Attend every class. You have no idea what your parents sacrificed to send you to college, even if they’re rich. If they’re rich, you aren’t. You are there to learn, not to impress people. Shut down social media one day a week. You pick the day. Take a gym class even if it’s not required. Don’t assume that humanities classes are easy if you’re a STEM major. Find a mentor. Don’t hang out only with people of your ethnicity.
While I won’t let incoming freshmen sign up for 8ams every day (unless it’s a nursing student as sometimes they have no choice), I don’t think 8am classes are something to be avoided. Not everything a student wants or needs is going to be available between 10 and 2. Just isn’t. Balance is important. Lots of freshmen want to just play right into the major. Don’t do it. Take the suggested first course and gen eds. And pay attention to balance. A kid who prefers problems to reading shouldn’t be in all reading intensive classes, but he shouldn’t have none, either. Spread out those distribution requirements.
Also thing about reading The Naked Roommate by Harlan Cohen. Covers a lot of the topics being touched on here.
D just finished her first semester with a GPA of 3.86. She had 8 am classes everyday and didn’t mind at all.
I knew 8 am classes was a bad idea for my son so I told him not to take them. Every kid is different so it is what it is. Have your kid find your schools twitter page. The vast majority of them have a hashtag for each class. ex. UT21 or USF21 in which incoming students use to seek friends and roommates. This was very helpful for my son because he made friends before he ever hit the campus. Step out of your comfort zone to talk to people is very important. College freshman are very open to speaking with others and your first year is not a time to hibernate in your room. Explore the campus and surrounding area. Spend time at the rec center and take a yoga or zumba class.
Procrastinating is the worse enemy for a freshman. Doing your assignments when they are assigned is great advice. Set aside a blocks of time each day to do your work. Do in the library not your room so that you can avoid distractions. Make this habit from day one and your academic success will be much greater. Be open minded and know that you will meet people from all walks of life. Today it may be the city slicker from the big city and tomorrow it may be small town girl who has ever been on a elevator. My son is black and one for his best friends is from Sri Lanka. Be open minded and determined. First semester can be rough but understand most freshman are going thru the same thing. Hang in there and prosper.
yes… don’t get your kid a car… because everyone in the dorm will want to use it or want a ride and it becomes a distraction.
8 am classes would be a good thread on its own. We could argue it all day (I’ve had 8 am classes for the past year and I hate them, but I’m fine with them).
@sbballer the flip side of a car is that we don’t want our daughters driving with other people who don’t know what they’re doing, or have an unsafe car. If we send our kid to a school where a car is helpful, we’ll probably send her with her car. I’d rather have her deal with the hassle of others wanting a ride then potentially getting in the car with someone who shouldn’t be behind the wheel (for whatever reason-inexperienced, drunk, or tired).
I think the car/class time thing boils down to “know your kid and [attempt to] advise accordingly.”
On the 8 a.m. class thing: know yourself.
My kid had 8:00 classes 4 days/week last semester, and he was done every day by no later than 1. As an early bird and an athlete, this schedule worked great for him. He loved never having conflicts with his sport, and the discipline of getting up for a good breakfast every morning served him very well. He really liked having his classes clustered together in the day, since it gave him big chunks of time to focus on projects or relaxation.
My daughter, OTOH, would have been a wreck with that schedule! She’s a night owl & doesn’t focus well before 10 a.m.
I have no experience in this area other than the time I spent away.
I just wanted to thank all the posters. I found this very informative and helpful. I hope to use some of this when my oldest son heads off to college this fall.
Thank you.
My freshman came home for break with eyes newly opened about her lack of good work ethic when she left here. It worked out okay – her grades were good in the end – but there was a lot of undue stress along the way as she FINALLY understood what we’d been saying for years about how “coasting on your natural ability and routinely doing the bare minimum is not gonna cut it in college.” I asked her how we could’ve better prepared her (we tried!) and she said “I just had to live through it, honestly. I sort of wish I’d dual-enrolled at the end of high school so I would’ve gotten it sooner, but it’s fine.” Her (similarly bright) younger brother is currently dual-enrolled and made the first Bs of his life – same issue. He says similar things about realizing what he considered “working hard” was… not quite right. Ha!
The thing I found most helpful as a parent was setting clear guidelines before she left, and sticking to them no matter how painful it was for me to keep my big mouth shut. We are paying for room/board, but the kid is on a Zell Miller scholarship (state funded full-ride tuition which is tied to her GPA). The agreement is that we will pay room and board as long as she maintains her tuition scholarship, and how she goes about doing that is up to her. So when the tearful call came about the class she wanted to drop and what should she do, I asked her to run through all the options, then said, “I trust you to make the decision that’s right for yourself.” And you know what? She did. She can only withdraw from a certain number of classes through college before it impacts her GPA, so I asked her to be clear on that number, but she worked it out and is smarter moving forward (I hope). There is also a partial tuition scholarship (HOPE) which she could potentially drop down to if her GPA drops too far, but we told her at the outset that if that happens, we would expect her to come up with the $$ difference to cover that. We asked to see her grades at the end of the semester, but did not inquire about grades during the semester.
Other than that, here’s what we told her: Have fun, try new things, but be smart, and remember that college is your job now. It’ll have ups and downs – and yes, there was a mid-semester “everything is awful, maybe I should transfer to a different school” call, too – but there are no wrong choices, only “right for right now” choices. You want to transfer? Okay, that’s your choice. Do the research and apply, if you want. Up to you. (She stayed and worked through things and seems glad to have done so.) Don’t work first semester if you don’t have to. (She did get a job for next semester, which she will theoretically have for the remainder of her time at this school, if she likes.)
Primarily, for both kids who are very much creatures of habit: we tell them that growth requires them to be a little uncomfortable. A LOT uncomfortable may mean you’re in the wrong place, but a little is good. Try new things. You never know what you’ll find. 
@yankeeinGA Thanks for your great advice and Go Dawgs! ( unless of course you D is at GT or another Ga school.)
@SouthFloridaMom9 @Lindagraf @intparent @crossfitmama @porcupine98 @Otterma @readingclaygirl @blossom @Requin @thumper1 @mathmom @sseamom @greenbutton @raulhumber2 @shoot4moon @twoinanddone @yankeeinGA
Thank you for all the great advice.(Sorry if I missed anyone above). I appreciate your input and time. I am going to consolidate the advice into a word document to share with friends about to go through the same experience and will discuss the advice with my D17 ( I agree she may not listen but it is worth a try!)
@readingclaygirl, thank you for raising mental health and advocating for getting help.
@porcupine98, I loved The Onion article. ( I could so relate) I will share that with my friends in the late spring also!
@yankeeinGA – posts like yours are what keep me coming back to CC. I don’t think we’ll have the intestinal fortitude to stick with any mandates but we’ll try. D18 still has a lot of growing up to do before going off to college. I wish she’d go to UGA instead of OOS.
In reading the posts above, one of the things that comes through loud and clear is that you need to know your kid to give him/her good advice. You also need to know yourself and try to think through how you’re going to handle the separation so that you can support your child as he/she leaves. I love @Lindagaf’s post above (as I do most of hers!) It shows so much how the nature of support changes as well as how what we as parents bring to the relationship impacts it.
If you are worried about being prepared (both in terms of logistics and emotionally – both you and your child) , make a list with your child of what needs to be done and work on it over the summer. This could include everything from buying bedding and climate-appropriate clothing to setting up Uber and Amazon accounts to getting a computer or whatever else is on the list. It could also include lessons in laundry, talks about sexual consent – whatever it is that concerns you. Seeing what needs to be done and actually moving through it at a reasonable pace will help you avoid some of the stress associated with packing at the last minute and will also help YOU feel like you’re moving toward this (looming) move-in day in a way that isn’t going to leave your kid in a lurch… We did this, and at one point, I said to DS, “You know, it’s not that I don’t trust you to take care of all this stuff. I totally do. I know you’re going to be fine. It’s just that this makes ME feel less anxious.” And his response, “I know, mom.” And he humored me.
I think that as he got older, and certainly over the summer before college, our relationship began to evolve much more to one between two adults. We both have our “stuff”. He accepts that I will worry about him (and pretty much everything else.) I think he realizes that we are not trying to control his life and that he can talk to us for support and ask for advice, but that we’re respectful that it’s his life and his decisions. The more you can build such a relationship in advance, the better positioned you’ll be for supporting the transition, especially if it’s not going well. Easier said than done, and again, it depends on both your personalities.
If you are traveling to school and will be staying overnight in a hotel the night before move-in day, get the name of a restaurant (and make a reservation if necessary) where you can have a relaxed family meal and say anything that you want to as part of your parting. There won’t be time for that on move-in day. Too busy and too emotional.
We also agreed that we’d speak once a week on the phone when school started – this was a suggestion that I got from another parent and it’s worked well for us. Even if it’s just 15 minutes, it’s helpful to me to hear his voice, and I’m guessing that he’s happy to chat as well.
A friend told me that this is the beginning of the best years with your kid, and while I feel heart-broken still each time I say good-bye, I think she’s right.
One other little side note . . . we checked in at the dorm about the same time as our son’s roommate and his parents. The guys could have checked in separately but they decided to coordinate so they could arrange the room, etc.
It was wonderful to meet roommate’s parents and they were/are super nice. One potential downside, though, is if you or your child is emotional. I did not want to cry in front of my son’s roommates LOL (and we live close to campus, don’t ask me why this was an issue for me). Maybe it was good they were there so I didn’t go too emotional. Another possible downside is it’s crowded in the room, but that didn’t seem to bother any of us. Anyway, think about that check-in day a little bit though of course you can never totally predict how it will go. You may not have much control over it . . . just throwing the thought out there for consideration well in advance of the big day!
My H’s advice to our son before he went off to college last year was to realize that when he was in high school, he spent at least 6 hours per day doing academic stuff, because he had 6 classes each weekday. In college you don’t go to class all day, and some days you don’t have classes at all. Therefore, if you continue focusing on your academics 6 hours per day, you should be spending enough time getting everything done. In other words, if you have 2 hours of classes in a day, then you do schoolwork the other 4 hours. It’s a way of convincing yourself to devote as much time to schoolwork in college as you did in high school, which you’ve already proven you can do. And that still left over enough time for ECs and downtime!
Stay in a hotel close to campus the night before move in and only have 2-3 people there to “help”. This requires some goodbyes to be at home (friends, SO, grandparents, etc) and provides for some mental adjustment time from home to campus so all those emotions have time to process. Also, those rooms really are not big enough for more people.
As a college instructor, I want to push back on the “don’t buy the books” right away mantra. In my comp classes, we DO use the book, and right away. When half the class is waiting for their online, back-ordered cuz they waited too long to buy it and it’s too expensive at the bookstore, copies to show up, it’s an instructional killer. Not good for their grades, either. There are reading reaction assignments right away, plus we start working on the first essays very quickly. There are some students who NEVER buy the book. It shows, believe me.
“Wait to buy the books” is a piece of financial advice, not an example of student success advice. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen it lead to a “rough start.”
Some advice from our freshman college student:
- Plan to study between classes… find a library or room. Since class times can be staggered if you wait until the end of the day like you did in high school you will quickly get behind.
- Plan to do the majority of studying somewhere other than your room. She made “study hours” and went to a community study hall area everyday.
- Do not feel compelled to do the maximum number of hours each semester. Some degrees, like engineering, have many difficult classes. Several of her friends started out with 18 hours but quickly had to drop classes because the workload/adjusting to college was too difficult.
- Pack a small umbrella in your backpack. She got caught a few times… nothing worse than sitting through a cold class all wet.
@gardenstategal’s advice is spot on, and worked well for us as well. It doesn’t mean there won’t be a meltdown or that someone won’t get their back up, but it gives you a context to work through it all.
This in particular:
“You know, it’s not that I don’t trust you to take care of all this stuff. I totally do. I know you’re going to be fine. It’s just that this makes ME feel less anxious.”
Trusting them with the information that you have needs and vulnerabilities that they can HELP you with changes the dynamic enormously.