Think back to a time when you weren’t in college. That may be hard for some of us, I know, but the truth is we weren’t always so knowledgeable about collegiette life, let alone did we know how to navigate the trials and tribulations of being a student at Florida State University. As freshman, we packed up our belongings and said goodbye to our parents, armed only with the facts that we had gathered from cheesy movies or advice from our best friend’s older brother, who had maybe partied too hard, dropped out and moved back home. Here’s a list of things you probably believed (or maybe still believe…), only to find out, on your own, how upsettingly wrong they were. If someone wants to debunk life after college myths, I’m all ears.
- “You’ll have so much freedom in college, you won’t even have to go to class if you don’t want to!”
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“You NEED to buy all of your text books, like for real”
I’ll be the first to admit, I fell into this trap, hard. $300 poorer, there I sat with a pile of barely opened books, feeling like a fool. To make matters worse the bookstore offered me not even half that to sell them back at the end of the semester. It’s not even that I didn’t do my assigned reading or homework (Mom, if you’re reading this I always do my homework, #StarStudent), it just so happened that I only really needed to read one chapter out of a book, over the course of the whole semester. If only I had known that from the start, right? Sometimes buying books is inevitable, I get that, but there are so many other ways to go about acquiring them. You could rent, you could share a book with a classmate and split the cost, you could attempt to borrow a book from someone. Ask around, post in a Facebook page, check online. There are so many cheaper ways to get textbooks, I promise you don’t have to go out and buy every single book on the syllabus brand new. Unless you want to, I guess…
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“The Freshman 15? Try more like Freshman 30… Basically you’re going to get fat!”
I’ve got two words for you: Tallahassee hills. We’re lucky enough to go to a school that provides an adequate workout simply on your way to class. So yeah, you might have eaten a large pizza at midnight last night, but man will your legs be burning after trekking around campus. You’ll probably even find yourself out of breath after walking up to the fourth floor of Williams. While it’s very easy to fall into the trap of unhealthy eating habits in a college setting, not to mention the unnecessary weight put on by drinking, there are still plenty of ways to stay in shape and keep your body looking bangin’. Between the gym on campus, intramural sports, and healthier eating options, you might put on a little bit of weight, but chances are you won’t automatically balloon once you set foot on campus. It still hurts a little looking back at pictures from high school though, I know.