Navigating the Freshman Year: A Guide to Thriving in College

Starting college is a huge transition. It's exciting but also daunting, throwing you into a new environment with thousands of others navigating adulthood for the first time. Freshman year, while full of potential, can be one of the most overwhelming. This article provides tips and insights to help you navigate your first year of college and make the most of the experience.

Embracing Change and New Beginnings

One of the most liberating aspects of starting college is the opportunity for reinvention. You don't need to hold on to who you were in high school. College offers anonymity, allowing you to become the person you've always wanted to be. This is your chance to define yourself anew, explore different interests, and shed old labels. Embrace this freedom and use it to your advantage.

Prioritizing Mental Health

Freshman year can be overwhelming with classes and living on your own. It's easy to get caught up in academics and feel guilty about taking breaks. However, it's crucial to prioritize your mental health. Remember, your grades aren't the only thing that matters. Don't sacrifice your well-being for that extra few percentage points in a course. It’s okay, and even healthy, to take breaks and make time for non-school-related activities that are important to you.

Looking Ahead: Planning for the Future

While it's important to focus on the present, it's also wise to consider your future living situation. If you're living in a dorm and plan to move into an apartment or house with roommates the following year, start looking for potential housemates early, around January. Planning ahead can alleviate stress and ensure you find a compatible living arrangement.

Managing Academic Expectations

One common misconception is that university allows you to immediately study what you're passionate about. In reality, first-year courses can be challenging and sometimes uninteresting. First year is often used to weed out people, and the courses aren’t meant to prepare you for your future career, but to prepare you for the courses that will prepare you for your future career. Many majors don't become specialized until the third year. Be prepared to face a heavy workload with numerous readings. Grab a cup of tea, settle in, and remember that it gets better. If you find your courses really dull, take heart!

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Staying Healthy: A Holistic Approach

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle in college is crucial. Even small changes can make a big difference. Focus on eating healthy lunches and breakfasts instead of just having pancakes and heavy pastas. Incorporate physical activity into your routine. When you’re doing a bunch of readings you don’t really need to take notes on, why not try to do some of them while walking on an incline on the treadmill? This year you have a chance to decide who you will become, so please take steps to make sure that you become a healthy person.

Dealing with Homesickness

Moving to college, whether living in a dorm or commuting from home, can trigger feelings of homesickness. If you’re living at home, you’re not excluded from this. Even though you haven’t moved out, you can be homesick for high school again-if your friends left to different cities, or you just miss how things used to be, take heart-it’s normal. We all feel that way. It's a big adjustment, and it's normal to miss the familiarity and comfort of your old life. Acknowledge these feelings and allow yourself time to adjust.

Navigating the Anonymity of College

College, especially large universities, can feel impersonal compared to high school. In college, you fail a test and the prof thinks “Well serves him/her right for not studying hard enough,” even if that’s not the case at all. However, this anonymity can be a double-edged sword. It gives you the choice to engage with professors and build relationships if you desire, or to remain more private. If you really love the course material and you want to better understand it, or to network with your professor, you can talk to your professor and become one of the few kids whose names she or he knows! Then they take a personal interest in your academic success and it’s really fantastic. But you don’t have to be friends with all your profs!

Embracing Failure and Learning from Mistakes

Don't be discouraged by setbacks. Some of the smartest people I know failed their first labs, midterms, and assignments in university. It's important to remember that everyone makes mistakes, and these experiences are opportunities for growth. Embrace failure as a learning tool and don't let it define your potential.

Finding Your Place: Community and Connections

A big reason why I was scared of going to college was because it was essentially an uprooting. It was the first time I lived on my own away from home, and the first time I’d be away from the support network of family and friends I’d built in the last 18 years of my life. It’s very easy to feel homesick at college when the people you’ve interacted with for basically your entire life are suddenly not there anymore. Seek out connections with others who share your interests and values.

Overcoming Academic Challenges

College academics can be demanding, and it's easy to fall behind. It’s very easy to fall behind and the best way to prevent that is to jump off the procrastination train before it crashes. College is not like high school where you have a 6-7 period day where everything is blocked out for you. You need to have the discipline and time management skills to do work when you have the time to do it (which can sometimes be 9 in the morning, 1 in the afternoon, or 10 at night, depending on your schedule).

Time Management and Organization

Got important dates? Due dates? An important life skill (and college skill) is time management. The key to time management is to not delude yourself about how much time you have to do your work and have fun. Thus, it’s best to rip the bandaid off from the beginning and get organized by writing down ALL of your important dates (e.g. when your midterms are, when your finals are, when your assignments are due) BEFORE the semester begins (or at the very least, at the beginning of the semester).

Seeking Help and Utilizing Resources

everyone is smart and accomplished, and so no one really is. But college is hard. Knock on your neighbor’s door. Ask for help and figure out resources. talk to people who’ve gone through the college experience: upperclassmen! like AWE (Association of Women in EE/CS) or SWE (Society of Women Engineers) you will find many people with similar majors/interests who can provide advice.

Dealing with Imposter Syndrome

You’ll never feel 100% ready and that’s okay. I think most people have some form of imposter syndrome or self-doubt and that’s totally normal. I didn’t think I was good enough to get into Berkeley, yet here I am. I’m only here because I tried. I wasn’t sure if I was ready, but I went for it anyway. Doing nothing gets you nowhere. I’d recommend adopting a similar mindset for anything that scares you, be it applying to clubs or that new internship position you saw online. Chances are, you’re more qualified than you think.

Grades and Self-Esteem

Study for midterms. This seems to go without saying, but it’s very easy to fall behind and get caught up in extracurriculars or work for other classes. That said, college is hard. You probably will not get the grades you are used to from high school and it might hurt your self-esteem. This is completely normal. Just remember that grades do not define you nor do they really matter in the long run. When I say they “don’t really matter,” I of course do not mean that you should proceed to party every semester and not do any work. What I mean is that when you are applying to your first job, a 3.3 GPA probably will not mean much different from a 3.5 or 3.7. As long as you are doing a baseline level of “good” (usually 3.0+), you should be okay. In summary, it helps to have thick skin for midterms at Berkeley. It also helps to have a supportive group of friends who get you boba after each one.

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Extracurricular Activities

(Try) to join clubs, but don’t overload! Berkeley is notorious for its competitive club applications (at least, for STEM or business clubs. There are plenty of leisure clubs or performance clubs too; I’m not very familiar with their processes though). Club applications were basically College Apps 2.0. The cool part is that you can really just recycle your college essays for many of the prompts that clubs give to you. If you are able to join a club, congratulations! For me, joining Codebase was a transformative experience which allowed me to gain real-world software development experience and allowed me to meet new people/make friends/network/get mentorship. Joining AWE and SWE gave me a sense of community with other female engineers and gave me access to opportunities I otherwise wouldn’t have had, like mentorship or company recruitment events. I highly encourage you to find a club (or two) that aligns with your interests and goals - or make your own - and reap the benefits.

Practical Tips for Daily Life

Prioritize Sleep: so that you can remember what you learn and stuff you need to do. to not feel terrible and groggy when you wake up.
Campus Navigation: Another tip: Once you know where your classes are, walk to them so you know how far away they are and where they’re actually located! Nothing sucks more than being lost and late on your first day of class.
Communal Bathrooms: TLDR; it helps to have small bags to put stuff in when using communal bathrooms.
Dining Hall Food: While I enjoy harping on Berkeley’s dining hall food for the laughs, I don’t really think it’s too terrible. I think they give very appropriate portions, help reduce food waste, and cook reasonably ok-tasting food. (Except the grilled fish in Cafe 3. Stay away from that…) I’m also grateful for the convenience of cooked meals over anything else (also since I live in Unit 3, I just have to walk 3 minutes to the nearest dining hall, Cafe 3).
Calendar and Scheduling: Google Calendar is an absolute must for scheduling. Add all of your classes, their times, locations, and type (e.g. College of Engineering), career center, various campus organizations, clubs, recruiters, and more.
Task Management: Since there are other dates you need to remember besides when your classes or meetings or events are, I use Notion to separate my due dates for tasks from those dates. Notion also allows for more flexibility when it comes to adding information about events.
Tablets: By the way, another tip: Don’t buy school supplies until you actually start your classes. While I don’t necessarily regret my decision (tablets can be expensive), watching my peers do their work on sleek iPads and being able to work directly on the PDF homework assignments has made me think that maybe getting a tablet would have been nice after all. They’re portable, somewhat better for forests, convenient, and they make it easier to share notes, access course files, or submit homework assignments. So if it’s within your budget and learning style, you might want to consider getting a tablet.

Redefining College Education

“Learning as Freedom”, by Michael S. Roth, is primarily a response to recent sentiments that higher education is a waste of resources. Roth states that his opposition frequently wonder why people who aren’t going to make lots of money in their future occupation bother with going to college. (1). According to Roth, advocates of this perspective see attending higher education as “buying a customized playlist of knowledge” (1), and nothing more. In his essay, College at Risk, Andrew Delbanco, a professor at Columbia University, insists that college “can provide the pleasurable chastisement of discovering that others see the world differently and that their experience is not replicable by, or even reconcilable with, one’s own. It is a rehearsal for deliberative democracy” (350). A college education provides students the freedom to think and structures their thoughts in ways that are critical. Also, it reveals to students the importance of how others view the world differently from their own, already formed perspective. Opening one’s mind up can allow them to accept or try new experiences.

tags: #becca #college #experience #freshman #year