While my laundry spins in the washing machine, all I can think about is how I helped my friend Josh move for the THIRD time this year. That’s right: he had to move between 3 different dorm rooms. I can’t help but reflect on what I learned through my experiences, after watching him learn the hard way.

I had the worst first semester of college. There are many reasons why it sucked — a lot of which could have been easily prevented if I would’ve had a better attitude — but there were circumstances and scenarios that impacted my first few months pretty negatively. It all made college so much harder.

Before you move into your dorm in the fall, you should think about this list. I learned the hard way so that you won’t have to!

This was my first big mistake. I went home the first three weekends I was on campus and it made adjusting to college nearly impossible. The first few weekends of college are crucial because it’s when people are searching for friends and are most sociable. Since I was never on campus, I never made friends. I was really lonely; I dug myself into a hole where I would regularly go home. I didn’t have any friends to hang out with while I was at Ball State. It sucked. I think I spent two weeks of my first sixteen weeks of college not on campus. Don’t do that. It’s definitely okay to go home, don’t get me wrong, but don’t go home every weekend. It’s one of my biggest regrets.

This was my second mistake. The majority of my friend group were kids a year younger than me, so when I left for college, I was sad. They were still together, but I wasn’t there. I went home so much because I wanted to see them. All that did was make me hate college even more: I wanted to be back in high school with them. It’s okay to have high-school-aged friends after you graduate (four of my closest friends are still in high school; two are seniors and two are juniors), but college is the time to branch out by making new friends. You want to build a group of friends at college that are worth telling your friends back home about.

Reality hit me pretty hard when I moved in at Ball State and stopped hearing from half of my hometown friends. The people I spent so much time with back at home kind of vanished from my life. This won’t happen to everyone, but it happens all too often: once young people find their college crowd, hometown friend groups shrink. But, this kind of change can be a good thing. My absence of friends forced me to make new ones: something I wasn’t always good at.

I quickly learned who truly cared about me and who didn’t. It may be corny, but losing friends helped me uncover the true friends buried amongst them. I made new friends back home that I didn’t have before I left for college, and that really shocked me. Be open to new friends, whether on, or off, campus. You’re in a transitional period of life where you should hang out with people you otherwise wouldn’t. Life will surprise you: let it.

I cannot stress this enough: join clubs. If I wouldn’t have joined the soccer club, I would still have no friends. Joining clubs gives you the greatest opportunity to meet people of all ages that have similar interests as you.

Club soccer introduced me to Emma, who became one of my best friends and helped me find my people.

Club soccer introduced me to Steph, along with two of her friends, who I will be living with next year in an apartment.

Club soccer introduced me to Olivia, who takes me to a burger joint every Tuesday night, and helps me shop for the perfect pair of cleats.

Club soccer introduced me to Rachel & Katie, Gina & Sam, and so many others.

You get the idea. Joining just one extracurricular will give you the chance to take a break from school and have some fun. It doesn’t have to be a sport: colleges have clubs for literally everything.

Laundry is expensive. Living with another person can be hard. Showering with flip-flops is annoying. On-campus food gets old after a few months. Every freshman has to suffer through that first year in a dorm. Some people love it, but it’s not for everyone. I could go on for hours about how to make the most of dorm living. Leave a comment below if you’d like me to write about it! Trust me when I say that it sucks.

If you trip and fall on your face in the middle of the street, it’s okay. If you leave your 100+ person lecture crying because you had a bad day, it’s okay. If you constantly find yourself doing cringey and embarrassing things in public, it’s okay. You see new faces in college everyday; no one is going to remember your one mistake. College is a great time to start fresh and focus on yourself. You’re in an environment with entirely new people and so many opportunities. Take advantage of it. Things won’t stick with your reputation like they did in high school.

I often remind myself that I’m paying for every class I go to. College is expensive, so it’s in your best interest to go to class. Yes, sometimes lectures really suck and they’re boring. Sometimes your prerequisite classes are terrible and you’d rather die than suffer through them, but you just have to do it. Skipping class one or two times throughout the semester because you know that you cannot handle going is fine. I did it a few times when I had bad days: it’s okay. Make sure that you study, do your work, and try your best. At the very least, try to get that 2.0 that keeps you in good standing with your university.

If you can’t get up early, don’t take an 8 a.m. Be cautious when scheduling all of your classes M/W/F or T/TH. It seems simple, but people still make these mistakes. You know yourself better than you think, so make sure your schedule its doable. If your schedule sucks, you’ll be more likely to skip class and start digging a hole that you won’t be able to crawl out from.

Books are stupid expensive. If you can, always try to rent your books. Even better, rent them used. This is going to be the cheapest way to get through the semester. Before you buy books, do research. Check websites like Rate My Professors to see what books are truly required for your class. Sometimes, you won’t even need books at all. You don’t want to spend money on things you don’t need.

Going through a crisis midway through the semester is fine. It’s better that you discover that your Pre-med major sucks before you’re 3 years in, or worse, you’ve graduated. Everyone switches their area of study: it’s totally fine. I’ve switched my major once and my minor three times already. Sometimes it takes a while for you to figure out what you want to do. Make sure that you’re doing what you really want to do; don’t do what your parents or other people want you to do.

If your friends want to go out one weekend and you really don’t want to, it’s okay to say no. If someone keeps pressuring you into joining a club, or bible study, or some weird scholastic society, it’s okay to say no. If your friends want to watch a movie at 1 a.m. and you have class at 9 the next morning, it’s okay to tell them that you want to go to bed. One of the worst things that you can do is to do stuff that you don’t want to do.

Some people will go to college only to realize that it isn’t for them. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve had many friends drop out of college, or not go at all, because they knew their talents rested in other things. That’s fine. Do what you want to do: don’t waste time and money if you don’t think college is the right path for you. No, this is not an excuse to do nothing at all, sitting at your parent’s house all day: be productive, even if you don’t go to school.

I hope you’ll take these tips seriously: knowing these things will help you not hate your first semester, like I did. Learn from my mistakes.

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This post was originally shared on Life as Maggie, Maggie’s personal blog. If you’d like Bloom to feature your work, apply here.