Rising freshman at UChicago here! I was wondering if any of the current students would give some sort of advice on anything involved with 1-st year student life at college?
Would be incredibly grateful for your help!
You can PM me if you’d like, particularly if you have very-very specific BJ questions and would like to avoid doxxing yourself.
Thank you @HydeSnark. Haven’t come with anything specific tbh but would love to hear some tips on about anything that comes to mind be that campus, RSO, classes, O-week and so on! If you have anything BJ-related would help wonders!
@ucbmxx Join your house facebook group, they’re probably waiting anxiously for first years to come say hi! And they can answer all of your specific questions about that house.
Go into the Oriental Institute and go to the second floor. Turn right and walk through the doors. You’re welcome.
There’s an RSO fair during o-week. The best RSO advice is to not do RSOs. Well…it’s not that you shouldn’t do any RSOs, but it’s very easy to overload yourself by signing up for everything and you shouldn’t do that. Sign up for one or two at the beginning and wait to let things settle out before signing up for more.
You’ve got a lot of room. Experiment! Don’t be afraid to take something you think you might be interested in.
Don’t feel like you have to go to every single optional activity in your o-book. Give yourself a break. Walk around Hyde Park or something. Don’t be scared of the rest of the year if o-week doesn’t seem to go perfectly, o-week is weird.
Go to office hours. Go to problem sessions. If you really like the class, talk to the professor to learn more about the subject. Do your homework asap and don’t procrastinate. Leave time to socialize, your life shouldn’t be consumed by school. Explore Chicago, take advantage of the U-Pass. And finally, for the sake of your RA, 1st week bar night is NOT a good time to find out if you can handle 10 shots of vodka.
Thank you @HydeSnark - sounds pretty reasonable!
There was another security alert over the weekend. Apparently an armed robbery on Sunday (SUNDAY??) morning one block north of campus. However, the advice given in the University email would be good for any first year student:
Here is their website.
http://safety-security.uchicago.edu/police/data_information/daily_crime_fire_log/
Ohh yes I’ve seen that one… Quite frightening to have two of them in less than a week time… Thank you @Zinhead! Anything besides safety that would be interesting to know?
Actually two incidents on 54th on Sunday - 10:15 am and 1:45pm. No weapons were displayed but inferred in the afternoon. Usually a very, very safe area with incidents very uncommon. Security and UCPD on every corner.
I’ve been on campus with my son for a week now and have walked all through the area at all hours as late as 11pm North of campus and feel completely safe. Many people and families out and about. Hyde Park is an absolute gem.
I do see quite a few people glued to their phones and not looking at their surroundings.
A large share of incidents take place in the two blocks just north of campus and the hospital campus just west of the quad… A huge number of students have found off-campus housing in the first area, so thiefs are drawn to those streets like moths to a candle, while the proximity of the hospital to roads through or around Washington Park makes getaways easy. The UCPD’s presence in these areas seems to be ineffective, and anecdotally I’ve walked through the hospital campus at night without spotting an officer on a number of occasions.
For all the fuss about Woodlawn, which many see as a scary (read: nonwhite) and dangerous area, a student will usually be safer walking from 60th to 63rd than travelling either of these areas. There have been three incident reports south of 60th over the last week, and one was a found credit card.
Current parent (and a former prof, elsewhere). I just want to emphasize one thing HydeSnark has already said. Seek out your professors. They will not come to you, but they will make themselves available, often in a variety of ways, so take them up on their offers if you have a question, if you need help, if you’re interested in the material and want advice about research opportunities or about what books you should read or courses you should take to pursue your interest, etc. Interactions should be substantive and you should be respectful of their time (e.g. try to think through the problem/issue before you go in, show up on time if you make an appointment), but most professors are actually quite accessible. As a parent, I’ve been really impressed with how much (and what good) interaction my daughter has had with UChicago profs in a variety of different departments. They’re there for you – just ask.
College is different from HS in that the student generally has to take the initiative – typically no one’s really monitoring your progress or checking in until things are looking pretty bad, even from a distance. And you aren’t evaluated as frequently/don’t get as much feedback along the way as you did in HS. So you need to evaluate your own level of understanding. Professors aren’t your only resource for academic questions. TAs are an approachable first stop. For after-hours help on a drop-in basis, check out Harper Tutors (Sun-Th evenings, 7-11pm). They’re located in a building with a cafe and all-night study space, so it can be a good place to do HW (alone or in a group) even if you don’t start out the evening knowing you will need help. And don’t be concerned that you need help – everybody does sometimes, especially when you’re being asked to do new and difficult things. Knowing what/when you don’t know is actually part of being smart!
Thank you a lot @exacademic! This sounds great but might be pretty daunting to reach out to professors from the beginning of the quarter.
It’s as easy as going to office hours! Each prof will announce the schedule and include the times on the syllabus. Think of it as a weekly open house to which you have a standing invitation. You can show up any time within the allotted period (though, ideally, you don’t come 2 minutes before the end with a 15 minute question and the assumption that no other student will already be there waiting). Profs are pretty much chained to their desks during office hours (because they’ve promised students they’ll be there), so it tends to feel more worthwhile if students actually do stop by.
You can ask a question you had about lecture or the reading (didn’t understand part, was thinking through implications and wondering if X, or about how this relates to Y) or an assignment (got stuck here, tried a, b, and c. Now what?). I’m not suggesting you make up a question just to show face – just that there’s a place for small quick questions if that’s what you have. That place might also be email or piazza or the end of lecture, depending on the prof and depending on whether the answer to the question is likely to be of interest to other students.
If you can’t make a prof’s office hours (e.g. because you are in another class at that time), just shoot the prof an email indicating what you want to talk about, explaining you can’t make office hours, and asking whether you could find a convenient time to meet or whether s/he’d prefer to email/phone.
One bit of advice about building a relationship with professors and getting help from them: It’s OK to be confused and to need help to understand something – in fact, it often helps to be confused at first if you want a really deep understading of a topic – but it’s not really OK to ask the professor to spoon-feed you something you could have learned by doing a little bit of work. You don’t want to ask a question and be told, “That was addressed in detail on pages 43-45 of the assigned reading. Didn’t you read that?” (Unless, that is, you can answer, honestly, "Yes, I read that, but it was confusing and ambiguous . . . " and then say how, exactly it was confusing.)
Professors want to teach, but it’s a lot more satisfying to teach someone who is willing to do the work necessary to learn than to teach someone who’s looking for a shortcut.
Also, don’t grade-grub. That’s poison.
@exacademic and @JHS Thanks for the words of wisdom.
Thank you @exacademic and @JHS! This is quite reassuring, will make a note of that.