Thursday Thirteen: Oh, The Places You'll Do Laundry!

Scroll down to find rules on my latest giveaway.  Remember, to enter this contest you must leave me a comment with your best piece of advice for a college freshman.

Remember Artypants, my favorite soon-to-be-college-freshman niece?  She's preparing to attend the Pratt Art Institute in Brooklyn (school motto: "Isn't It Enough That We're In New York STATE?") and she will definitely need a copy of the book I recently received from the wonderful people at Hundreds of Heads publishing: How To Survive Your Freshman Year, By Hundreds Of College Students Who Did.  It's packed with advice from students across the educational and socioeconomic spectrum: kids attending all sorts of colleges and universities, male and female students from a variety of nationalities and lifestyles.  I'll buy Artypants a copy because I'm giving away mine to one of my readers.

This book attracted my attention immediately, since as I leaf through it I experience regular "DUH" moments.  My brain smokes when I try to assess the depths of my freshman dumbitude, but please, anyone who went to college with me, don't write to point out how totally dweeby I was -- it's taken me years of Valium and therapy to forget.  I wish I'd had a book like this to help boost my confidence and solidify my study habits before I learned all most some of it by trial and error.

Here are thirteen examples:

Go: Starting Out

• "The first days of college are the best: for a few brief drunken moments, there are no cliques, no caste, no class, and no classes ..."
• "The first few months were easier than I thought they would be.  But everyone I knew hit a patch right before they went home, after they'd been here for a couple of months.  It was easy to come here, but after a couple of months you start to miss the security of home.  Especially when the tests start."

Dorms: The Good Life

• "I made my core group of friends by living in the dorm freshman year.  Relationships are based more on physical proximity than anything else, so most of your friends are probably going to come from your dorm."
• "Set monthly cleanup times and stick to them.  Failure to do so might result in an infestation of dust bunnies."

Filling The Daytime Hours: Choosing Classes

• "Just because some people don't go to class and still get A's doesn't mean you can skip class and still get A's ..."
• "From an academic perspective, I would advise freshmen to use that first year as your sandbox year ... it's OK to go out and experiment."

Studying: Why, When & How

• "You can't procrastinate as much as you do in high school.  You get behind, and you get behind, and you get behind, and then you get further and further behind, and you don't know what to do about it..."
• "Don't study in your room; you won't ever get to it.  Your phone and neighbors will be too enticing ..."

Food For Thought: Pop-Tarts, Beer & Other Essential Nutrients

• "Don't buy the full meal ticket, unless you're sure you can eat breakfast every day.  I made it to breakfast once the whole year.  When I got up, I didn't have time to go downstairs and eat; I had to go to class."

Ready To Wear: Fashion & (Eventually) Laundry

• "If at all possible, go to a school in a state where your grandmother lives an hour away and just take your laundry there.  You need to visit her every once in a while, anyway.  So take your laundry there; she'll cook you dinner."
• "Do not do laundry on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday.  Wait until Monday, midday, when most people are at class.  The maintenance staff has already fixed the machines from the weekend, and you don't have to worry about people taking your laundry out."

Free Time & How To Spend It

• "Introduce yourself to everyone; it makes a difference.  If you continue to say hi to people, you'll get to know people.  Not everyone will be your friend, but you'll get there ..."

Friends: Good, Better, Best, Or Former

• "It's far too easy to make friends in college.  What is difficult is weeding through the self-serving jerks and spending as much time as possible with your true crew ..."

In addition to the chapters highlighted above you'll find information on:

• Get Ready: What To Take To College
• Get Set: Leaving Home
• Expectations: College Dreams & Campus Reality
• Talking To Strangers: Your Roommate & You
• My Face, Our Space: Social Networking & Online Communities
• Extracurriculars: Clubs, Organizations & More
• Money For Your Life: Working & Finances
• Road Trip! Vacations & Studying Abroad
• Family Ties: Keeping In Touch & Setting Boundaries
• Going Out, Getting Serious: Dating & Sex
• Parties 101: How To Have Fun & Be Safe
• Animal House: Fraternities & Sororities
• More Wisdom: Good Stuff That Doesn't Fit Anywhere Else

How To Survive Your Freshman Year offers short, manageable snippets of wisdom, presented in a conversational tone.  You can skip from subject to subject as your interests and needs inspire you.  Of course, there is a good serving of advice on how to get the most out of your partying, which absolutely was not my style in college, or high school, or anywhere for that matter; still, there's a large proportion of really excellent cues on how to get the most out of homework, roommates, schedules, studying (remember, never study on your bed unless you're okay with taking a long nap).

Tune in next week for my review of HOH's related book titled How To Get A's In College, and the following week for a review of How To Survive The Real World.

Do you want to win my treasured copy of How To Survive Your Freshman Year?  Leave me a comment on this post giving the best piece of advice you'd give a new college freshman.  I'll draw one name at random on July 17th.

Visit FeeFiFoto to design back-to-school and off-to-school gifts for high school and college graduates.

Comments

[The Gal Herself]

Very wise and very funny. Thanks for sharing, and thanks for visiting my TT.

[Maggie's Mind]

Great list! I wish I'd have had some of that advice when I went away to college, definitely! Some of those are really funny. :)

[Nessa]

MY Advice: Remember that this is a new school for all intents and purposes. If you ever wished to be something else in high school, here's your fresh start, a clean slate ready to be written on. Don't be afraid to be who you want to be.

[Jerry]

Whenever you have the choice, pick the class for the PROFESSOR, not the subject.

Boring Prof = Boring class.

Fascinated, engaged Prof = Great Experience, regardless of the subject matter.

Ask around...