<p>What would you say? Any words of advice to yourself?</p>
<p>I'm an incoming freshman, so I don't have any words for myself...yet. I'm sure I'm gonna embarrass myself in some way in the next couple months lol.</p>
<p>Also, I'm not sure if this is the right place to put this thread, so sorry in advance.</p>
<p>I never did this, but I know many a freshman who did so…</p>
<p>Doing the puke and rally is NOT cool. It just makes you that freshman</p>
<p>Take your grades more seriously, have more fun, and understand that the same habits that scraped you a “B” in high school, end up getting you a “D” in college. lol</p>
<p>As far as academic advise, you’ll have to figure that out for yourself as you go along through college. Each person learns from their mistakes. </p>
<p>But I can give you one piece of advice I was told and discredited it for my first two years. I’m a junior now and I plan on doing it this coming year. Get involved. I don’t care if it’s through Greek life, clubs, leadership things, community service. Just do something and put yourself out there to meet the type of people you want to meet. That’s by far been my biggest problem. Good luck!</p>
<p>Take grades a little more seriously, don’t get distracted, actually talk to your professors (they can help you in the future) and LOOSEN UP! :)</p>
<p>Be yourself. If you have to change yourself to satisfy your peers, find different peers.
Be confident. You have just as much right as anyone else to be where you are.
Talk to professors on the first day of classes - ESPECIALLY if you are going to a large university. This will open many doors to you.
Don’t overload yourself. Especially first semester. Leading three clubs, doing varsity soccer, work-study, and dealing with collegiate academics while having a social life and keeping in touch with your parents is just too much. Something is going to drop, and you don’t want that to happen.
Don’t be afraid to take classes that are outside your comfort zone. In fact, your freshman year is the BEST time to do this.
Get a job that will teach you new skills. Doesn’t really matter which skills. Just make sure that you’re learning while you are working.
Finally, remember that everyone has priorities - yourself included. Figure out what your priorities are. For me, from most important to least important, it’s like this:</p>
<p>Family (most important) -> Academics -> Being an RA -> Being a Friend -> Working for Admissions -> Everything else.</p>
<p>For you it’s probably different - find your priorities. </p>
<p>And have fun! 
Just don’t forget that it is YOU that defines what is fun. Not your peers. YOU. So find that what that is, and enjoy the heck out of it!</p>
<p>Edit: I did some of these, but not all. This is my advice to you, not everything I would have told myself. :P</p>
<p>Don’t get in a romantic relationship.
Move out dorm when things get bad.
Study in library more.</p>
<p>Rediscover your love of science earlier.
Go to more games.</p>
<p>Find the study and party balance sooner. It’s awesome to hang out randomly with people.
The spring of your freshman year, you are going to get some friends who you’d be honored to call family. Treasure those moments just a little more.
You don’t have to be a doormat for people to like you. That actually makes people like you a whole lot less.
You’re more talented than you give yourself credit for.
You are surrounded by a bunch of smart people, and you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t just as smart as they were.
Being far away from everyone you knew since you were knee-high has its perks and challenges. You’ll figure those out.</p>
<p>“Don’t drop that math minor! And did you know that your school has a writing minor with a scientific/technical focus and some really interesting courses in women’s studies? Take some. Don’t listen to your honors advisor - you can handle that argumentation class. And don’t listen to your sociology advisor - you DO need to start Japanese 101 in the fall, because it’s not offered in the spring. But you should probably take Spanish instead, and study abroad in a Spanish-speaking country, because 8 years from now you will wish you knew Spanish. And study abroad for a whole year, not just a semester.”</p>
<p>For more general freshman things, I guess I would say practical things. Everyone tells college students to just study their passion and forget about everything else, that things will just come to them if they do - but the 1990s are over and that’s not remotely true. You need to build practical skills, and I think in your freshman year you should start thinking about what family of careers may be interesting to you and take classes to build in that area. Actually, pretty much all of my advice to my younger self in that above paragraph has to do with practical skills I wish I had more/better of (mathematical/statistical, technical writing, concrete knowledge in women’s studies, and Spanish language skills).</p>
<p>So I would encourage a random freshman to think about the kinds of skills he or she wants to know and use in their jobs (and maybe look at career boards to see what’s in demand) and then develop those skills. Writing and mathematical/computational skills are two of the most in-demand ones, with language skills being next. Although it’s always difficult to predict what language skills will be hot in a few years when you are ready to be on the market (although I think in 2004, in the wake of 9/11, we knew that Arabic would be important - I don’t think anyone would’ve thought of Korean at the time. At the same time, though, the list of critical languages hasn’t changed much. They’re currently Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Turkish, and Urdu, in case you are wondering. But it also varies by field - I am in health, so Spanish would be useful especially in my city.)</p>
<p>I plan to be a lifelong learner, though, and I’d like to master two languages - Spanish and either Chinese, Korean, or Japanese.</p>
<p>For the love of god, JeSuis, take classes to help you decide your major. Don’t just take math and chemistry expecting to have a sense of direction your sophomore year.</p>
<p>^But what do you do when all of your classes are filled with prerequisites for a POSSIBLE major–one that you’re not even sure of? And with no slots to explore anything else?!</p>
<p>Show more respect to your professors and the administration. (They may have no idea what they’re doing, but you don’t need to say that out loud…) Go to office hours. Sample a wider variety of clubs instead of going to 2 and deciding that neither of them is for you. (Rugby is actually the party club on campus. Try crew instead!)</p>
<p>Study smarter/more efficiently, not necessarily harder (although I would have studied harder)
Put academics first - it makes all the fun/recreational activities all the more enjoyable when you’ve finished your work
Explore the city you’re in - I go to school in LA and the only activity I did regularly was go to the movies, which you can already figure out is a real bummer. Go to the beach, amusement parks, restaurants, concerts, etc. It’s important to have fun and enjoy yourself while still getting work done!</p>
<p>+Be yourself, but also gain some confidence!
+Make more of an effort to make new friends. You’ll make some great ones your freshman year, but you’ll also miss out because you feel ‘awkward’.
+Become more involved in church. These are the people who you want to surround yourself with because you have made these weird choices in life like not drinking or having sex.
+DON’T sign up for nine classes! You’ll be able to handle it and not wreck your GPA, but your semester will be so incredibly stressful. Just don’t do it.
+Don’t procrastinate.
+Introduce yourself at the beginning of the semester to the people in your classes. Two of them might just end up playing in the National Championship series in D1 baseball.</p>
<p>I guess out of all of this, I get a few main messages that can be translated to advice for any freshman:
<p>Don’t try to do too much (extracurricular-wise, for me). It’s not worth it, and you’ll just be making things hard for yourself. The first year of college is hard enough as it is. After you explore first semester, just do the one (or two, MAX) activities that you feel like you absolutely need to do in order to live haha. Seriously though.</p>
<p>Thanks you guys. This is really helpful, especially for all of those new college freshman out there.</p>
<p>Pay more attention to studying. I’ve had a great 3 years so far full of fun and friends, but my GPA isn’t as good as I know it could been. Easily the biggest regret I’ve had about college, since it could limit my options for the future.</p>
<p>Cherish this year because it’s all down-hill from here.
Jk…kinda.</p>
<p>I woulda told myself to chillax; to be myself more and put myself out there.
Join more clubs! Be more social! Party more!
Also, seriously consider a second major. I have two now but it woulda been a LOT more helpful if I had started working on it like, asap.</p>
<p>Thanks for sharing all the experiences everyone. :)</p>