I wasn’t scared to go off to college. I had been in a “boarding school” since I was sixteen — which is a very long story for another article — and thought I knew exactly how to live on my own. For two years I had done my own laundry, gotten (mostly) straight As and made some of the most cherished friends in my life. From a logical standpoint, I should have been all set.
Well, not to scare any up-and-coming college students, but this adjustment has been a lot more complicated than those things. That’s why I’ve compiled a list of all of the emphatic “DON’Ts!” of my college career thus far. You guys deserve to learn as much from my mistakes as I have.
- Don’t live off of nothing but raw cookie dough for 3 weeks
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Yeah, this is a real thing that I did. Sorry, Mom and Dad! But seriously, it messes with your body in more ways than you could possibly imagine. Please, eat a vegetable.
- Don’t just eat rice either
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I saw one Jennifer Lawrence interview in middle school in which she mentioned a study that found that you can live off of rice and beans for an entire lifetime and I really took it to heart. Spoiler alert: it’s not much more nutritious than the cookie dough.
- Don’t watch 4 seasons of a show with hour-long episodes in one week
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I paid $15 for a month-long HBO subscription to watch True Blood and, uh, this happened. I can’t bring myself to calculate how many hours of my life that ate away, but the numbers for my social time that week are much easier to crunch because it’s just zero.
- Don’t lock yourself away in your room
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Sure, being able to watch everything on your Netflix list while pantsless is a holy experience, but it’s much healthier in small doses. There are so many other experiences to be had out on campus — you’re in college, after all!
- Don’t throw yourself into too much all at once
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Just like staying alone in your room, partying and dating are the most fun when done in a more lowkey way. We’re bombarded with cliches of what college is supposed to be in every teen movie ever made, but don’t put too much pressure on yourself to get crazy — you don’t have to become a party animal to have a social life.
- Most importantly: don’t put so much pressure on yourself to be perfect
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Being in college is genuinely difficult. We’re expected to juggle a hefty workload, get jobs and find our soulmates, not to mention figure out what we’re going to do with the rest of our lives. Our stresses (and the occasional unhealthy coping mechanism) are totally valid. We’re trying our best, and that’s okay.
Hopefully, incoming freshmen can learn from my (mildly bizarre) mistakes and maybe some of you returning college students can see yourselves in them. One thing is certain: everyone messes up when they’re making a big transition. The important thing is that we all try to do better the next day, the next week or the next semester.