There are certain pieces of advice that are commonly given to parents, and entering college freshman. Find a group of friends. Be respectful to your roommate, and create a “contract” of what is ok and not ok from the get go. Go to class. Go to office hours. Get involved. Eat healthy food, and get exercise.
HOWEVER, there are also little nuggats that are less common but valuable. What are your favorites? One person on this board recently had a terrific one: go to the writing center for a paper your first semester, whether you think you need it or not. That way, you are familiar with the resource for when you or a friend are struggling down the road.
My favorite is actually from my own life as a student, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Remember that you are a CONSUMER of this education. You are paying for knowledge that you will need. If you see a need that is not met, do something about it. I elected to do THREE independent studies in college and graduate school because of this rule. For example, I knew that I desperately needed more information about how to counsel parents and clients effectively to do my job well. There was no class in HOW to counsel as part of my undergraduate or graduate program. My program (speech/language pathology) did not offer this course. I went over to the social work department, had coffee at their coffee bar, talked to friendly people in the program, and asked them who they thought would be the best mentor for a class like that. They gave rave reviews to one particular professor. I went to her office, told her why I was there and what I was hoping to learn, and she immediately agreed. I told her exactly what I wanted to learn, and she directed me toward resources. I ended up doing mock counselling sessions on video, reading articles on types of counselling methods, and generally learning EXACTLY what I needed. I did the same thing with a required course on cultural sensitivity. The class was all about the history of cultural sensitivity, whereas I needed specific knowledge on (for example) the differences in language structure in the Mandarin language. The required course wasn’t exactly a waste of time, but it was not the best USE of my time. When I went to the professor, he readily agreed to let me skip all lectures in favor of creating a resource binder of what I needed. He was extremely impressed with my tool, and I used it for many years in my practice.
This assertive “what do I need to learn and who could help me” attitude created a much more engaged experience.
Consider auditing some courses for fun. I sat in on Art History 1, and a course in Asian Art and Religion and both were great, even just going to the lectures I learned a lot.
Consider taking a mix of lecture and seminar type courses. Consider taking some courses that have work every day (math, languages especially) and some that just have a midterm and final, or a paper or two (or three).
If there are freshman seminars take one - even if it isn’t something you necessarily think you are interested in. I took one in Prints and Printmaking that combined studio arts with art history. It had a lot to do with my eventual choice of major.
Here is a geeky one – for a change of scenery, find the little libraries that individual departments might have and go study there. Like the math library or the music library. Some place old and historic with a cool vibe. You don’t just have to go to the main library to study outside of our dorm room.
Duct tape. (Back when I was in school, we just had the gray stuff. Now it comes in all kinds of colors.) It really does solve a multitude of emergencies.
Another one - ask questions. I have to take continuing ed classes and it always amazes me how everyone sits there like lumps on a log. I figure if I have to be there and pay for it, I may as well learn what I want to learn. It’s amazing how often after I break the ice other people start asking questions too.
I really regret that I was too shy to speak up more when I was in college.
If you follow @MomofWildChild 's advice, be sure to know your limits and to eat a full meal before partaking.
If your Prof/instructor invites you and other students to their home for a meal, take him/her up on the offer. Great not only for a free meal, but also good for allowing the Prof to know you better in and out of class and for LORs.
Bring a reasonably large empty backpack with you to dining halls with a thermos or few Use it to stock up on fruits, portable snacks, cereal, and drinks to get the most out of your mandatory meal plan. This will also allow you to have snacks in between meals/late nights if needed and if you took more than you need, kindly give it away to those in need*.
If your college has an unofficial tradition of sneaking in the local homeless/indigent population, that's another way to get the most out of your meal plan and perform a small act of kindness to those in need.
Your new home will not have a scissors, chip clips, straws, etc unless you bring these items with you or buy them. These items do not appear by magic no matter what impression you have from living in our house.
Try new things–it is amazing what resources there are on campuses available to students.
My boyfriend was able to learn how to operate the telescope in the observatory and given access to a key he could use any time. The heavens were very lovely.
I wanted to graduate with honors in my field but my my department didn’t have an honors program, so I found several advisors in the program I liked and agreed to be in my honors thesis committee and I wrote an honors thesis and was their 1st honor graduate in their department.
There are sometimes free buses on colleges–find out about them. There was a free bus that went between UCDavis and Berkeley and another one between USCal Park Campus and Med School.
Yes, it can be a felony to have fake ID and is at least a misdemeanor pretty much everywhere. I never had a fake ID and hope my kids didn’t either–currently both are over 21 now.
I never had one myself and IME, depending on the bar/area…one doesn’t necessarily need one to drink. Some bars will accept college ID as proof one is of drinking age(Not as much the case nowadays as opposed to my undergrad years in the mid-late '90s and before).
Granted, this did play a factor in why most of those bars subsequently got shut down by the local authorities.
Mine is not standard dorm room stuff: get a small folding clothes rack. It means you don’t have to wait for a dryer to free up, you don’t have to make repeated trips to the laundry room, and it saves money. In fact, you will recoup the cost if you use it regularly (about $20 or less.)
Over the past 3 years of being here at CC (and observing kids of friends), the freshmen who end up in the “worst” dorms (bathrooms down the hallway, tight quarters, no perks, etc) seem to be the ones who thrive. I believe its because you meet more people & there’s a sense of we-have-to-survive-this-together.
Not always. My daughter pays by the credit, so nothing is free.
Taking food from the dining room might be against the rules also. You have unlimited food while in the dining room, not all you can take with you. In fact, backpacks aren’t allowed in the dining halls of either of my kids’ schools. You check them at the front. Even when I was in school a million years ago, all we could take from the dining room was an ice cream cone. We were felons as we’d sometimes load butter onto a cone so we could bake with it bake in the dorms.
One daughter can buy a mug and take one ‘drink’ out of the cafeteria, but only in that mug. She could take soup or stew, but I’m sure 90% of the students take coffee or milk. Other daughter can take a drink and a piece of fruit.
Sign up for any freshmen adventures pre-move in. My daughter went on a 3 day bike trip, which allowed her to move into the dorm 3 days early. No traffic, no hassles.
Not necessarily for just freshmen, but try to find a ballroom dancing class because it won’t be long after you graduate before you are invited to wedding after wedding . . . . after wedding, and those skills can come in handy. I did this during grad school with a classmate, but it would have been better to do it when I had more time than grad school normally allows. I also had the president of a company fly me out to attend a formal, business related event not long after graduation where the president’s wife asked me to dance. If I hadn’t taken that class, I’d have been afraid of making a fool of myself.
Regarding fake IDs and drinking, the Dean made a really good point to the parents. A lot of us parents focus on the danger of the actual alcohol/drugs when we are cautioning our kids. The problem is not the actual alcohol - any kid knows that the vast majority of people who drink too much do NOT end up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning or getting big consequences for getting drunk. It’s honestly not realistic, and they know it. What he suggested we focus on is that it is not the alcohol that is the issue - it is the choices that you make when you are compromised. For example, driving, going to unsafe places, choosing not to go to class/study, having unprotected/unsafe sex, doing illegal stuff that you might not do otherwise… THAT is the issue. The choices. I’d never thought about explaining it this way. Maybe everyone else did, but I had “good kids” and she was my oldest.
