After painstakingly waiting day after day for your acceptance letters to arrive, you made your decision. If you’re me, you did exactly what you said you weren’t going to do. All my life, I had planned on going to a small, private, liberal arts college, close to home – in control of every situation, all the time. When it came time to send in my enrollment fee, basically a financial lock on my future, I ended up addressing the check somewhere I never thought I would: The Ohio State University.
Sure, I knew the basis of what OSU and big were – sports, sports, crazy fans, Michigan sucks, sports, 50,000 students, but I also became aware of the opportunities such a large school, so far from home opened for me. So this is my advice to you, the daring, scared, soon to be college freshman, on how to survive being one in 50,000, several states away from home.
1. No one knows who you are, use that to your advantage.
I’m gonna go all cliché and argue for the billionth time that college is all about finding yourself, becoming who you really are, or whatever that’s supposed to mean. It’s true for everyone, for the kids commuting every day, and the people like me, who have to fly home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. But being from a totally different area of the country than everyone around you has its perks. You’re not going to run into that psycho ex-girlfriend from sophomore year, for starters. That d-bag quarterback? He’s 500 miles away doing nothing with his life. You’re the only one, or maybe one of two, like me, from your graduating class who enrolled at your respective college for autumn classes.
No one has any idea who you are and quite frankly, they don’t care. You’re in the driver’s seat. There’s no one holding you back, telling your floor mates or classmates who you were, what you are – it’s all on you. I’m not gonna say be someone you’re not, because that’s going against everything you’ve ever been told, but what I am saying is take this once-in-a-lifetime chance to redefine yourself, become the person you want to be, the person you see yourself as, because for the first time in your life, you’re not stuck in the stereotype years in the same school and town have put upon you.
2. Use the distance as an accelerated growing-up process
College is great, that’s a given. You’re on your own – no parents, no worries (except keeping that magical number between three and four) – basically freedom for four years. For some though, college can be a constant reminder of home, and that gets to some people, it really does. Staying close to home makes it able for mom and dad to come pick up your dirty laundry, take you out to dinner, buy you Alka-Seltzer for those Sunday “headaches.”
It all sounds super appealing, and it is, but in my opinion, it’s not the point of college. You’re there to do you, and you should do it by yourself (plus your friends). Going away to school affords you this opportunity. Any chance you had at those weekend getaways back home vanished when you paid that first tuition installment. But what I’m trying to get at is that in the end it’ll be good for you – you won’t have anyone to rely on for the first time in a long time, so, to be blunt, deal with it. No one is going to hold your hand in the long run, so use the distance as sort of a simulator for what’s to come. You’ll be amazed at how a little independence and a lot of miles matures you up in a short amount of time.
3. Take advantage of all your new home has to offer.
Chances are if you’re at a huge state school like Ohio State, 90 percent of the student body will be from that state. With that being said, they’ve probably grown up with ambitions to attend that school, visited hundreds of times, know the ins and outs, you catch my drift. But if you’re in the same boat as us out-of-staters, it’s like starting your life in a new country. New traditions to learn, new sports teams to like or tolerate (@Browns), even new air to get used to. Growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey, I wasn’t ready for the mass of Buckeye pride that slapped me in the face day one. I wasn’t ready for the fact that being from Ohio basically means you’re from a suburb of Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, or some lowkey town in the middle of nowhere that prides themselves on producing the best corn in the state. With that in mind, I took it all in, and I advise you to do the same.
I like to think of going to school in Ohio a lot like going on a semester long vacation, with some classes and a final or two (or five in three days) thrown into the mix. Everything I was seeing, I was seeing for the first time. I embraced the fact that I was seeing a new part of Columbus every single day, or learning something interesting about Cleveland and their disappointing sports teams from my best friends regularly, or losing my mind at GBD in Oxford (soberly, of course). My peers had been around these things their entire lives, but for me, everything was new. So do what I did, treat it like a vacation; go back to your friend’s hometown for spring break, take that day trip to downtown, and embrace all that your new home has to offer – after all you’re stuck there for months at a time.
4. Be adventurous.
You already made the crazy decision to attend college nine hours from home, why stop now? I like to constantly remind myself that I only have four, now three years left in Cbus (that’s what the locals call it), and that I should use my time wisely. So I’m gonna tell you the same thing. Take that stupid art history class because it sounds cool. Go out on Mondays (surprisingly good deals). Take your friend up on that invitation to help with his astronomy project. Ask that cute girl from class out. The point I’m trying to make is just do it. You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone, especially since none of these people know you in the first place. Don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone – that’s what college is all about. Live adventurously, you’ll be happier.
That’s my two cents on how to survive freshman year as an out-of-state student. Most of it is pretty cliché, but if any of this remotely helps you, inspires you, or relates to you, at least you know you’re not the first to go down this road. We’re a special kind of college student just trying to find our niche at a place where life probably didn’t have us ending up. It’s a scary thing, growing up. No one ever said it was easy, especially when everything you’ve ever known is 500 miles away. Just know that it’s been done before, and you’ll thank yourself in the long run for the choices you made right now. Go Bucks.
