When I was getting ready for my first year of college I thought I had it all figured out. I’d read enough books and had seen enough movies to convince myself that I could be nothing less than 100 percent prepared for my freshman year. Little did I know that everything I was so sure about going into that year would soon blow up in my face.
1. You do not, I repeat DO NOT, need all that food in your dorm
There was no reason you need 50 cups of instant Mac&Cheese and an unlimited supply of Ramen in your dormroom. For some reason evernight first semester my roommates and I ate easy mac for dinner. I call this the “Mac and cheese faze” where freshman eat instant mac and cheese so much until they actually can’t stomach it anymore (No sereiously I havent touched that suff in over a year). This seemes like a good idea until you realize its expensive and that your already paying thousands of dollars for a meal plan. So you just have to suck it up and eat the provided Lockes chicken and french fries.
2. Do Not buy your textbooks until the first week of classes
Textbooks are expensive so wait until you see excatly what you need on the syllabus before you drop $500 on books you’ll never use. Also, order your books online because the school book store is a total rip off.
3. Stick to pitchers at Canonns
I can’t be the only one who walked into Cannons on the first night and ordered a martini… Okay maybe I am but it’s a rookie mistake. It was my first bar and I swear I thought I was in Gossip Girl. Therefore don’t be like me and recognize that places like Cannons aren’t to be considered classy. So don’t waste your $15 like I did and stick to beer.
(I wasn’t lying I took pictures…)
4. Don’t confuse missing your significant other with hating school
So many of us are guilty of this. We go into school with our significant other telling ourselves that we’re stronger than to let them interfere with our time. We tell ourselves that we can still have just as much fun as the single girls but remind ourselves that unlike them, we have someone who cares about us to go back to. But the truth is that so many people go in with this perspective and eventualy realize that they’re not actually having any fun and try to blame it on the school. My first semester I tried to transfer out, I truly was convinced that it was the school that wasn’t fit for me, not the relationship that held me back from experiencing college the right way. I see this happening all around me and it’s a shame that sometimes people realize this too late and miss out on what could have a been a great experience. This isn’t to say relationships in college can’t be good or rewarding, it’s simply to say that sometimes we can trick ourselves into believeing what we want because we’re too scared to face the truth.
5. Choose courses based on the professor not the time
Something I’ve noticed in my time here is that someone could be the exact same major as you and could be doing a very different course load. Depending on the professor you choose, a couple things could go wrong. One being that you end up with a professor who makes a relatively easy course extremly diffcult. The other being that you could end up with a professor who doesn’t care about actually teaching and passes their students with good grades just so they can still look good. So, to avoid this ask around to see who’s highly recommended and always check RateMyProfessor.