I interviewed several freshmen, and this is what they came up with:
1. "You're going to actually miss your parents a lot" - Chelsi Perez, NCSU
The Freshman Plague is a thing, and you're probably going to get it no matter how good you think your immune system is. When you're sick, you'll have nobody besides your roommate and your Neosporin to help you out. Furthermore, you'll realize just how much you took it for granted that you had a person in your life who genuinely cared about you all the time.
2. "They don't tell you how much of a responsibility living on your own [is]" - Dylan McCabe, NCSU
Yes, we've all been told that in college, we're able to skip classes if we want to (which, by the way, isn't true at all based off the classes I've taken where the teachers count attendance as a grade). However, our responsibilities most certainly aren't limited to schoolwork. Now, we have to actually deep clean our rooms or else dust will accumulate. We have to make sure we eat healthy food or else we're not going to function as well for our future classes. I'm sure some people are even getting used to doing laundry for the first time here. All these tasks are suddenly thrown on us, and if we neglect them for just a second, it seems like our entire lives are in shambles.
3. "You're going to spend way more money than you'd like to." - Anonymous (AKA Me)
We look at tuition, and the price already seems intimidating. If you've only saved up enough money to pay for your tuition, you're going to have a difficult time. I'm not just talking about groceries and cleaning supplies either. A lot of universities require that freshmen pay a thousand dollars for meal plans. Also, if you thought you could save money by purchasing used textbooks, I have some bad news for you: a lot of the textbooks are now only accessible online. I even have to pay an extra fee to be in the engineering program at NCSU. There's so much money that you're going to have to spend, so you better start really saving if you haven't already.
4. "There is no parking anywhere" - Jenna Hunt, UWF
Parking is honestly so difficult that most people don't bring their cars to college. To all you high school seniors (or just people who have licenses), you'd better enjoy driving while you can. I can't even begin to describe how terrible it is to have such a beautiful and liberating right taken from me. And if you are lucky enough to get a parking spot, you can expect to have to walk 15 minutes to get to anywhere practical.
5. "There's a lot of pressure to find a good friend group" - Lindy Ferrell, OSU
This is something that I'm sure everyone feels to some degree, but I really don't hear a lot of people talking about it. Nobody wants to admit that they're not a social butterfly when they're in the one environment that all the adults said was going to be the "greatest four years of anyone's life". It also doesn't help that we no longer have our parents as a source of love, and we end up wanting to rely on other people to get that sort of affection. Unfortunately, friend groups are not going to give you the same love your parents will, and it's unreasonable to expect that, even though I'm sure we're all guilty of it.
6. "There's also a lot of pressure to find new ways to study" - Lindy Ferrell, OSU
We've all heard it a million times. That we should get into study groups. I think I've said this before, but I really don't understand why teachers are so obsessed with study groups. Yes, I know I've said that study groups are helpful, and they are. They make me not want to kill myself, and I'm also able to ask smarter people what they think will be on the test. But there's no reason why we're suddenly expected to throw away all the study habits we've accumulated in the past just because "this is college".
7. "Some professors are [rather unkind]" - Marcus Nunda
I know we've all heard that professors aren't going to care about you like high school teachers will (quite frankly I can only recall several high school teachers who actually seemed to care), but I don't think anyone could really prepare for dealing with certain professors who just really enjoy abusing their power. Quite recently, a physics professor at NCSU was suspended for saying that the women in his class were useless. Imagine being in a respectable position of power and thinking that's okay to say. Unfortunately, this is how many professors are for a lot of the huge first-year courses.
8. "College professors are nowhere near as strict as [high school] teachers say they are" - Miranda Brown, VT
This is basically the opposite of the previous point, but there are a variety of professors in college, and so both statements still apply. In college, professors tend to be much more clear with their grading criteria than high school teachers were. I mean, we're even given a syllabus off the bat that includes every assignment that we'll have and when it'll be due. So in that sense, college professors truly are much less strict.
9. "Your sleep cycle will be [totally messed up]" - Eric Romero, NCSU
We were forced to stay on our high school's physical property from 9-4, but now that we're in college, we're suddenly given huge time gaps where we can do whatever we want. For a lot of us, that means that we sleep. Classes range from 8:30 am's to 7:20 pm's, and I'm sure there are many exceptions as well. When you're a freshman, you're going to want to sleep every chance you get, which isn't always going to be at a normal time.
10. "Being on a big campus can be really isolating" - Cailin Campbell, UNC
I don't know about everyone else, but I was personally under the impression that if I attended a huge university, then I would have more friends and feel less lonely. That is absolutely not the case. Living on a huge campus like NC State has really taken away a lot of the social anxiety I used to have because there are way too many people around me to know or care about what they think. However, this also means that if I meet someone that I do like, it will still be rather difficult to meet up with them because everyone's daily lives are so different. Therefore, I think a lot of us are feeling a bit lonely right now and are hoping to find those people that we can call our friends for life.
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