Actual good first-time college student advice:
- Wear jeans/pants that “breathe” and bring a sweater, even if it’s scorching hot out, until you know which building blasts the AC to 60 degrees F and which feels like a sauna
- Backpacks with thick straps are your friend! Messenger bags are cool and all but if you’re commuting with a lot of stuff, symmetrically styled backpacks are better for your back
- You are your own person and you can walk out whenever you need to or want to, so long as you’re not disrupting the class. Meaning you can go to the bathroom without permission, take a breather if you’re anxious, answer an important phone call, etc.
- If you don’t like the class on the first day, if you can- DROP THAT CLASS AND TAKE ANOTHER ONE! It’ll only get worse from there!
- If you can, take a class outside your major; it’s a good break from your expected studies.
- You are in charge of your schedule. Your adviser and guidance counselor is there to ‘advise and guide’ but if you don’t like certain classes and you can substitute for others, that’s your choice.
- Consequently, if you are changing anything drastic in your plan, talk with your adviser and instructors.
- Pay attention to your credit hours and grades. Never leave this to the last week of school, you will be sorry and stressed beyond belief!
- Unless it’s a lab book or otherwise specified, go to the class for a week or so before buying an expensive textbook. Some classes, while having it on their required list, do not actually use the textbook a whole lot and you might find some of it scanned online. Rent if you can or buy used online (schools actually don’t give discounts). Use your best judgement on what you think you need.
- Tell the people who go up to you selling or advertising things you are not interested in that you are in a rush to class and don’t have time to listen to them. It’s less rude and they’ll leave you alone.
- The smaller the class, the better it is to have some sort of acquaintanceship with a couple classmates. They might save your ass if you are absent one day or need to study. And talking with them makes the time go by faster without it being so insufferable.
- You don’t need to join a club or sport, but internships are cool and useful!
- If you can afford it, take a day off once or twice each semester if you’re too exhausted. Just be aware of what you missed and if it was worth missing!
- Your health is the most important, this goes for mental health too!! Note: College-age/upper teens is when mental disorders like depression and anxiety are most commonly diagnosed. Most schools have therapy services, especially during exam time. Look into it if you need to!
- Communicate with your professor if you are having trouble with something. Anything.
- Eat and stay hydrated. Bring a water bottle and snack to class.
- All-nighters will happen but never go over 36 hours without sleep.
- It’s going to be hard and there will be times you might think about giving up. This WILL happen. You just have to make sure what you’re doing isn’t making you absolutely miserable and/or there is something rewarding and positive to look forward to at the end!
I did none of this and it bit me in the ass every time so this is EXCELLENT ADVICE.
ADDITIONAL ADVICE
Don’t let a mental health day turn into a mental health week because you will be so screwed.
Pay attention to the syllabus and do not lose it. A lot of professors put all of the assignment due dates in there and ONLY in there.
If your school has blackboard or moodle etc. CHECK IT. a lot of professors will only post certain info there and not talk about it in class
Check your student email account weekly. A lot of it will be unimportant junk but sometimes it’s the only way professors will communicate.
Check your student email multiple times DAILY.
THANK YOU. I’m so glad i have resources like this queued up in my ‘college’ tag bc honestly i was so stressed before
Advice from someone who really fucked up their freshman year:
READINGS ARE NOT OPTIONAL.
I REPEAT. READINGS. ARE. NOT. OPTIONAL.
Put them in your schedule, read BEFORE class. And summarise it. For bonus points, come up with some questions about the text and go introduce yourself to your professor either after class or during office hours, and ask them about it. This will make them much more likely to remember you in a positive light (and possibly bump your grade up if you hit a hard patch.)
Your library will have a copy of your textbook. If you cannot afford to rent it, you can go to the library and borrow it from the front desk for a few hours whenever you need it. It is there for you, okay?
SO DO YOUR READINGS.
When planning out your schedule, make sure you have a plan A and a plan B. Classes fill up fast so it’s better to have a back up plan.
Reblogging this because when I went to college back in the mid-90s, I could have used all this advice. I was the first person in my family to go to university, no one told me any of this, and the internet was not really A Thing yet. (For perspective, there were an entire two computers on campus which had access to the World Wide Web, because it was such a new concept that demand for it was low.) This would have been relevant then and it’s relevant now.
YOU. PROBABLY. HAVE. LAWYERS. NOW. Student Legal Services are a common thing on campus. USE THEM. They can act as a notary, they can often give any contracts for internships, jobs, or off campus living a look over for you as well. Before you sign *anything* read it first.
If you’re in any way prone to anxiety around being late or getting lost, go to campus on a day before the semester starts and walk through your schedule. Physically go to each classroom, lecture hall, etc. If you have only a few minutes to get from one class to another, you can tell the second professor on day one that you’ll be a little late (bus, weather, etc.) but you’ll be there. If your route is inaccessible, you can request accommodation or plan a workaround if you know in advance. If there are long gaps between classes and you can’t leave campus (this was the case for me due to public transit being lousy), you can find the best places to sit in the air conditioning, study in the quiet, eat lunch, grab a coffee, whatever. That way, when the campus is louder and more crowded during classes, you’ll still be able to navigate.
Not sure how relevant this is still, but if you have classes where you regularly have to turn in hardcopy assignments, get yourself a little stapler you can keep in your bag or wherever. I was amazed how often there ended up being a traffic jam for the use of the one stapler in each room. It’s not just handy for you, it’s also a good way to start making a connection with classmates. Just make sure you get it back when you loan it out!
Little stapler, little staple-picker, and a little USB drive so you can plug your assignment into the printer kiosk or lab computer and print it out. At least in my day (about ten years ago), you’d have a certain number of free printing pages loaded onto your student account that you could print off in the computer lab per semester.
I was in college 2005-2010, so I’m not sure how relevant my tips are, but things I found helpful–
- Wait a week or two before you drop $$$ on the required textbooks to see if you actually need them. Some classes would ask you buy books and then barely use them.
DEFINITELY buy used textbooks whenever possible. I am aware there is some fuckery now with digital textbooks being required, which can’t be resold, with required digital workbooks also. But anywhere you can buy used or previous editions, go for it. If someone can figure out how to pirate the ebooks, go for it. Textbook prices are a scam.
Read the syllabus and note how many absences are excused each semester. I liked to save a few of those to use to skip class and finish up projects/papers when I needed some extra time.
BACK UP YOUR FILES. Get a dropbox account or something to sync to your computer and backup your files. Then if your laptop dies you can still work on your papers and not be late.
On that note, see if there’s any good student discount on software. Now that everything is subscription it’s probably less useful than being able to buy a copy outright, but no harm in getting cheap/free programs while you can.
As someone working behind the scenes at a university library, I’m going to follow up on “the library will have a copy of your textbook”.
- Books (and other resources) that a professor has asked the library to set aside for a class are called “course reserves”. The rules for checking out course reserves can be different from those for other materials–if a book needs to be available to the whole class, they can’t let one student keep it for three weeks. Make sure you know what the policy is!
- Try not to put yourself in a position where you and everyone else are trying to get the same course reserve item the night before class.
- Libraries also have subscriptions! If you find yourself needing a paywalled article, search for it through the library catalog, because odds are good that the library has paid the paywall for you.
- If you have trouble accessing something ask the library staff! Publishers of ebooks and online journals love to set up weird hoops for people to jump through. Trust me the librarians are just as annoyed with this as you are.
- Larger universities have Subject Area Librarians, that is, librarians who specialize in researching Art History or Spanish Literature or Computer Science or Sociology or whatever their area is. Talk to the librarian for your major and discover databases you never dreamed existed.
- If there is anything that would make it easier for you to use the library, from materials you wish they had to accessibility issues, send in that suggestion! There will probably be something on the library website, or you can always ask whoever is at the desk how to send in feedback on [topic]. Librarians spend a LOT of time thinking about how to get people to use the library more, so suggestions are useful, and a record of specific requests from students helps them justify the funding.
I’m not doing a great job at thriving in college but i have been to two colleges for four years total so far, and my best advice is to spend your first couple semesters taking all the random courses that seem to have nothing to do with your intended major, so you can figure it out early if geology or equine therapy or civil engineering makes your heart sing for some random reason
