Freshman Change Management
The degree and nature of change during your freshman year of college varies depending on the size of the college, its distance from parental units, and whether or not the student lives on-campus, off-campus, or at home. If you come from a large high school, then trot off to a private college that has 900 students or so, then you’ll have to adjust to a situation where everyone knows both you and your business. In that case, it’s best to learn the art of discretion. If you come from a small or moderate-size high school and go to Megastate University, with a student population of 50,000 or more, you’ll have to adjust to anonymity.
Although it is important despite the size of the school, it is especially critical for the students of large universities to learn how to network and build support systems. The stronger the support, the better your chances are for survival, not just during freshman year, but throughout your college career, and years after that. If you totally lack social skills, the best place to start is with your advisor, or favorite professor. Take advantage of their office hours. There are ten bizzilion campus organizations, one of them has to involve something you’re into, whether it’s a sport, artistic endeavor, politics, or Star Trek.
Students living at home still undergo changes, as increased demands are made on their time and attention. Hopefully, mom, dad or other family members will be around. High school buddies, especially those who went away to college, might drift away, however. If any of the above is important to you, it might be worth your while to keep in touch. Phone calls will do in a pinch, but they can get to be rather expensive. E-mailing is cheap and it does the trick, especially if you can add photos or live video and sound. If you really want to impress someone, however, remember this simple fact: everyone loves getting snail-mail.
Those students living in a dorm might find it difficult to adjust to a roommate. It’s one thing to have to share a bedroom with a younger sibling, but it’s another to do it with a complete stranger who might turn out to be your total opposite. It’s a good idea to spend some time getting to know each other, and negotiating the use of space. Hash out such issues as how clean the room should be, what music is acceptable after what hour, strategies for privacy, and so on. It’s also important to mark your space. A good way to do this is to decorate some aspect of the room with photographs of family and old friends. That serves the added purpose of cutting down homesickness.
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