A few tips to help you survive your first year at college
YOU’ VE worked hard and you’re ready to embrace the college lifestyle you’ve dreamed of and rearing to play harder. Or are you apprehensive about moving away from home? Revved up to party mad and get a degree somewhere along the way?
Whatever your feelings are about flying the coop, a few tips to help you out can’t go astray. Here are a few tips for a ‘newbie’ to help you survive your first year at college:
This seems like a fairly obvious tip, but it’s one that has to be stated regardless. Orientation days may seem pointless, given that it’s just someone showing you around college and technically people could do such a thing themselves. However do NOT take these days off. They are added to the calendar for a reason. It’s a lot easier to get a quick tour of where your classes will be with someone who knows the place inside out.
Aside from that, all questions can be asked there and then and you’ ll be getting the tour with your future classmates. Orientation is your first chance to meet these people and get to know each other before the year ahead. This is the time for the initial “class bonding” to be formed.
Clubs aren’t just good for making friends, they’re also brilliant for keeping a person active. Many sports teams have gym access, which not only saves you the cost of heading in yourself, but more often than not you’ ll get priority times on the machines. They’re also an excellent way to keeping fit. Societies are epic for following a hobby or passion and tend to involve weekends away, trips, etc. that can be partially subsidised by the society itself. They’re great for keeping a person busy when the college might otherwise be dead at the weekend and they help to prevent a person from becoming bored and getting homesick.
Within the first few weeks of college, you’ ll attend lectures and slowly gain an idea of what college is all about. Then your lecturers will start telling you your booklist and things you need to succeed in the course. The problem with this is, most of the books and materials needed can be incredibly expensive.
The reality of this is, students just don’t have that kind of money to throw about, so don’t for one second believe that you’ ll fail if you don’t buy a first-hand edition of the book asap. Most colleges have a student union second-hand bookshop, which will sell almost all the books you’re looking for at a fraction of the price. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, then go to the library. It will definitely be there and if somebody else already has it, put your name on the list.
No lecturer expects you to get the book within the first few days and when you do get your hands on it, you can take yourself off to the photocopier and photocopy the whole thing instead. It’ ll still be about €40 to get a whole book done, but you’ ll save yourself far more than that in the process.
Similarly, once you go into second year, you can sell all your books to the incoming first years and earn back the money you spent the year before. It’s a system that has been in place for years! So don’t burn them or destroy them once you’re done. You may just use that money to help you out once you make it to next year!