bed.
Finals are a joke.
Finals are a huge excuse for students to get together with everyone they can think of to procrastinate together, complain about the "studying" they are doing while procrastinating their studying and see who can stay up latest. Our "excuse" for a meal consists of pizza and all night coffee . . . and as much as we complain about it, we all know that we secretly love it. We drag our feet knowing that we have to open our books and appear to be gaining content for our exams, however in reality we throw candy across the library, discuss drama we missed out on while away from the library and update our social media about every five minutes via the library. Each and every one of us debates who has it worse. Not a whole lot honestly gets done, but it's truly a bonding experience. We're all surviving this week of misfortune together.
Senioritis is a real thing.
Seniors have many important things on their mind. Those things do not include academics. Professors forget that we are concerned with graduation parties, what new bedding we want when we move and if the temperature is cool enough to wear heels to ensure our feet don't get sweaty and we don't trip across the stage on graduation. It will come to a point where you really don't even feel like you are attending school anymore. You just truly do not care. Your assignments just sit until ten minutes before class and you don't even care if you get zero points. If you've learned anything in the past four years, it's that it will work out. And with that attitude, you simply do not exert yourself to the point of even extracting assignments, books or papers out of your backpack. They simply reside in your backpack, to and from school, never to be looked at while at home. If a professor is lucky, they may see them come out during class. This only happens on a extremely motivated day. Otherwise a quick "I forgot" will do when you know you're graduating in a mere two weeks.
Graduation won't hit you until it's over.
You'll be sitting in your new apartment, scrolling through Pinterest and planning your adult life and it will hit you. You'll start uncontrollably crying and won't be able to stop. You'll want back your noisy neighbors, your minuscule parking space, your loud roommates and too-small house. You'll always have the memories, but you won't be able to go back. And in that moment, it is overwhelming. It's so true what they say, and after graduating you'll understand that you're so lucky to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.
