How to Survive Freshman Year

Summary of How to Survive Freshman Year

Adjusting to Change:

• Transition from high school to college brings discomfort and challenges.

• The first steps in anything new, like college, are often the hardest.

• Adapting to new schedules, expectations, and responsibilities is key to success.

Making Friends:

• Building friendships can help both socially and academically.

• Join clubs, participate in sports, and attend events to meet people.

• Conversation skills are important for making connections and will be useful in future careers.

Building Relationships with Professors:

• Talking to professors can enhance your learning and lead to opportunities (scholarships, clubs).

• Building relationships with professors, especially those in your major, is crucial for long-term success.

Managing Health and Nutrition:

• College can lead to poor eating habits due to busy schedules and bad dining hall food.

• Stock up on nutritious snacks like granola, Greek yogurt, and overnight oats.

Navigating Dorm Life:

• Essential dorm items include a shower caddy, shower shoes, a fan, air purifier, sleep mask, and blackout curtains.

• Investing in a good computer will make academic life much easier.

Taking a Rest Day:

• Schedule one rest day each week.

Effective Scheduling:

• Make to-do lists and prioritize tasks by urgency and time required.

Managing Classes:

• Focus more on classes related to your major; it's okay to spend less time on general education courses.

• Prioritize learning the material that will be foundational for future courses.

Pursuing Side Projects:

• Explore personal or career-related side projects to gain practical experience.

• Side projects can enhance your resume and reignite your passion for your major.

Creating Playlists:

• Make different playlists for studying, working out, and daily use.

• Update playlists each semester to keep your motivation fresh and track your changing music tastes.

How to Survive Freshman Year

The first year without a doubt is the hardest year for people in college. Unfortunately, there is no formula to fix this. But you can stop some of the effects. For everyone, the first year can be difficult in different ways. Some may make friends, others keeping up with classes. Some people may have trouble keeping a constant schedule. For myself, it was to keep up with classes and meet friends because of the pandemic in 2020 and the downstream effect. The real question is how to deal with this and make it through. I will explain this and more in the following post. 

Adjusting to Change:

To start out, part of the reason for the discomfort and distress is you were very comfortable with your place in high school or wherever you were before entering into college. So, when your life utterly changes to every little detail from your life before. You must react to this good or bad. There are growing pains with this process which is lesson number one from college… Since you were used to the workload of high school. It may not have been difficult compared to how college feels now. You probably had a transition period from middle school to high school and this has long passed you and you vaguely remember the problems. However, likely, the problems were not as apparent as they now show themselves in college. This makes college that much greater because the stakes are higher now that there may be skin in the game of pulling out loans and your savings. You will find that the stress from college, whatever it may be will cause many of your classmates to change majors if not drop out. They will be missing a valuable lesson coated in this set of terrible circumstances. Which is the first lesson of college. The first steps in anything new will most certainly be the hardest to learn and understand. This lesson can be applied on a small scale to your study sessions or at large to the whole concept of college itself. The sooner you learn this lesson the sooner you can take steps to achieving your goals in college. 

Making Friends:

The next problem to solve is making friends. Making friends in college can help you with your studies by finding people in your classes who are smarter compared to you. It should be thought of this way in some cases if you're really struggling. Also, it can be thought of in the inverse relationship to help someone else out in your class. This can be a net positive for both of you. You make a friendship and they get extra help with studying as well as a friendship. Eventually, you can build yourselves up and find what each other is missing. Making friends also doesn’t have to be as complicated as the statement above. Go and find clubs and intramural sports. Then talk to people at these events. If you don’t like talking or don’t want to tell you don’t have to. However, how do you expect to meet people and become friends without striking up a conversation? Oddly enough this is an important skill to have. There are plenty of possibilities where you must make conversation with strangers. Think of the first day of your job after college. You probably will not know most of the people there. The point is to make friends you must get out there and it may take time. Another option is to go to the gym… Yes, it may be scary but generally, people don't care what you're doing and are pretty friendly. Many people at the gym will give you advice if you ask and it's an ice break to start talking to someone and maybe make a friend. Also, a lot of people at the gym tend to go at the same time every day so odds are you will see them and can strike up a daily conversation for a couple minutes or so. 

Building Relationships with Professors:

Adding onto having conversions. To make the first year semester and following semesters easier. It is important to talk to your professors. This will pay off in your learning of your class but also in real value in that they can give you scholarships that are more suited for your resume to apply for. Additionally, you can use your professors as a resource for what is happening on campus. Like joining a club. Many of the professors are advisors to clubs and will steer you in the right direction or maybe just try to get you to join the one they advise. The action of going to talk to your professor is greatly underutilized in college. It also seems like a last resort for help. Which is not the correct action you have to build that relationship with your professors. Especially the ones that teach the classes in your major since you will see them a lot though your college career. 

Managing Health and Nutrition:

Expanding on every little thing changing in your life when you start your first year. What really comes to mind at some points is the quality of your food. A lot of people maybe rush in the day while in college to not sit down and eat let alone make a quality meal for all the meals of the day. But this is only part of the issue. The food that the food services provide is usually not that great or healthy. I suggest taking the stress off with quick good meals to supplement some of your food service meals. For example, get some high-protein granola to have as a snack or small meal. Bring good granola bars around with you as well. If you have a mini fridge. I suggest getting Greek yogurt. Also, overnight oats are a good option as well for breakfast, especially if you have a smaller appetite in the morning. The food you buy doesn’t need to be a lot but just have something actually good for you. I do understand that not all food halls are the same and some colleges have better ones and others have worse. It's all up to your preference. 

Navigating Dorm Life: 

Dorm life can also be a change and make life much more annoying. Everything from unclean bathrooms and showers. Especially if you have a communal bathroom. But there are also noises and out-of-unit Laundry, maybe a roommate you don’t know. It can be an adjustment to figure out a course of action. To start with if you do not have in-unit showers I would get a shower caddy for all your soaps and toiletries. It is a pain and a major inconvenience if you forget things like a towel and fresh clothes. Not to mention if you have started showing. A caddy is 100% a must-have on your college dorm list even if you want to be cheap. Another item is shower shoes given that you may be sharing a bathroom. I also recommend a fan and air purifier for white noise and to cool off the dorm room. It can be very loud at times with people having very odd schedules. In addition to the fan, I would get block-out curtains or sleep masks. I still use sleep masks and have found a difference in how well I sleep when using them. Another must-have for dorm life and college in general is a good computer. It will make your life so much better to not cheap out on a computer. It is so annoying to have to do homework assignments and then have your computer freeze up. I know good computers are a lot of money, however, you will spend a lot of time on your computer and if you take care of it, you will have it after college. 

Taking a Rest Day:

I also recommend having a rest day where you do not work on any of your schoolwork. It is so easy to work in school all day every day. Since school never stops once the semester picks up. It may be difficult to get this to work but it is one of the most important things you can do for yourself to make it through the first semester and the first year. You may have to do some planning and scheduling to achieve this. Also, some semesters may be easier than others given the workload. As you get better at managing your time you will see more free time in your schedule and have a better balance with school, studying, and social life. Later, in other blogs, I will go over scheduling and provide examples. 

Effective Scheduling:

Make a list of all the items you must do. Rank them by most urgent and another ranking them by the most time it will take you to do it. Obviously, the assignment that is due in three hours is going to take priority over all other items. But if you start to see items pop up to take a long time and are increasingly urgent. You may want to tend to them sooner rather than later. Doing this will allow you to be effective with your time and don’t forget to list items like study time and club tasks if you are on board. Of course, keep a calendar as well. But the list is a big key since it allows you to focus on what really needs to get done and what can wait. It also holds you accountable and makes you do the task that is of the most priority and not pick the task that is the most fun because you are pushing off what you need to get done. It is also satisfying to cross off these items when they are done. 

Managing Classes:

This leads me to how to effectively spend time in classes that you have in the semester. This will take practice. Since you don’t fully know what's important or not. But I would suggest if you needed to spend less time in classes you do so in your general classes and not your math and engineering-based courses if you were an engineering major. It is ok to get a B or a C in your college writing class if it's not part of your major and the college is making you take it. What you want to do is fully learn the information that will be built in other classes so you know enough to not struggle in the next level of the curriculum. Yes, all classes are important to get value out of them but sometimes you must cut the extra out and find what is acutely important. So, you don’t drown in the semester. 

Pursuing Side Projects:

On top of finding your way through college life, I recommend finding what you would like to do. Like a side project if you have time. Since college in your major will not apply what you are learning to the “real world” you must do this yourself. This will be a good resume builder and a great topic to talk about in interviews. You will need this since it is hard to get an internship coming out of your first year of college. It also is an effective way to find what you love about the major and why it is worth sticking with your degree. It is up to you in college to find what you are interested in and no one can do that for you. Also, many majors have a final project at the end of your college career but this is not particularly interesting many times, and the college standards kill a lot of the fun on the project. 

Creating Playlists:

I recommend making a playlist for yourself. really multiple playlists. I would make a playlist for typical use and then for studying. However, for studying I would not use this all the time. The playlist would be used for applications when you are sick of studying but need to still do more studying to get the grades you want. So this will make the act of studying a little more enjoyable. Another playlist I would make is one for going to the gym or a different playlist to your general one so the songs don't get to you. A lot of times as well they play music if you're studying in the Student Union but it's on a track and you get sick of these songs. I recommend trying to make a new playlist each semester. You can always go back to the old playlists later if you stop liking one. It's also cool to see your music tastes change.

Conclusion:

Hopefully, this information will help guide you through your first year of college. It is important to keep in mind that everyone will struggle the first year but in different ways. Learning many of the basic lessons early is the key to success when starting out your college career. But keep an open mind when you're at school and you will make it through to the end. Lastly, if you want more content consider applying to the email list to get a reminder. I will be covering a lot of different topics and even example problems for math, science, and other subjects. 

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