Hey y’all! So this is the first post of what I’m calling my Studyblr University Orientation Week. For the next week I’ll be making a post a day filled with all sorts of university advice, similar to what you may get from your university’s orientation week but minus all of the glam and attempts to impress you with how amazing your new school is. The subjects will range from what to expect out of dorm life, to how to cope with mental illness, to how to deal with your first day of class.
This first post is partially inspired by a post that @academicsapphic made about a month or so ago called “Things I Would Tell My Freshman Self.”
So to all you little university freshmen, here’s some things to expect from your first year or so of university (based on my own experiences as a History major)
The debate over written vs typed notes will be overdone and drive you up a wall. Different things work for different people in different majors or in different courses. You will get tired of people telling you that you are taking notes wrong and will want to break your laptop over their head or shove your notebook down their throat. You won’t though. Good job.
You will have a class that you absolutely hate. It could be because of a terrible professor or boring material or annoying classmates, whatever: you hate this class. You never want to go to it and you suffer through your coursework for it. Depending on how bitter and petty you are, you will either do the minimal amount of work required and just pass the course, or you will work crazy hard and get a 90% just to spite them all.
You will have a class that you absolutely adore. It could be that the professor so clearly loves the material that it makes you love it or it could be that it’s an elective that you weren’t expecting to love this much. You will find the work easy and interesting and be able to get it done on time without a problem.
You will stay up until 3 in the morning working on a research paper in tears, hating it, your professor, yourself, anyone that comes to mind. You will be running solely on panic and will be anxiously chugging water and shoving junk food in your mouth just to stay awake.
The library will send someone to talk to your class about research for your papers. They’ve sent the same guy to every single one of your other classes. You’ve seen him fifteen times in the past year and he’s said the same thing every single time. You still don’t know how to do good research.
You will get sick and miss two weeks of class because you feel like you’re dying. Catching up on work will be hell and you will question why you’re doing this.
You will miss class because of period cramps. You’ll think to yourself that it’s a stupid reason to miss class; your friends all push through and go. It’s not a stupid reason. Some people have worse cramps than others.
You will miss class for an actually stupid reason. You’ll know that it’s a stupid reason while you do it. Keep these to a minimum.
You will begin to notice that some people don’t care about class but still show up. They typically sit in the back and talk all class. You will wonder why they bother to show up if they’re not going to pay attention. Ignore them. They will disappear after first year (mostly).
You will hate everyone who sits in a left-handed desk with a laptop.
You will get way too into a television show/book/movie series/podcast/etc during finals.
You will be excluded. You will feel like you don’t belong and like you’re all alone here miles and miles away from home.
You will be included. You will feel like you’ve come home and found a second family even if you have to be separated from your first one.
You will hate the science students who take arts courses because they have to but spend the entire semester bashing on how stupid the professor is and how useless the course is. You will want to turn around and yell at them. You won’t.
You will love the science students who take arts courses and take it seriously. You will love them even more when they think you’re a genius because you understand the course and they don’t.
You will be the arts student in a science course and remember why you did not take science. It’s the math. Maybe that’s why the science students are so cocky: they have conquered the great evil and know how powerful they truly are.
You will have friends from all sorts of different majors and be amazed by how smart they all are. They are all doing things that you could never do. You will not know this, but they are thinking the same thing about you.
You will learn that different people really do have trouble with different things and it wasn’t just that you were stupid in high school. The zoology major that you thought was so smart for knowing how to balance an equation will ask you for help with their essay and you will find out that they’re struggling solely because they didn’t do any research before beginning.
You will have a professor that you absolutely love and adore but the rest of the class hates. You will wonder why the entire semester, only to find out afterwards that it was because they were too stupid to listen to what she was saying.
You will have a professor that you absolutely hate but that everyone else adores. You will never understand it.
You will wonder if the boys notice that they only ever hate the female professors.
You will have a TA that is the bane of your existence and who will take off marks from you for no reason other than that he didn’t like you. You will think about how much you dislike him often.
You will have a TA that puts all other TAs to shame. You will miss them after the semester’s over and you’re stuck with the TA from hell.
You will learn that the Freshman Fifteen is real and it will happen to you and that’s okay. Eating healthy is good, and your body will thank you when you put an apple into it after eating nothing but fries for two days, but it’s also okay to go and grab chicken fingers from the dining hall at ten at night because you’re stressed about your paper that’s due tomorrow.
You will meet amazing people from all different walks of life and learn more about yourself and the world than you could ever believe possible.
You will think that you are the stupidest person in the world. You will think that there is no way that you can do this, that you should just quit and go home now.
You will think that you are the smartest person in the world. You will look at a mark that you worked hard for and think that of course you can do this, you were silly for ever doubting yourself.
You will fail a course. It’s okay. Buy a bunch of junk food, cry and feel sorry for yourself for a bit. But then it’s time to keep going because
You will do this. I believe in you.
