About a month ago, I finished my first year in College. There are a lot of things that I wish some people had told me before I moved in to my dorm room and had to face responsibilities that I hadn't really done when I was in high school. So for those who will be going to college in the fall, here are some things you should learn how to do before starting your college journey and your new life (given you haven't already learned how to do these things).

1. Learn To Do Laundry

Ah, yes! Laundry! Believe it or not, there were people that I met when I got to college that had no idea how to do laundry. They said that their parents would always do it for them. Well, news flash....you're going to have to do your own laundry in college if you plan to stay in a dorm or apartment. If you truly don't know how to do laundry, I suggest you learn this summer and save yourself from some awkward moments in the laundry room. It's not really that hard to put laundry detergent in the machine, put your clothes in, and then press a button. And no, you can't get away with not doing laundry in college, those clothes will need to be cleaned eventually!

2. Learn To Keep Track Of Your Money

Another thing about having independence in college is that normally, you have some sort of amount of money that you have for certain necessities while your living up there, whether you earned it yourself or family sent it. You'll be tempted to spend all your cash on late night pizza or Chinese food with your friends, or get an iced coffee every single day in the first couple of weeks of school, but you will need to learn how to manage your money, otherwise, you could be put into a hard situation and I'm sure your parents might not want to have to send you money every week because you spent it all in the first couple of days. You don't have your parents around to keep track of how much your spending, or what you're spending it on, so this summer try to acquire some skills in keeping track of your money. (Just a side note: you will need money for laundry because most dorms don't have free laundry!)

3. Learn How To Cook

A lot of college freshmen usually live in dorms their first year, but that's not always the case. Learning how to cook is very important if you want to survive living on your own, and save some money as well. You probably don't want to spend hundreds of dollars your freshman year eating at restaurants all the time, so it might be nice if you knew how to cook things other than Easy Mac and Ramen Noodles (if you're lucky enough to have a kitchen in your dorm building or apartment). Some are lucky and probably will have a meal plan to save them on the whole meal situation, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't learn how to cook! It's an important skill that surprisingly a lot of people do not have, so impress your friends by learning how to cook so you can survive on your own (especially if you run out of meal swipes at the end of the semester!).

4. Learn How To Clean

Some people might be used to cleaning their rooms all the time, but sometimes there might be more to cleaning your room than you think when you're living in a dorm. If you happen to have a bathroom in your room, then you will have to learn how to clean the shower and the toilet. It's not fun, but a lot of times we find that we try to avoid these things in high school, but now in college it's necessary to living. If you don't know how to clean a toilet or a shower properly and you will have your own when you get to college, learn how to do it now. It sounds stupid, but yes, there are people out there who don't know how to do these things because they never had to before. Disinfectant spray will become your best friend when flu season comes around on a college campus, just saying!

5. Learn How To Share

This is a big one! Most of you will most likely be living dorms with Doubles or Triples (and sometimes Suites/Quads), so you will have to learn how to share the room with your roommate(s). If you're like me and was lucky enough to have your own room at home before going to college and never had to ever share a room with anyone else, this one can be hard to learn. I was so used to being able to control where things go in my room, what I could decorate, and I could control how loud I played the music, etc. You can't really do these things once you have a roommate. Suddenly the room is only half (or a third, fourth, etc.) yours and you have to learn to share the space evenly. You can talk with your roommate(s) about rules and all that, and you might be frustrated some times from having to share a room, but learning this skill is important if you want to make it a good experience. Sometimes you find that sharing a room is actually much better than you thought!

6. Learn To Wake Up Early And Not Hit The Snooze Button

This can be probably one of the hardest things to learn in general, not just for college. In college, you will most likely have to deal with early morning classes at some point while you're there, so getting up early is a skill/habit you need to get into sooner, rather than later. I know that in high school we'd have to get up early too, but it's very different when you're responsible for walking to class and for all the other things that getting up early entails in college (you don't have your parents there to wake you up and get you to school!). One of the things that I would always do is hit the snooze button so I could get a few extra minutes of sleep. That does not work at all. Most of the time my alarm would go off, I'd hit the snooze button and continue to hit it thinking I had more time before I actually needed to get up, and then I'd end up either being late or sleeping through my class. Try this summer to learn how to get up early on the first try and without struggle, instead of hitting the snooze button a whole bunch of times. It will save your life!

7. Learn To Have Fun

This one seems kind of easy at the moment, but believe it or not, there may be times in college where you feel like you're so busy with work and school and all that. You feel like you don't have time to hang out with friends or have fun. Especially in the first semester of your first year of college, you tend to want to work harder because you feel intimidated and you want to do well and make a good first impression. Don't forget to have fun. Although studying and working hard are very important, learn to have fun every so often. It's okay to take a little break from all that studying to hang out with friends, because it might even help you do better with your studying as well.