I'm not going to lie, I had a really rough transition from high school into college life. Now, just about finishing up with my first full year of college, I will impart some of my hard-earned wisdom on you young folk preparing to enter into the collegiate fold:
1. If you need help, you need to get it yourself.
It is completely okay to admit you need help. College is extremely difficult, and you will not do as well as you did in high school. Teachers are also not obligated to help you. The professors I have had this year were all amazing and were able to help me through times when I needed it. However, that is only because I told them my situation and how they could help. Use office hours, study with friends who may know more about a subject than you and use all of the resources that are available to you.
2. You don't need to be the "typical" college student.
I know when I first got to college I felt some slight societal pressure to become the "typical" college student. What I mean by this is that I felt some pressure to go out to parties, drink and do typical college stuff. However, if that's not your cup of tea and you would rather stay in and watch a movie, do that. You don't need to stay friends with the people you become friends with at the beginning of the year. As you meet more people at the school you will naturally find people who you want to become friends with. I didn't become friends with one of my best friends here until about halfway through the second semester. And don't worry, there are always more people to meet, even at a small school.
3. You don't need to be best friends with your roommate.
This one is pretty self-explanatory. If your roommate isn't someone who you would normally hang out with, that's perfectly fine. You aren't obligated to spend any time with them if you don't want to. There are plenty of things to do on most campuses to keep you out of your room for most of the day if you need to be. However, if your roommate is being annoying, tell them. Try to work it out between yourselves. You're living together, so you will both need to make sacrifices.
4. Get organized.
I know firsthand this one is much easier said than done. However, keeping your room neat and your work organized goes a long way. If you know what you have to do, you can better manage your time so that you can do other things besides work, such as sleep. This ties in well with time management, which is very hard to learn, but also completely necessary in college. If you do not manage your time you will end up putting off everything until the last minute and the work will just pile up, which nobody wants to deal with.
5. Sleep is kind of important.
If you're anything like me, during your first semester you are going to think you're larger than life and end up staying up legitimately all night to finish a paper due the next morning. Then you're going to end up taking a "short 5 minute nap" and missing your classes that day. Even if you did go to your classes that day, you would have been dead tired and not gotten anything out of them. Seriously, you need sleep. Your sleep schedule may not be normal by any means, but once you get it down and you're able to get some semblance of sleep every day, you're going to be much happier for it. Moral of the story, you can't stay up forever even though you may want to.
6. Go to class.
Sleeping in will definitely be tempting at times, going along with my previous point. However, you need to learn to beat your temptation. Even if it feels like you aren't doing anything during class and it would be perfectly fine to skip that day, you are undoubtedly going to miss something. Plus, class attendance is usually factored into possible participation grades, which are usually used as GPA-boosters. You don't want something designed to help you pass a class be the thing that makes you fail.
7. It is okay to drop a class.
In high school, once you were in a class you were in it for good. In college, you have a quite large are of time where you can drop a class without it negatively affecting your GPA. Now, I wouldn't recommend doing this too much, as you do need a certain amount of credits to graduate, but if the class is going to end up doing more harm than good to your college career, then it is a perfectly viable option to drop. A 'W' on a transcript is much easier to explain than an 'F.'
8. Become friends with professors and advisers.
Most professors will work with you if asked. They want to help you, or else they wouldn't be teaching in the first place. Advisers are also there to help. That is literally their entire job. If you need help managing time, getting organized, finding a tutor, or almost anything else you should definitely ask your adviser for help. They will know what resources are available on campus and how to best utilize them to help you.
9. Get involved on campus.
College is an amazing place. You will be given tons of opportunities that others may not ever get the chance to do. Take advantage of as many as you possibly can. Another positive of this is that some of your time will be taken up. You are going to have an exorbitant amount of free time in college, and a lot of people struggle to fill it all and because of this end up putting off due dates a lot more than they really should.
10. Find a balance.
You need to find the balance of work and play that is right for you. If you know you need two hours of alone time a day to stay sane, make time for it. Set priorities every day and hold yourself to them. You don't need to set aside the same time for things as others. You need to find what works for you. Everyone is different, and this is one of the most important aspects of surviving in college.
