Author: Cinderella

My experience being a college freshman has been pretty smooth sailing so far, and I hope to keep it that way. There are a few things that I have done and prioritized to help me with this tremendous change like: learning how to manage my time, not letting fear and anxiety take control, keeping my space and head organized, and being okay with making mistakes. I feel that these are key to helping incoming freshman transition smoothly. I know how scary it is to move to a new place with new people and expectations because of my experience as a freshman. The best advice I can give is to remain calm throughout the bumps in the road because there will be a lot of those. By keeping your head up during those bumps you will gain resilience to those feelings and be able to accomplish anything

One thing that I was anxious about was getting to know the teachers and seeing if they were as scary as my high school teachers made them out to be. From my experiences so far I can say that they are great and a lot more relaxed than I expected, and that was a big relief. Another thing that I was worried about was learning my way around campus; I can now say from experience that it’s not that hard and I figured out campus fairly quickly. I was so nervous to start college because of all the colossal changes in my life, but I surprised myself with how well I was able to adapt to the change. I have shared what I believe will help incoming freshmen, I hope they will listen and have a smooth adjustment to their new life.

There are many things that a person starting college has to adjust to, one of the most important is dorm life. For most first year students, it is their first time living on their own. There are many pros to living in a dorm, however, there are a lot of cons. For me, one of the things I am struggling with is being away from my pets since pets are not allowed in the dorm. In contrast to being away from my family and friends, I cannot call my cat, Walter and snuggle him and get what I need out of our time together like I normally do. I know that this is a minor thing to be upset by but I love all my animals and miss the comfort of being around them. Another con that I found with dorm life is the very small living area. I am the type of person that cannot be cooped up in a small space for long periods of time so I utilize the spaces around campus that are used by all of the students on campus, like the various lounges that are placed around campus and the lounge that is in my dorm hall. These places have made me feel like I cannot relax, take my shoes off, and put my feet up like I would in the living room of my own house. That is one of the many things I am struggling with. 

Although there are a lot of cons that I have found in living the dorm life there are also some amazing pros that I would not trade for anything in the world. Because of dorm life, I have been able to enjoy the freedom of living on my own without all of the struggles of living in an apartment. I like this new found freedom that I have; it makes me feel like I am in control of my life, and I like having control. Another positive thing that has come out of dorm living is the friendships that I have built with the people across the hall and in other buildings. I feel a natural connection between us, and I like that we can hang out for however long we want and where we want. Although dorm life is hard for many, myself included, I can still see the positives of being                                                                                     away from home.

I had many expectations for my first year of college. I had imagined what it was going to be like because of what I have heard from my older sister and what I have seen on TV and in movies. I had expected the classes to be much larger than I was used to in high school, I thought that my teachers would not notice me because they had so many students, and I thought that I was going to have a ton more work to do. My biggest expectation was that college was going to be very difficult for me. The idea of starting in a new environment with new people and new classes terrified me.

I had expected that I would be riding the struggle bus for the whole first semester. However, I have learned that it’s not as scary as I anticipated. Surprisingly, it did not take me very long to learn my surroundings and find my way around campus. Since starting classes I have made many new friends and I feel like I am doing well with my adjustment. My classes have no more than about forty people in them, which surprised me because I thought that my first two years were going to be filled with huge classes in large lecture halls. Along with my smaller classes, I have found that my workload is also a lot smaller than I thought it was going to be. Before I came here, I thought I was going to be bombarded with so much homework that I was going to have to work day in and day out at school. However, this is not the case so far, I actually have a very respectable and very doable amount of homework that I am expected to do. I have found that even though I was terrified to start new, college is not as hard as I expected it to be.