After returning from the wild woods of upstate, my house is currently caught in the scramble of preparing for college classes. On the whole, I think I am in decent shape. But since it has been the only thing on my mind, here are some assorted pieces of advice which new college students may find useful; tidbits I wish I had known, or in the cases where I did know them, wish I had been able to get them through my thick skull earlier.
Get an umbrella
Sure, there are more important things to make sure you have before going to college. But most of those things are obvious: backpacks, laptops, writing instruments, and so on. No one talks about back to school umbrellas, though. Of the items I have added to my school bag, my collapsible umbrella is the most useful, least obvious. To explain its great use, I will appropriate a quote from one of my favorite pieces of literature:
Partly it has great practical value. You can open it up to scare off birds and small children; you can wield it like a nightstick in hand to hand combat; use it as a prop in a comedy sketch for an unannounced improv event on the quad; turn it inside out as an improvised parabolic dish to repair a satellite antenna; use it as an excuse to snuggle up next to a crush as you walk them through the rain to their next class; you can wave your umbrella in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course, keep yourself dry with it if it doesn’t seem too worn out.
More importantly, an umbrella has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a Prof discovers that a student has their umbrella with them, they will automatically assume that they are also in possession of a notebook, pencil, pen, tin of biscuits, water bottle, phone charger, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, homework assignment etc., etc. Furthermore, the Prof will then happily lend the student any of these or a dozen other items that the student might accidentally have “lost.” What the Prof will think is that any student who can walk the length and breadth of the campus, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still know where their umbrella is, is clearly a force to be reckoned with.
Find out what programs your school uses, and get acquainted with them
The appropriate time to learn about the format your school requires for assignments is not the night before your essay is due. The time for that is now, before classes, or at least, before you get bogged down in work. Figure out your school email account, and whether that comes with some kind of subscription to Microsoft or google or whatever; if so, those are the programs you’ll be expected to use. Learn how to use them, in accordance with whatever style guide (probably MLA or APA) your school and departments prefer.
You can, of course, keep using a private email or service for non-school stuff. In fact, I recommend it, because sometimes school networks go down, and it can be difficult to figure out what’s happening if your only mode of communication is down. But don’t risk violating handbook or technology policies by using your personal accounts for what’s supposed to be school business. And if you’re in a group project, don’t be that one guy who insists on only being contacted only through their personal favorite format despite everyone else using the official channels.
Try not to get swept up in future problems
Going into college, you are an adult now. You may still have the training wheels on, but the controls are in your hands. If you’re like me, this is exhilarating, but also immensely terrifying, because you’ve been under the impression this whole time that adults were supposed to know all the answers intuitively, and be put together, and you don’t feel like you meet those criteria. You’re suddenly in the driver’s seat, and you’re worried that you never got a license, or even know how not to crash. If this is you, I want you to take a deep breath. Then another. Get a cup of tea, treat yourself to a nice cookie. You can do that, after all, being an adult. True, it might be nutritionally inadvisable to have, say, a dozen cookies, but if that’s what you need, go ahead. You need only your own permission. Take a moment.
Despite the ease of analogies, adulthood isn’t like driving, at least not how I think of driving. There aren’t traffic laws, or cops to pull you over and take away your license. I mean, there are both of those things in the world at large, but bear with me. Adulthood isn’t about you being responsible to others, though that’s certainly a feature. Adulthood is about being responsible as a whole, first and foremost to yourself. In college, you will be responsible for many things, from the trivial to the life altering. Your actions will have consequences. But with a few exceptions, these are all things that you get to decide how they affect you.
My college, at least, tried to impress the, let’s say, extreme advisability, of following their plans upon freshmen by emphasizing the consequences otherwise. But to me, it was the opposite of helpful, since hearing an outside voice tell me I need to be worried about something immediately plants the seeds of failure and doubt in my head. Instead, what helped me stay sane was realizing that I could walk away if I wanted. Sure, failing my classes would carry a price I would have to work out later. But it was my decision whether that price was worth it.
Talk to Your Professors
The other thing worth mentioning here is that you may find, once you prove your good faith and awesome potential, that many items you were led to believe were immutable pillars of the adult world… aren’t so immutable. Assignment requirements can be bent to accommodate a clever take. Grades on a test can be rounded up for a student that makes a good showing. Bureaucracy can, on occasion, be circumvented through a chat with the right person. Not always, but often enough that it’s worth making a good impression with staff and faculty.
This is actually a good piece of life advice in general. I’ve heard from people who work that no one notices that you’re coming in late if you come in bearing donuts, and I have every reason to believe this is true. I’ve brought cookies in to all of my classes and professors before exams, and so far, I’ve done quite well on all of them.
