Amelia’s Declassified Freshman Year Survival Guide: 5 Do’s and Don’t’s for Your First Semester at College
After being an RA (multiple times) and becoming a higher education wiz in the near future, the freshly-minted Boston University alum gives her take on the freshman experience.
Headed off to college? As Douglas Adams would put it, DON’T PANIC. (That’s not the first of the “Don’t’s” I’m including on this list, but you get the idea.) As a recent college grad and current college adviser for high schoolers, I’m here to impart some wisdom on you, and maybe even reassure you that everything’s going to be A-okay, no matter where you’ll be studying this fall.
Keep in mind that these are tips, not rules — no two people’s university experience is identical! If you’re going to be a student of Finance at the enormous public Ohio State, or Biology at 2,000-student strong liberal arts-based Union College in upstate New York, or even Aviation Science at Bridgewater State out in the ‘burbs of Boston, taking the advice of someone who didn’t study any of those majors at any of those universities as completely de facto, no exceptions, isn’t the best idea. So, just think of the following as some basic guidelines to make your fall semester an incredible beginning to the “best four years of your life.”
#1: DO live with a roommate.
I can’t stress this one enough — unless you’re 200% sure that living alone will be best for you and your emotional/mental health, having at least one person to live with freshman year can make the entire adjustment to your new life a helluva lot easier. I’ve always been an introvert, and starting at Boston University — my undergraduate alma mater — back in the fall of 2013 was pretty difficult. I was a very small, shy fish in a very big, noisy pond, but having a roommate to attend icebreaker events, search up and down campus for academic buildings, and eat in the dining hall with made me feel a lot more confident in my new environment.
Like many colleges and universities around the world, when selecting a roommate at BU, you can either request one or go in random. I was someone who requested my roommate, and it worked out great! We connected over Facebook, found that we had a lot in common, and when it came to living together, our shared early-to-bed habits and mad love of Beyoncé made it an altogether fun and rewarding experience. However, random roommate pairs work out just as swimmingly — in fact, most of my friends ended up going in random, and many of them chose to live with these people again and again over the next four years.
Granted, I don’t want to coat this process entirely in sugar — there can be some crazy salt out there, and I’ve seen it all as a former Resident Assistant. But that’s what RAs and other residence life staff are there for — if you’ve got some roommate blues, they can help you guys work through your stuff. You don’t have to be best friends with your roommate, but trust me — when you’re that small fish, it feels really great to have someone to come home and talk to every night.
#2: DON’T overpack.
Unless you’re off to High Point University in North Carolina (where, from what I’ve heard, they live like kings and queens poolside), your very first college bedroom is most likely going to be a shoebox. A big shoebox, but a shoebox nonetheless. I recommended above that you live with (at least) one roommate throughout your very first year — keep in mind that he/she/they will be sharing the shoebox with you. Take it from someone who’s guilty of being a bit of a hoarder — you really, really don’t need to bring two evening gowns, eight bath towels, three pairs of boat shoes, and your entire poster collection to school with you this fall. Impracticality, over-saturation, lack of variety, and too much clutter, respectively.
Speaking more on that last one — don’t forget that your roommate(s) will want to personalize your shared space, too! They might not be as big of a Game of Thrones fan as you are, so it’s probably best to leave that full-size cut-out of Brienne of Tarth at home and bring a smaller art print with you instead. And if you’re doing your laundry as regularly as you should be, you’ll find that you don’t need many duplicates of any clothing/linen item (but having a surplus of underwear is a great idea, because let’s be real, no one does their laundry as regularly as they should be). Granted, it might be nice to have one evening gown, but honestly, how many opportunities are you going to have to wear an evening gown, let alone two of them? (Is that something they do at High Point? Keep me posted!)
#3: DO leave your dorm room.
This one might sound like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised by how easy it can be to slip into the habit of sleeping through entire weekends (guilty as charged). Orientation weeks and other bridge programs can make the transition to the postsecondary education life a lot smoother, but sometimes, you’ve gone through five too many icebreakers, and you’re so mentally drained that you just want to go home and hide under your covers. That’s totally fine, but make sure you don’t end up spending your entire semester that way, because you’ll be missing out on an entire world of amazing opportunities. The great thing about college is that you can kind of do whatever you want (within reason, of course — I’m not telling you to go break the law or something). At BU alone, we have over 500 student organizations, and they really run the entire gamut of interests. Enjoy beekeeping? There’s a club for that. Into food rescue? Hop into our van. Love hugging strangers on the street? We offer that service during stressful revision and exam periods — just walk through central campus if you want to run into members of Humans United: Giving Support (HUGS). Students nationwide are very big on community service, and many institutions have a center dedicated to just that. Alternative Spring Breaks aren’t just popular because they might get you to Puerto Rico for a week in March — people genuinely enjoy giving back to the world around them.
Athletics are also a huge part of the lifeblood of many campuses, and they make it really easy to meet friends and get involved. Even if you aren’t a D1 athlete, you can still try out for or walk onto club (externally-competing) and intramural (internally-competing) sports teams. If you’re headed off to UMass Amherst and want to get some exercise in an unconventional way, try your hand at Quidditch. Want to LARP? (If you know what that acronym stands for, you’re probably already planning on doing it.) Harrisburg Area Community College in Pennsylvania has its own LARP-ing squad — go on an adventure with them! And, of course, if you’re like me and you’re a self-made super-fan, even just attending a major sporting event (such as a basketball or football game) and screaming yourself hoarse alongside hundreds (or even thousands!) of your classmates doing the exact same thing can be a really huge rush. Nothing in the world makes me more ready to sing Dropkick Murphys songs at the top of my lungs than a mention of the BC Eagles.
In sum, get involved — you’ll make amazing friends and have amazing experiences, and it’ll make your college years as worthwhile as possible! And when it’s time to start looking for jobs, being able to boost your résumé with a list of activities will help you stand out to employers. As someone who got employed before she even graduated, trust me on this one — doing things gets you places.
#4: DON’T skip classes.
Okay, this is another one of those guidelines where there are definitely some exceptions to the rule. If you have the flu, by all means, get some rest. Don’t be Patient Zero and infect all of your classmates — that’s not cool at all. But if the reason why you’re still sitting in bed and staring up at the ceiling, debating whether or not to attend class on a given day, is because you “don’t feel like it,” I strongly encourage you to just get up and go. For starters, classes are expensive, no matter what kind of college or university you attend. Skipping even one class for essentially no good reason isn’t fair to whoever’s financing your education!
And speaking of an education, that’s why you’re going to college in the first place — don’t pass up on any learning opportunity while you’re there. College professors are world-class, top-of-their-field, award-winning researchers, scientists, Pulitzer Prize winners, MacArthur Fellows, you name it. Getting to know them and networking with them could lead to obtaining funds for your research on antibodies (a current project being led by a professor at UCLA) or your dream internship (Virginia Tech can take you all the way to Antarctica). You might feel lost in a large, lecture-style course, but by showing up to your professor’s office hours, you could end up meeting someone who will become an invaluable mentor to you (or at least write you a good recommendation letter for your summer job). Especially if attendance isn’t mandatory — making a noticeable effort in class will help you stand out in any professor’s eyes.
You’re bound to dislike (at least) one of your instructors at some point or another during your college career — I certainly did! — and that might be your incentive for cutting class. But don’t let it be — you’ll just be hurting your education… and yourself.
#5: DO check yourself before you wreck yourself.
Like #3, this one might seem pretty obvious, but it’s really, really, and I mean really important. I’m not about to tell you to avoid parties like the plague, but I am going to tell you that when it comes to certain aspects of college life, err on the side of caution. You’re at a point in your life when you’re more independent than you’ve ever been before, and that independence will allow you to make choices that haven’t been available to you previously. In high school, I had a curfew of 9:00 PM each night. But once I got to college, I chose my schedule — that was something I did on my own, without any input from my parents. Between working as an RA, performing with Pep Band, and studying (but mostly eating spinach and artichoke dip) at one of BU’s late night dining locations, I was usually out well past midnight on any day of the week. My busy schedule had a noticeable effect on my sleep cycle, which, in turn, didn’t do me any favors when I had to wake up the next morning at 6:00 AM for my internship, and it did cause me some level of added stress, whether I was planning a large-scale Residence Hall Association event or requesting funds for my club from the notoriously stingy Student Activities Office.
There were so many more things that I wanted to get involved with while I was at school, but if I had stretched my schedule any further, I knew that I would be hindering rather than helping myself. To do all of my activities, I did sacrifice my well-being, but within reason. So, in general, I encourage you to think wisely about your choices as you strike out on your own, but don’t allow some thinking to get in the way of having fun and doing the things that you love to do. College should be a “work hard, play hard” type of time for you — after all, it’s a learning curve on all fronts, not just academically. Get out there and be social — just don’t hurt yourself along the way!
