Imagine maneuvering a giant maze filled with traps, quagmires, and obstacle courses. Then imagine maneuvering it while you’re blindfolded and without any past experience in the adventure. That’s exactly the feeling many freshmen have as they try to survive their first year at college.
There is little in high school that prepares you for navigating college. “Everything about college is completely different from high school,” says Linz Hightower, a freshman at Belmont University in Nashville, TN. For the first time, you will control the direction of your future. While that is an exhilarating prospect, it’s also frightening and filled with potential problems.
There are some things college catalogues don’t tell you, but it’s this information that can help you succeed — without learning the hard way.
Recognizing these four areas can help make a successful transition from high school to college life.
The College Identity
Exchanging your high school identity for a college one is the first step in a successful transition. However, it’s also the first place most freshmen slip, stumble and fail.
Being homesick and trying to establish a college routine often causes the first panic attack. Even the most accomplished high school students can be intimidated by the enormity of the college world. New responsibilities and challenges can cloud good judgment. But you can’t go back to high school, and even if you could, it wouldn’t be the same.
Time Management
At first glance, class schedules seem quite simple. Compared to structured high school classes, college classes appear to not take much time. To the not-so-serious student, classes certainly take little time at all. With the anonymity of a campus, it’s easy to establish the habit of not going to class. It might seem irrelevant to go to class…until test time, when it’s too late.
“The most difficult part of the first year is time management. It’s hard to know what I need to do and how to balance it all,” Hightower says.
“It’s really easy to neglect grades the first year and think you can make it up the last year, but that’s not the case,” adds Michelle Thiebaud, a graduate student in psychology at Angelo State University in San Angelo, TX.
Spending Money
To compliment a new lifestyle, freshmen also can spend lots of money. Sometimes it’s not just the tuition, books, and added expenses of collegiate lifestyles that consume freshmen. Irresponsible spending and the mistaken notion of financial freedom are as equally crippling.
It’s easy to sign your name on credit card applications, stuff receipts in your dresser drawers, and lose track of where your money is going.
The Party Scene
College dorms seem like real-life versions of the movies. Weekend parties spill over into weekdays. The lines between a social life and a party life can become blurred and virtually impossible to separate.
Temptations that were easy to ignore in high school
suddenly loom everywhere. Binge drinking, drugs, and no curfews can entice, engulf, and overwhelm a college freshmen.
Somewhere in the distant future, you’ll have to declare a major, file a degree plan and graduate. In the meantime, it’s easy to flaunt responsibility and live for this very moment. While you studied poetic versions of Carpe Diem in high school, you can actively live this philosophy on a college campus. However, there is a very fine line between savoring life and being controlled by the experience.
At some point, most freshmen are rudely awakened with a realization that their college experience is the antithesis of what they had expected. It might be the day a professor springs a pop quiz. It might be the weekend your parents get the credit card bill. Or right before finals, when you’re overwhelmed by the amount of material on the test. When those party lifestyles screech to a halt, you have to face reality…or else. That “or else” is a scary alternative. When that moment arrives, it’s time to tackle your freshman year — with success in mind.
First, take a dose of reality. Most freshmen are juggling academic loads far different from high school. They’re also savoring their first exhilarating taste of independence and decision-making without adult supervision. They are settling into living environments quite different from home and just beginning to start a new life.
Ready for a game plan?
Identify your personal needs. “Form your own identity; don’t take your high school identity with you,” Thiebaud suggests. Part of establishing your own identity is deciding what you want out of the college experience. The habits you create early either destroy your college career or make it possible.
“Learn to establish a study routine,” Hightower says. “Don’t procrastinate,” Thiebaud adds. “Do your assignments as your teacher gives them, because you never know when there’s going to be a good party. If you’ve finished studying, you don’t have to worry about cramming it in before the party.”
Then, take control of your time with a calendar and schedule. “Don’t skip classes. It is very tempting, especially in classes without roll call,” Thiebaud says. “Just because the teacher doesn’t take roll doesn’t mean you don’t need to be there.”
Draw up a budget, analyze your expenses, and note your impulse buys. Managing money helps you take control of the rest of your life.
Set some priorities to create a balanced lifestyle. Active participation in college is key to your long-term success. “The classroom is not the only place you can learn on campus,” Thiebaud says. “Meet as many people as you can, do as many activities as you have time to do, and most importantly, learn from these experiences.”
Take advantage of this exciting period of your life, but recognize that your future depends on it. “Have the best time you can imagine,” Thiebaud says. “But don’t forget the reason you are there — your education.”
