If you got into college and you’re going to start your freshman year soon, congratulations are in order.
You’re going to embark on a journey that should not only teach you about academia but will also hopefully open your eyes to new and interesting people with whom you will interact.
You can often meet individuals from all kinds of backgrounds who will have opinions different from yours.
Freshman year can overwhelm some people, though. We’ve compiled four great tips to help you get through this first year as easily as possible.
1. Find Out About People You Meet with a Background Check
When you meet new people freshman year, you might become fast friends with some of them. You might consider dating someone you meet as well.
College affords many opportunities for romantic interludes or expanding your friend group.
You may want to find out more about a person before asking them out on a date or opening up to them platonically. Information.com has a free search engine you can use to find out about someone you meet. All you do is type in their first and last name, and this tool goes to work finding out what it can about them.
You can often learn even more if you have this person’s physical address, phone number, email, or other information.
You might learn that this person has a criminal background and they did something disturbing that may prohibit you from wanting to get any closer to them. You may find they have a spouse already, so you don’t want to date them.
Doing your due diligence about a person you’re going to date or befriend often happens these days. You can take advantage of these free tools and inform yourself before you decide to hang out with this individual again.
2. Stick to a Gym Routine
You might have heard the term “the freshman fifteen.” It means the fifteen pounds some freshmen put on when they start eating school food or fast food if you have a burger or pizza place right there on campus or somewhere close by.
If your school has a gym, try to get a membership. You can probably get a discounted one as a student.
Create a gym schedule for yourself and stick to it. You’ll probably want to go two or three times per week, if not more.
The gym sessions might tire you out a little since you have to fit them in around your classes, studying, and maybe spending time with new friends.
However, you’ll feel better if you’re working out and combating the freshman fifteen. You might use this time to transform your body after high school if you want to do that.
3. Watch Your Alcohol Intake
Some college freshmen arrive on campus at the age of eighteen or nineteen. In the US, you can’t drink alcohol legally yet at that age. Still, you’ll probably find alcohol readily available at some parties you attend.
You can choose to abstain from alcohol if you’re underage. You might think it’s a harmless vice, but the police can still bust a college party and detain or arrest you if you’ve consumed alcohol and are not twenty-one yet.
If you do decide to experiment with alcohol, at least limit your consumption. You will quickly find that testing your limits in this area can cause missed classes and hangovers the next morning.
You might even black out and not know what you did the previous night. That kind of behavior can lead to alcoholism if you’re not careful, and that’s not why you went to college.
4. Stay in Touch with Family
You might feel lonely or homesick if you go off to college in a different city or state from where you spent your life up to this point. Maybe you have some family members in your new city, or perhaps you don’t know anyone at all.
Either way, you’ll likely want to stay in touch with your relatives during your freshman year. You should call home at least once per week or more if you need to hear a friendly voice.
You can call your parents or siblings on the weekends or weeknights if you want to talk to them about what you’re experiencing.
They can support you if you’re not adjusting well during the first few months. You’ll often find that they can cheer you up if you’re feeling down, and you’ll adapt to your new surroundings in time.
