Photo: uiuc.edu

Attention incoming freshmen: Now that you’ve got your social fears under control (if you missed it, see part one of this series, Conquering Freshman Fears: Making Friends), it’s time to tackle academics. One of the hardest parts of transitioning from high school to college is the difference between the two levels academically, which may have you dreading the first day of classes. Again, this fear is something shared by most freshmen, and you’re not alone. Before you begin to doubt your abilities, take a look at these tips for conquering freshman fears.

Fear #4: I won’t be able to keep up academically.

It’s true that college will be a lot more difficult and a lot more work than high school, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to make good grades. In college, after you choose a major, most of your classes will be tailored more specifically to your personal academic interests. These classes are designed to challenge you academically. If you find yourself needing extra help, there are tons of resources on college campuses that can help you succeed.

Fear #5: My professors will be too intimidating.

Many of your professors during your first year will gear the class ambiance and material to freshmen students, and understand the stress the transition to college can cause. Professors who teach freshmen are very open to helping students and answering questions both in and out of the classroom. They, along with teaching assistants, often will set up “office hours,” or scheduled times when students can come in with their questions to receive more one-on-one help. Getting to know your professors on a first name basis will ensure that they see you as not just another student in class, but one that goes above and beyond to excel in the classroom. It will also help you feel less intimidated by your professors when you see them in a different environment.

Fear #6: I was admitted by accident.

Many nervous students question whether or not their acceptance to college was an accident, and whether or not they are the caliber of student that the university looks for. The good news here is that the system the admissions office uses to review and admit students is very precise, and accidents, if they’ve ever happened, are extremely rare. You worked hard to get where you are, and you deserve it. Don’t question yourself, and start enjoying college for all of the great things it has to offer.

Photo: yourstoryclub.com

Attention incoming freshman: are you scared to start school? Dreading meeting your roommate? Don’t know if you’ll be able to keep up? Take a deep breath—you’re going to be fine. What you’re feeling is completely normal, and you’re among other students who are experiencing the exact same thing. Before you freak out and question yourself, take a look at these tips for conquering freshman fears.

Fear #1: I won’t be able to make friends.

The best thing about going to college is that everyone is new, and the living and learning environments are both designed to foster social interactions between students. The majority of freshman students will know virtually no one on the day they move to school, and find that meeting people is actually pretty easy if you put yourself out there. If you’re worried about making friends, try propping your door open during the day while you and your roommate are moving in. This will let people walking by know it’s ok to come introduce themselves and help create a friendly environment on your hall.

Fear #2: I won’t like my roommate.

Getting along with a new roommate is a genuine concern for many students who may have heard horror stories from older friends about bad roommate experiences. It may be your first time sharing a room with another person, which can be difficult for even the most open-minded of people. You and your roommate may not be best friends, but odds are highly in your favor that you will be able to comfortably share a room together. Serious problems are pretty rare, and if you do experience one, your university may be able to reassign you to a different room. Keep an open mind when you meet your roommate, and you may be surprised with the outcome. Remember, it’s a two-way street–he or she is preparing to live with you, too, and may have some building nerves, so make it easy on both of you by remembering to be open and considerate in the beginning. You don’t have to be the best friends on earth, and in fact, a simple and civil living situation is perfectly adequate for the purposes of starting your college life. With a little time, however, those initial feelings of angst will soon be a distant memory.

Fear #3: I’ll miss my friends from home too much.

When you leave for college, you may think that you won’t be able to live without your friends form home. You will miss them a lot, but like you, they are away at school experiencing new things and meeting new people. If YOU don’t let missing your friends hinder you from meeting new people, then it won’t happen. Rather than sitting in your room on Skype during Welcome Week, get out with your roommate and start making new friends. By the end of freshman year, you’ll think that you won’t be able to live without your new friends either.

But more often than not, when the time comes to formally enroll, things change. You may have taken a shot at a dream school across the country, and in return, was awarded a great scholarship. You might decide you want to pursue a pre-med degree, a major that isn’t offered at the arts school you had all planned to attend.

Finding yourself in this position is extremely tough for high school students. On the one hand, you don’t want to disappoint your friends, or have them mad at you, especially now that you might not see them much in the next four years. On the other hand, this is your future, and you don’t want to compromise it for the sake of making someone else happy.

Here’s a few ways you can open up a dialogue with your best friend, or group of friends, about wanting to attend a school other than the one you had initially planned.

An Emphasis on Your Future

One of the most important aspects of this conversation will be about what you want for your future. By explaining everything you will personally gain from going to your college as opposed to the one you had planned with your friends, they are more likely to see your reasons for taking this opportunity. The best of friends will want what’s best for you, no matter what.

An Emphasis on Your Friendship

The other most important aspect of this conversation will be about how you plan to handle your friendships. Obviously, your friends don’t want to lose you. They won’t be happy to discover you won’t be embarking on the same journey as them. Have a couple of ideas prepared ahead of time, so when they ask you questions such as, “When will I see you?” or when they make statements such as, “We’ll never get to talk to you,” you have a response that will make them more accepting of the situation.

When Your Reasons Are Tricky

Sometimes your reasons for wanting to attend a different school than your friends are far more difficult to explain than something like “one has my major and the other doesn’t.” You might want to go to another school because you want this chance to be on your own. Maybe this decision was made because you want to break away from your friends. When this is the case, you may be better off by explaining that this is simply something you have to do, and that you hope they respect your decision. Again, trust that your true lifelong friends will understand.

Don’t Do Everything Together

People get sick of one another. Even if after ten years of friendship, and two week-long vacations together, you have never gotten sick of your best friend before, but if in college you do everything together, you will. This is why colleges tend not to match roommates with the same majors. Protect your friendship by rooming with other people, or taking classes at different times. Join different clubs. Eat meals with different people. This will ensure that you aren’t seeing too much of one another, and that you’re not growing dependent on each other.

Don’t Let Your Friendship Interfere with Your Social Life

Part of attending college is meeting new people and starting new relationships. Don’t let your friendship with your best friend hold you back from doing these things. If your high school friends are the only people you spend time with, or if you refuse to go to a club meeting or to get dinner without your best friend there, you’re missing out on one of the best opportunities college has to offer! Make sure that if you are attending the same school as your best friend that you both feel free to do your own thing with other friends in addition to one another.

Don’t Let Your Friendship Interfere with Your Future

College is all about preparing for your future. You will be given many opportunities such as the chance to become a resident assistant, to study abroad, or to take on an internship. You may find yourself wanting to transfer schools or switch majors so you can ensure that you’re receiving the best education for what you want to do. Don’t let your friendship with your best friend stop you from doing any of those things, as this can often lead to resentment. Make sure that you both feel free to pursue your dreams.

Don’t Let Your Friendship Hold You Back from Change

Nobody leaves for college and returns the same person. College is about identifying who you are and becoming comfortable with that. For many, this might mean letting go of high school, or becoming something other than what you were growing up in your home town. Keep in mind that your best friend will remember your past. Don’t let your friendship stop you from becoming the person you want to be.

Toolbox

A toolbox may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you begin crafting your dorm room shopping list. After all, you won’t be doing any remodeling or installing work inside your dorm room, but you will be surprised how often you could actually use a screw driver, a wrench, and some nails. If you decide you want a different chair for your desk, or a bookshelf, you will want to have the tools to put it together. If a bolt comes loose in your futon, you will want the ability to tighten it up. You might have a nail sticking out in your dresser, and instead of waiting three days for maintenance, with your own hammer, you can quickly fix it yourself. Basic tool kits can be bought at any department store, and you can get them in all kinds of fun colors!

Sewing Kit

You have probably seen the sewing kit on your college dorm lists before and shrugged it off. When was the last time you sewed anything? When would you possibly need that? You might not even know how to sew! While you won’t be using a small sewing kit too often, it ends up being nice to have. You might be involved in a club that plans to personalize t-shirts for an event, and you want to sew something to it. You could rip your only pair of dress pants twenty minutes before a presentation in which appearance makes up 20% of your grade! With sewing kits only being a few dollars in the check out line, why not?

Craft Supplies

You probably wouldn’t think of buying fun scissors, stickers, markers, glue, crayons, tape, fabric paint, glitter, and other crafty things to college unless your major deals with children. Surprisingly, there are a lot of instances in which these tools come in handy. You will find yourself making posters for presentations, decorating t-shirts for club events, drawing pictures for group bonding games, wrapping birthday presents, and someday, painting graduation caps. With late summer being back-to-school season, you can easily stock up on all of these things for just a few bucks!

Gaming Systems

As if you were going to leave that behind! Having a gaming system in your room may seem like an anti-social move, but with the number of people who play video games today, and with some of the best video games coming out every fall, you are likely to find many people who will want to talk about games, play multi-player games alongside you, and start floor-wide tournaments.

Outdoor Games

With the first weeks of college still feeling like summer, now is the time to bring your frisbees, soccer balls, and Kan Jam! It won’t be uncommon for you to walk outside by yourself with a ball, and an hour later, have entire teams playing kickball, all of whom you have just met! Inviting others to partake in outdoor activities is a quick way to learn a few names, and as the person who owns this equipment, you can expect to be who others go to when they’re looking for some fun on a Sunday afternoon.

A Movie Collection

If you have a wide DVD collection, a Netflix or Hulu subscription, or the latest episodes of your favorite TV shows downloaded from iTunes, you can expect to be pretty popular around the residence hall. By turning one night a week into a theatrical event, with everyone taking turns bringing the popcorn and the pizza, you will find yourself in the company of quite a few new friends.

Appealing Dorm Room Decor

Your room is far more likely to draw others in if there’s bamboo on the windowsill, neon lights aglow around your desk, and a comfy carpet on the floor, as opposed to a room with no personality at all. A really awesome looking room will cause people walking down the hall to stop and peek in. It will be the place where your friends want to hang out. Make your room as interesting and fun as you can, while still obeying all of your residence hall rules and regulations of course!

Toys

Another way to make your dorm room more enticing to others is if you have something for others to tinker with while they’re there. I mean, we’re all really kids at heart, right? Someone who had originally come by to get the notes for a class they missed could find themselves sticking around for an hour because they were playing with the magnetic poetry on your fridge! Litter your room with these kinds of fun, addictive toys!

What these checklists don’t account for are the personal tasks you have to take care of before leaving for school. Like breaking up.

UGH.

The break up conversation is not ever an easy one to have. It gets even harder when you’re only contemplating breaking up because you’re going away to school. But when you are both headed in new directions, parting ways is a smart choice. Believe me, I’ve been there. I struggled with the pros and cons of what maintaining a long-distance relationship would entail. I considered making it work, but came to a few key realizations that led to my decision to break up.

It was important to me that I grow and change as a single person, not as one half of a relationship. In my opinion, college is a time when students are allowed to be selfish – they are allowed to indulge curiosities, explore what the world has to offer, and not worry about being tied down by a significant other. Not that having a boyfriend or girlfriend drags you down, but I find it can influence your decisions, and college is a time to find your own voice.

I was honest with myself and knew that if I had a boyfriend at another school, I would think about him too much and find it hard to be in the moment with new friends and activities. I would spend time thinking about what he was doing instead of focusing on my own awesome future. In a word, I would become clingy. I did not want my happiness or activities to be dictated by someone I never saw.

I cannot stress how much better it is to break up before school starts than to wait until you are miles apart. Talking it over in person and giving yourself time to heal will make the entire process easier. It may not seem that way at the time, but you’ll thank yourself later.

In the end, I am so very glad I made this decision. I think anyone who will be a freshman this fall should enter as a single unit – an individual ready to take on new challenges alone.

What do you think? Are you considering breaking up before college? Have you been through a similar situation?

What words of wisdom do you have to offer?

Breaking up can be tough, but planning for your future doesn’t have to be. Cappex has tons of college resources to help students.

Residence Hall

The first place you’re likely to make a few new friends is your residence hall. This makes sense, as you’ll be spending most of your time here, so the frequency in which you’ll be seeing the guys down the hall, or the girl next door, is quite high. The residence hall is also where the college experience begins. Before you head to your first class, and before you sit amongst an audience of other freshmen listening to speeches and words of wisdom from the president and other staff, you’ll be unpacking your bags at your new room and passing those who will be living around you. Introduce yourself. Greet others as they pass you in the hall. The first people you share your meals with are probably right here.

Clubs/Organizations

Joining clubs and other organizations on campus is one of the best ways to make friends because you already share an interest with everyone else there! Unlike the residence hall, where you’ll be amongst other freshmen and likely those of the same gender, groups on campus give you the opportunity to meet students of all ages, both male and female! Be sure to join at least one group when you start your college career!

Classes

The people you meet in your classes, especially the classes for your major, are very likely to become your friends. Not only will a like major give you a lot in common with one another, the different experiences that brought you to the same path will give you lots to talk about! Having friends in your major is also a benefit for when you miss a day, or were unable to get the last few bit of notes! While you’ll surely meet people by introducing yourself and Facebook-friending, you’ll find class friends often just happen naturally. With four years of college and all of you needing to take the same classes, the faces in your major will become a constant. It’s harder not to make friends with them!

Social Events

You’ll be surprised how many people you’ll become acquainted with because they were friends of your friends! By attending social gatherings with groups of people, you’re likely to meet many new faces where a conversation can immediately begin on how you both know a particular person!

For those who are interested in how you’ll make friends on campus, but haven’t decided where you’ll go to school yet, Cappex can help you search for colleges! By making a profile online, schools can find you, not the other way around!

Your Grades Are Too Low

If your grades are too low to be accepted to a four-year university, starting at a community college can help you get the bumps you need to transfer in. The university will take these grades into account and see your progress, which lets you apply and hopefully be accepted after your first year or two. If you decide this is the route you want to take, meeting with an advisor throughout your community college experience is crucial. The transfer requirements for universities are constantly changing, and your advisor can help you stay in the know about what courses you need to take to be considered. Planning early can be your key to success.

Location, Location, Location

If you know where you want to go to a university but don’t get accepted on your first try, attending a community college nearby can be a great way to open doors. In addition to being surrounded by the culture, sports, and students you desire, you will be able to foster a closer relationship with the university by enrolling in an affiliated institution. Many schools, like the Florida public universities, have programs with community colleges in the state that allow students to transfer in more easily after they complete two years and the required classes.

Financial Restraints

Lets face it: college is very expensive. You may find yourself in a position where you know you don’t have the money to pay for all four years at a university and wondering if there are cheaper ways to achieve a higher education. Community college is indeed cheaper than four-year universities, but they still can cost as much as $10,000 a year. If you are looking into this option to save money, be aware that it is more difficult to get financial aid at a community college than a four-year university—community colleges have limited resources because they are state funded. In this case, community college is still a good option for you if the careers you are interested in only require an associates degree. Many high-demand occupations hire candidates who have gone only to community college, and exploring your potential career choices before going to college can help you understand whether or not an associates degree will be sufficient.

Still looking for money to pay for school? Cappex can help you find scholarships!

While universities do an excellent job at educating you about campus life, there are other ways you can prepare yourself for the transition between high school and college.

Define Your Relationships

Before you leave for college, you may want to consider where your relationships stand. Do you want to be single when you leave for college? Do you plan to continue a long-term relationship? Think about what’s best for you and your future. What is going to make you happy? What is the right decision in the long run? If you can define your relationships before you leave, you’ll be better able to focus on your education and enjoying college life instead of being concerned about where things stand with you and another.

Identify Improvements

As this is a transition, now may be a good time to consider where you’d like to make improvements in yourself. Maybe once you’re in college, you would like to start going to the gym. Maybe you’d like to try to be nicer to people. You could have a tendency to lie, and decide as a college student, you’re going to work harder on telling the truth. Maybe you haven’t been single since the 7th grade, and you want to just live for yourself now. College isn’t just about improving yourself intellectually, it’s about growing as an adult!

Identify Your Core

Just as there are things you want to change about yourself, there are things you would like to stay the same. What are some of these things? Maybe you have never had alcohol, and would like to continue waiting until you’re of age. Maybe you love that you can find something funny about any situation, and that’s something you’d never want  to go away. You could love to sing, and want to identify that as being something you want to continue doing on a daily basis. Make a list of these qualities you love about yourself and keep it in a safe place. While it’s okay to change your mind about some of these things once you’re in college, you may benefit from knowing that at one point, these were the characteristics you picked to be the most important to who you are.

Update Your Facebook

One of the best ways you can keep in touch with your high school friends and make new ones quickly is to keep your Facebook profile full and updated. Display what college you’ll be attending, and where you’re currently living. Upload pictures during college orientation. Post about what classes you’ll be taking in the Fall. “Like” a couple of TV shows, music groups, books, and athletes. When you start Facebook friending classmates at school, you’ll quickly find your common ground!

Still looking for your dream college? Cappex can help you find your perfect college match.