<p>okay so i'm starting college in 3 weeks and i was just wondering what everyone wishes someone had told them before starting freshman year.academically, socially, or whatever, any advice?</p>
<p>be able to handle alcohol and know your limits before you start college.</p>
<p>Don't procrastinate. Do. Not. Procrastinate. Stay on top of things or they will build up and incapacitate you.</p>
<p>keep 'em coming, please! lol</p>
<p>BE OUTGOING from the start! Talk to anyone and everyone, not only on your floor or dorm, but all around! In the dining hall, classes etc.</p>
<p>You will end up hanging out with those who live around at first based on living circumstances. However, you'll realize down the road who your real friends will be.</p>
<p>Don't do anything stupid early, you don't want a bad rep. </p>
<p>Just be outgoing! Don't be left out of the social loop from the start. This is one of the few times in your life it will be this easy to meet and introduce yourself to complete strangers and expect them to do the same in return.</p>
<p>Enjoy it, it's the best time of your life.</p>
<p>"Don't do anything stupid early, you don't want a bad rep." </p>
<p>Elaborate please :)</p>
<p>I agree with harmon25 on everything they said, and would like to add:
Join clubs! they are fun and a great way to meet people. they can also be a good way to get leadership experience. I've met some really nice people this way, and some of my best friends! </p>
<p>Get a bulletin as soon as you get to campus if you don't have one already. this is where all the classes you need to take for your major are listed. Get a new one every year (or however often they update them) and keep on top of it. Advisers are supposed to help you with these things, but crap happens, sometimes the adviser misses something or they just don't know what they're doing. This will save you alot of time and hassle and you can make sure you graduate on time.</p>
<p>""Don't do anything stupid early, you don't want a bad rep."</p>
<p>Elaborate please "</p>
<p>Don't be that person who stumbles in drunk at midnight when everyone is still awake and hanging out and can see you obviously wasted. Don't be that person that sleeps around with other people in the dorm. Don't be that person that gossips about everyone else in the dorm. The reason for not doing these things is simple: word travels FAST in dorms. Everyone knows everyone's business if you let them. If you do something where other people can see (or hear) it, EVERYONE will know about it the next day. Then you will go down in everyone's minds as "the dorm whore" or "the big mouth gossip girl" or "that drunk chick/dude that threw up in the elevator" for the rest of the year.</p>
<p>^ So dorms are kind of like communities? Like everybody knows everybody and stuff? Or do people usually just know everybody on their floor, and just a few here and there in other parts of the building?</p>
<p>what if you like getting wasted</p>
<p>They're pretty much like communities, yeah. It depends on how big the dorm is, of course. If there's 900 people in your building, obviously you won't know everyone. But if they are <200, you will probably know a majority. In my dorm, there were about 100 people, and I knew quite a few. </p>
<p>We had a group of us that hung out downstairs alot, and my roommate was a desk assistant (make sure people signed their guests in and stuff). plus I knew my RA before I moved in (her ex used to live with my ex, when we were both still dating the guys) and it's her job to know everyone. Plus, our guy RA was really hot, so we hung out with him alot too ;D. We had 2 floors of girls, and only one floor of guys, so I knew most of the guys, but only about half of the girls (not just the ones on my floor). Plus we had like, hall activities that the RAs planned, good for meeting other people, tv show viewing parties (House, Grey's Anatomy, Lost) on the lobby TV, and we also had a ping-pong table and a pool table in our lobby that we used quite a bit.</p>
<p>if you're gonna get into soft illicit drugs like cannabis or shrooms, make sure to buy from a trusted source, don't ever buy from someone you don't know, and always ask for advice from someone more experienced. and inspect product, unfortunately, because of it's illegality, sometimes unscrupulous dealers will screw with their product.</p>
<p>(mods this isn't advocacy of illegal activity, i'm explaining how to stay safe...many college students will chose to do such things)</p>
<p>If you like getting wasted (I have been known to do it myself occasionally), you do it on the weekends when everyone else is also out getting wasted, or you wait until like 2 am to come in so no one is around when you stumble in disoriented. Or you just crash at a friend's until the next day when you are sober enough to walk in normally.</p>
<p>don't be afraid to try something new or push your expectations of yourself. at the same time, don't forget who you are. besides being a chance to learn things you couldn't in high school, college is an amazing opportunity to broaden your horizons and expand what you perceive as the world.</p>
<p>in high school, i was pretty shy...not super quiet, but i wasn't one to go up to someone and introduce myself. i learned quickly that if i wanted to have friends in college, i would have to look past that previous image of myself. also, i was never one to party...but i never looked down on it, went a few, and found out they weren't so bad (given a few conditions, like knowing what party it was and going out with good friends).</p>
<p>Copy/pasted from my posts in an old thread.</p>
<p>1) Go to class. AT LEAST the first couple weeks, go to EVERY class. After that you might be able to see that you can skip one or two, but in general, GO TO CLASS!</p>
<p>2) When you're studying actually study. Don't sit in your dorm room half watching TV, half doing physics. You won't learn any physics. If you actually study you'll have time to do other stuff later.</p>
<p>3) Don't just hang out with your old friends/your roommate. Make friends in your hall and in your classes and hang out with them. If you just hang out with your roommate who are you going to complain about your roommate to?</p>
<p>4) Don't be a jerk to your roommate. Set up guidelines on sharing food and stuff, and don't take anything without asking. If you all have an agreed upon set of standards for the TV, visitors and sharing supplies/food everything will go much easier.</p>
<p>5) Exercise. All that cafeteria food and studying can take its toll on your body. Go for a run, lift weights, play football, just do something. Bonus points if you actually join some sort of club or intramural sport.</p>
<p>6) Meet a lot of new people. Leave your door open when you're in your room and don't be afraid to strike up a conversation with someone before or after class. The more friends you have the better your experience is going to be.</p>
<p>7) Don't get too into the partying scene. Have fun, but don't start going out five nights a week or anything. You have to know when to work, and when not to work. Friday night, you aren't bumping up on any deadlines or tests? Go have a good time. Saturday night, final you haven't studied for on Monday morning? Study.</p>
<p>8.) GO TO CLASS.</p>
<p>9) Talk to your professors, especially if they're in your major. Go to their office hours and ask questions on anything you're not positive about. Most professors like students that do stuff like that, and will help them out. Also you get contacts/recommendations. The professors here bent the rules for me BIG time and let me transfer into my college within the university because I knew two of the three that could make the decision.</p>
<p>10) Keep healthy/clean. Eat some decent food (vegetables and fruits) and take a vitamin. Now's a great time to stop drinking pop and start drinking water. Keep your clothes and room fairly clean, you never know when you're going to have somebody over. Wash your sheets every once and a while too.</p>
<p>11) Call your parents every once and a while. They're probably paying for you to go there so it's nice to let them know you're still alive, especially if you call sometimes NOT asking for money. With my parents at least, they bug me less when I give them a weekly or so call then when I fall off the face of the earth to them for a month.</p>
<p>12) Try some new stuff. I'm not talking about drugs and whatever (Don't do drugs, you'll get kicked out of the dorms and all kinds of other bad stuff), but if you're the type of person who's sort of quiet and doesn't go out much, try going to a party. Try new food. Play a new sport. Go to a play. Just do SOMETHING new. It keeps life interesting and gives you something to talk about.</p>
<p>13) Don't go home every weekend. Don't go home every other weekend. About twice every three months works out pretty well. I tend to not go back unless there's something big happening. There's plenty of fun stuff to do on campus, and you'll end up missing a lot if you're just home watching your mom do your laundry.</p>
<p>14) GO TO CLASS.</p>
<p>15) Have fun. Really, you've got the oppurtunity to make college whatever you want to. Want to be a huge partier? You can. Want to stay locked in the library all day? You can. Want to live healthier? You can. You are actually going to be making real decisions that really effect who you are as a person every day. Just remember to keep everything in moderation and you'll be alright.</p>
<p>About scheduling:
You know if you're a morning person or not. If you are then you should get your classes out of the way early. Some people can do 8ams, some can't. If you can't do NOT sign up for them, you will skip.</p>
<p>Make sure you leave time to eat lunch. Class from 10:30 - 2:30 might get the day over with quicker, but you'll be ready to eat your notes by the time 2 rolls around. If worst comes to worst take a sandwich and eat it between classes.</p>
<p>Try not to take any evening classes on fridays. Evening classes are generally fine, especially if you only have one or you're not planning on getting a job, but having one on friday makes it harder to go out and do stuff, or to take weekend trips, or go home or whatever. Just try to get out of class as early as you can on friday. In my experience there are fewer classes on friday anyway, with way more M/W or T/TH than two day classes that meet on friday.</p>
<p>If you live pretty far off campus try to get all your classes together. If you can't and you have a large block between classes stay on campus and use that time to study. You'll be wasting a lot of time and gas driving back and forth.</p>
<p>If you're on campus you have a bit more flexibility. Some professors do run over. If you have one that has a tendency to do that talk to him after class one day and just inform him you might have to duck out right at the classes ending time to get to your next class. He shouldn't care. You COULD schedule huge blocks of classes and get them all over with, but then sometimes you're racing across campus over and over. Just try to avoid having just a half hour between classes, since then you'll be getting back to your room just in time to leave again. If you do have an hour or so you could just go to the library and study. Time management is key.</p>
<p>I've found ratemyprofessor to be pretty inaccurate at times. If a professor has a LOT of reviews that all say basically the same thing then it might be worth listening to, but two or three reviews generally don't mean anything. If you can, talk to students that have had professors before. This is easier to do when scheduling for second semester and beyond, but if you've got older friends that go to that college you can ask them. You can also use facebook to try and find people. The professor you have makes a HUGE difference in many classes, enough of one to justify taking an 8am over an 11am just to get a certain professor. Trust me.</p>
<p>Try not to schedule too much of one thing on one day. Split up your math classes or labs or whatever if you can, especially labs. Having two labs on one day would be a very draining experience, so don't if you can avoid it.</p>
<p>Schedule classes with friends if you can. You can study together and keep eachother on your toes when it comes to test dates or whatever.</p>
<p>Only use online classes if that is the only way it is offered, or if you're extremely motivated, or if the class is not in your actual field (just taking it to satisfy a university requirement) and you've talked to a lot of people that have said it is easy. It's easy to forget to do stuff when you don't have an actual classroom to go to, and it really becomes annoying to keep up with everything.</p>
<p>PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT COURSES YOU HAVE TO TAKE, AND DO NOT BELIEVE A SINGLE WORD YOUR ADVISOR EVER SAYS! This one came back to almost kill me.</p>
<p>I second what someone said about knowing your limits with alcohol, thats a big one thats biting me in the *** right now.</p>
<p>I'm not advocating drugs or dismissing them...but please stay away from the narcotics.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Copy/pasted from my posts in an old thread.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That was really good advice !</p>
<p>frosh have a major tendency to come to campus and go OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG ALCOHOL LET'S GET WASTED NOWWWWWWWWWWWWW and the excitement overwhelms common sense and the fact that alcohol is going to be around for the next four years in no short supply. When stupid things happen (here I'm talking about sketchier stuff than just walking into your dorm totally wasted) they tend to happen most in those first few weeks. Your campus probably has a few sketchy frats, and you might not know a frat's reputation before you go to a party there. Watch out, is all I can say.</p>
<p>I also agree with the wait-and-see on harder drugs. Ask somebody who is more experienced in these matters who you should talk to and how much you should be paying.</p>
<p>Another thing-- try to be as considerate as possible of the noise you're making, how much, what kind, and at what time of day. Most people aren't going to complain if they hear music or TV throughout the afternoon, but they will complain if you like to sing in falsetto at 3am or stomp through the hallways loudly. It's the easiest and probably only way to get your hallmates to hate you.</p>
<p>On that note I'll add: Hall soccer is fun. Hall soccer at 3am gets your ball slashed.</p>
<p>OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS OFFICE HOURS.</p>
<p>Very important!</p>