Advice for Incoming Freshmen
This piece was originally published on Medium.
The summer after your senior year is fun, full of excitement and a new type of freedom you’ve never experienced before. But now the fall is inching in, and your short life free from academic responsibility is coming to a close.
You’ll be moving to a dorm in a few weeks. You’ll be on your own, living the full, college experience. But you haven’t yet learned what that even means. So you’re terrified — or at least a little nervous. And of course you are. Your life is about to change for good. Hopefully, it’ll be for the better, but you really don’t know yet.
So let’s go over a few things to expect as you’re about to head out to college.
Your friend group is about to change.
This is normal. Even if your best friend from kindergarten is joining the same college as you and you’re both trying to coordinate your classes together, chances are you’re both going to find a new friend group. You’re going to meet new people from all across the world. Even if you’re going to a local community college, you’re going to see new faces you’ve never seen before who have lives that are so much different from yours. You’re going to find new people to hang out with, and this is good. You’re figuring out more about yourself just as much as you’re learning about others.
Your old friendships will still be there. But if they’re muted in color as your new relationships are flourishing, just remember that that’s okay.
You won’t succeed at everything.
Maybe you were in all honors classes with a 4.2 GPA in high school and were the president of 3 clubs, and you expect the same of yourself going into college. Or maybe you weren’t doing super great in high school, but you are ready to do better in college and keep at least a 3.5 this time around. You’re going to pass all of your classes and have a steady rate of extracurriculars to keep you busy — and you’re going to be in leadership for all of them.
Regardless of your reasons, you might be going into college with some pretty high expectations for yourself. And that’s good! Goals are important and keep us motivated, but if you put too much pressure on yourself, what is supposed to be a motivation can easily become a hinderance. Especially since you really don’t know who you’re going to be in college yet.
So when you get a low grade on that exam, or you find you need to drop a class, or you decide to back out of a club… that’s normal. Realistically you’re going to have some setbacks. And you gotta remember that’s okay. Failure is a part of life.
Just make sure you get back up even after you get knocked down.
Your summers won’t be the same after this.
As a kid, you probably spent your summers having fun. As a teenager, they most likely had some more responsibilities, but they were still a break from the stress of school. Summer in college isn’t the same. You’ll be spending them either taking some more classes or doing an internship or working full time and preparing for next year. You’re on your way to adulthood. And adulthood, unfortunately, doesn’t have the same summertime breaks as childhood. You’ll still have fun, but it will look different from how it used to be.
You’re gonna learn a lot about yourself.
College is filled with so many unique experiences. The classes you take, the people you meet, events on and off campus… all of these new, exciting things are going to teach you about yourself.
But what you can’t do is let yourself be defined only by the type of person you were in high school.
Let yourself try new experiences. Join that sky diving club, try that new restaurant, take that introductory class for that subject you’ve never even heard of. Try new things! You’re probably going to hate some of them, but you’ll learn something from them too.
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This next phase of your life is an adventure. Be ready for change and let yourself experience it in all of its glory. Don’t hold back; accept the new and you’re going to love it.
Good luck.