<p>I'd like some heartfelt advice from non-newbies for the first year at college. What are some things you regret doing and not doing? Stuff you wish someone had told you beforehand?</p>
<p>my friends at college came back for break and were telling me some stuff:
1) don't drink the punch
2) don't sleep around when you first get there. apparently that first reputation will stick with you for four years
3) get core requirements out of the way asap</p>
<p>meh...</p>
<p>also how is college different from high school?
are people nicer? less cliquier? or is it that tehre are so many people that there is no such immature "social hierachy" and evryone finds their own niche?
comments would be mad appreciated.</p>
<p>There are definite social hierarchies even in elite, intellectual campuses. One thing I've noticed is that kids from expensive private schools (like the ones in New York and New England) somehow all find each other and become friends. It might be a proximity thing, but then, why aren't kids from Dalton hanging out with fellow New Yorkers from Stuyvesant and a public school in the Bronx? Some people might attribute it "shared experiences", but I mainly chock it up to snobbishness.</p>
<p>should you really not befriend your teachers. I usually do that I mean we dont go out or anything but I love talking to them about other things in life besides just what they are teaching.</p>
<p>I don't think people on average become nicer. While obviously certain people become nicer, but at the same time others become meaner. On average the distribution of "nice" and "evil" people on campuses is approximately the same as out on the street. Except, people are smarter. So perhaps you wouldn't see their "evilness" like you would on the playground.</p>
<p>take a broad range of classes. don't limit yourself to the classes only in your major. just take things that are interesting to you or that is being taught by a really cool professor...then figure out ur major.</p>
<p>my school is so big there it is impossible for it to be clique-y. everyone has their own groups of friends, but that's only natural. it's not like people are separated or that groups don't overlap</p>
<p>People definitely become more segregated.. according to race and such. It's pretty lame if you ask me, and maybe only happens at the college I'm attending. But the people are alright, since I go to a school where 95% of the students are devoted to studying and top-nerds we all know that studying is our #1 priority and such. So, its not like high school where there are dumb kids in your class who make stupid comments and ask dumb questions and etc.</p>
<p>Get involved in your school's student life. Going to class is good, but when you look back at your time in college, you will want to remember something other than your classes.</p>