How to Survive the First Year of College

Freshman year of college is survival of the fittest

The first year of college can be a tough one, since so much is changing in your life at the time. For a lot of people, going to college is the first time they are really out on their own with no adult supervision or help – you can see why tips for how to survive in college would be useful! Everything from being able to look after yourself to finding out how to navigate around the college is very important, and so this article will spend time giving you some basic ideas on how to survive that all-important first year.

Things Every Freshman Student Should Know

Go to Orientations

Colleges will all offer various orientations for new students. You should make sure to go to all of them, or at least as many as you can. The orientations will cover a lot of material that you wouldn’t otherwise learn, and so it is important not to miss them.

Orientations can be held for different things too – the ones we all think about are the class orientations, but there are orientations for clubs, for sports, and for most anything else. Find the ones you are interested in, and make sure that you go to them.

Meet People

Ah yes, this one heads the college survival tips list on a thousand websites for a very good reason. Most people at college will have a roommate, so you should start by getting to know them – you will be spending a lot of time with them after all, and who knows? This could be the college roommate that you spend the rest of your life calling your best friend, cliché as it sounds.

Beyond that, getting to know people on your floor, in your dorm building generally, and also in your classes, is a very good idea. Knowing people means that there is less chance of feeling alone, which is a problem reported by a lot of first-year college students.

Explore

Exploring is good for two reasons: one, it helps you understand where everything is, is a valuable tip for college, and two, it works into our previous tip.

Exploring to find out where everything is, is a useful thing to do. Getting lost in your first days at college will not help your nerves, nor will it look good to professors. Exploring helps you figure out where everything is, and lets you get a head start in finding your classes.

Exploring might also help you meet people, particularly if you do it early enough. Just exploring alone will expose you to more people than if you simply sat in your dorm room until the classes started. You will meet more people simply by walking around – people are usually willing to help others who get lost – and you might also chance into a meeting, or another orientation, which will give you insight into an area or subject that you never considered before.

Expert Advice for First Year Students

Organize Yourself

One of the biggest transitions between school and college is that nobody holds your hands anymore. In school, attendance is mandatory up to a certain point, and teachers will give you assignments systematically throughout the year, This does not happen in college – often the work is all assigned at the very beginning of the year, and it is up to you as the student to keep up, and have everything delivered on time. This also applies to classes – nobody will make you attend your classes in college, so it is up to you to keep going. Staff at Perfect Essay recommend that you take extra care to note down when your assignments are due, and that way you can give yourself ample time to work on them.

Take Care of Yourself

It can be easy to let things slip in college – you don’t go to the gym, you don’t have breakfast, you take the opportunity of being away from your family to enjoy yourself and cut loose a bit….this is good in moderation, but be careful. One of the best tips for college is to take care of yourself. This will give you a more enjoyable time overall, and allow you to have a better experience. Keep up your good habits, but allow yourself some treats on days off or holidays. Keep going to the gym, and you will find yourself will lots of energy to party and socialise, while also keeping up with your studies.

Look after yourself and keep yourself healthy – this will make your first year at college much more enjoyable overall. Keep an eye on what you eat, and make sure to keep drinking lots of fluids to keep yourself going.

Conclusion

There are lots of college student tips out there on the internet – this article has only looked at a few of them. Hopefully it will give people a start on what to expect from college, and inspire them to look out for more tips on how to survive their first year in college, and go on to enjoy many other years, both in college and in general. Our tips are the start of what people should do in order to keep themselves fit and healthy for the whole year. An additional advice we can give you is to try to pay off student loans early in case you have one. This will help you get organized with your finances right from the start.