As a Barnard first-year, I thought that I had adequately prepared myself for the transition from high school to college by keeping up with posts in the Facebook group and pestering my RA and orientation leader with questions about wait-lists and office hours. Of course, there was only so much I could prepare for; the rest I had to learn through trial and error. Here are my biggest takeaways from the first week of classes.
1. Some old study habits don’t apply anymore.
In high school, I spent four years perfecting a system in which I pushed all my work to Sunday evenings and was able to take Friday nights and Saturdays off to go out – or, more likely, stay in and watch old rom-coms on Netflix. This just doesn’t work in college; even if you’re spending less time per day in class, your homework assignments pile up fast. It was jarring at first to see people heading to Brooks Study Lounge or Butler Library on a Friday night or Saturday afternoon for some reading, but now, I have to admire their time management skills – I know I could still use some help with mine.
2. Syllabus week is half-myth, half-truth.
I’ve heard many an upperclass student debate about this before. Some say they’re given exams in their first classes, while others are pretty much handed a syllabus and shooed out the door. At least for freshmen, I’ve found the reality to be somewhere in the middle: the first half of class is spent discussing required textbooks and grading policies, while the second half is devoted to some light discussion or analysis. I’d like to think I appreciate this happy medium for helping me get back into an academic mindset, but I’m probably just relieved that I didn’t have to take any tests.
3. No, you can’t realistically join twenty clubs.
I attended the club fair at the end of my first week, which was a whirlwind of flyers, stickers, and free candy that ended with me writing down my email address on just about everyone’s sign-up list. In my defense, this was mostly due to the sheer determination of the students at each booth (making eye contact with any of them was enough to guilt me into joining their mailing list). My inbox was soon flooded with messages from club presidents or publication managing editors, but I soon realized that becoming a club member is not as easy as writing down your name on a list. After you factor in homework assignments and a work-study job, devoting time to one club can be tricky, let alone multiple clubs (and seriously, why does every interesting club want to meet at the same exact time on Sundays?). I think I’m going to stick with two or three, but first, I should probably clear out my inbox.
4. Everyone around you is going through the same thing.
The main lesson I took away from this first week is that no matter if people have a special, tricked-out planner with all their important dates outlined or one all-purpose notebook that should probably be a little more organized (hey, that’s me!), or whether they’re in their first-choice classes or wait-listed for almost everything, nobody really has it figured out. That’s the beauty of the first week of college. Even when I accidentally showed up to the wrong class on the first day, or spent twenty minutes staring at a blank page while I tried to write a response to a reading I barely comprehended, I took comfort in the fact that I could bemoan my lack of organization to just about anyone and have them understand.
Hopefully this list has been a helpful insight into the life of the Barnard first-year. Adjusting to a college lifestyle may seem foreboding at first, but once you get over that hump, you’re sure to find a new groove that works for you.