Fantasies + Fears

Dorms are boujee, nice, clean, and hotel level.

Realities

Absolutely not! 😆 Well, most of the time. I learned this the hard way because when the movies show you dorms being all beautiful, it’s because no one wants to see a rundown, old, musty dorm in a movie! 😆 They want to see the glamorous version! And movies have a bigger budget and a smaller audience to house for the production of a film, so they get to spend more on dorms that look nice. So dorms typically run small for freshman and it’s usually a cubicle room with two twin XL beds. There will typically be a desk and a small closet, so don’t try to bring your whole wardrobe. Bring staple pieces that you can mix and match.

But if I’m being honest, dorming is an adjustment and you might not have all the luxuries you have when you are at home, but know that it’s not terrible. You get used to sleeping in a small room and you get used to the space. My biggest tip is to really decorate your side of the room to make you feel at home because this will literally be the space you will occupy for the next year, so make it comfortable to you! 💕

You’re going to be besties with your roommate.

Not all the time. I wasn’t besties with my freshman roommate and my sophomore roommate didn’t move in, so I didn’t have a roommate. Suffice to say, you might not always become best friends with who you room with and that’s okay. Just respect each other and each other’s space and property and that’s all you can do. Even if my freshman roommate and I were vastly different and not close, I still said hi to her whenever I saw her around or if she came in the room, I gave her presents for holidays, and tried to ask her if she needed anything. It’s okay to have a lot of hope that you and your roommate might be the next Serena and Blair, but don’t have too high expectations. Just always be kind and respectful no matter what 😊.

The bathrooms are GROSS.

In some ways, they are, but you get used to it 😆. For my freshman year, we had a community bathroom and gosh it’s the most ANNOYING thing when you have to pee and all the bathrooms are taken and you have to wait like a creep in the hallway just so someone else doesn’t come up and take a stall when you had to pee badly 😆. Been there, done that. I’ve also waited in the hall for MINUTES just to brush my teeth because people like to shower at ten at night! But that’s okay, you learn. I think it’s important to just be aware of when people shower—-not like in a creepy stay in the hall and watch way—–but just keep in mind like if you take a shower at six and all the bathrooms are taken at six, then maybe you know for next time to go at 5:30 or after six when it’s less crowded. Or if a certain day the bathrooms are all crowded at night, you make sure to get there first. You really have to fight for it! 😂 I’m joking, don’t fight! Just be aware.

The bathrooms themselves are small. It’s not your home bathroom, but it does the job. Personally, just go in, do what you got to do, clean up after yourself, and then leave.

CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELF!!!

Gosh gracious it’s disgusting when people don’t flush the toilet, leave toothpaste all over the sink, hair dye all over the shower and the sink, hair all over the drain, clog the toilet with toilet paper, smoke in the bathroom, putting food in the bathroom trash, or leave toilet paper or trash scattered on the ground. Now, that’s DISGUSTING. Honestly, thank your janitor each and every day because man, do they deal with the GUTTER with what people do in a dorm bathroom. It’s DISGUSTING and I feel DISGUSTED for them. Thank them! Or be considerate of them and your floor mates by being clean.

But yea, the bathrooms I guess can be gross if people make it gross.

You have to bring a laptop to class and type all your notes.

Honestly, no. Unless you class requires you to bring a laptop, you really don’t. Because in movies, it seems like the cool thing to do—-bring a laptop—-because in high school you don’t really do that, but in college you can show up with nothing but a pencil/pen and a notebook and that’s fine as well. Personally, I like writing notes because it helps me process things better, so I bring tons of colorful pens and highlighters and a notebook to write things down. At first it felt weird, because EVERYONE brings a laptop and sets it up on their desks and it seems so intimidating and you feel like, for lack of a better word, a loser for being the person with a notebook. Trust me, you are not a loser! If you are, I am one too and I am proud! We can be losers together! 😁 But seriously, having a notebook is fine! Do what you gotta do to make learning the best for you. Some people like laptops because it helps them to type notes faster on a computer when a teacher talks fast, and I get it. That’s fine. All up to you!

Oh, and if you like to write in notebooks and still want to bring some for to technology to class, I highly recommend investing in a tablet or iPad because it’s not as heavy as a laptop, but it still works and does all the things a laptop can do. I know when I had to bring my laptop, I brought my iPad for those very reasons. And it’s also more convenient and simple to carry a tablet/iPad.

You have to call them professors.

One of the things I joke about a lot is that when you’re paying for college, you’re also paying to call your teachers, “professors.” Like they get the upgrade too! And heck, yes, they deserve such a prestigious title for the years of education they go through and heck, if a professor is called a Dr., then I am not mad if a professor wants to flaunt that title because gosh knows he/she worked for it. Going into my first semester of classes, something I noticed across the board at my school is that professors rather be called their name. Like seriously. They might introduce themselves as professor so-and-so who has this-and-that degree, but they will always insist on being called by his/her first name. I think it’s because they want to seem personable and less intimidating to students so they break down the formalities straight to the person, which does make it less intimidating, but it’s also strange. Because all throughout education, you hear that you have to call a teacher Mrs./Miss/Ms. or Mr., so when you don’t have that anymore, it’s strange to just call a teacher like Bob or Rick or something. 😂 Personally, I still call my teachers professors because that’s what I’m comfortable with and that’s how I show respect, so I say Professor Bob or Professor Rick. But you don’t have to. But know that it’s not all formalities in college.

I also think they do this because there are some students who might be older than the actual teacher, so to them it would feel weird for someone older than them to call them something so respected/formal.

All teachers talk super duper fast and super duper long. They give long lectures with lots of notes.

Yes and no. It depends on the class, the school, and the teacher. For the class, typically if it’s a smaller class, the teachers try to not drag on with super duper long lectures and they try to mix it up with group work, discussions, or films. Because if there is a smaller class, it allows for more movement and interaction with the class to break it up for other things rather than just straight lecturing. But if the class is big, typically you’re going to get a super duper long lecture 😆. Sorry! But it’s true. Because teachers have 100s of students in one room, so it’s hard to make the time for students to discuss or to interact or play a game because there’s more people to account for. So for the most part, the teacher talks. But teachers, the good ones, know that lecturing is BORING! So if you have intuitive and good teachers, they will try to make long lectures fun by having a quick break by talking to your neighbor about a question, a Kahoot game, or a thought-share type of thing. But it’s not like the movies where the teacher calls on a person in a big lecture hall and then that person talks and everyone stares at that person because honestly, there’s not enough time for that. Maybe some schools do that, but my school and teachers don’t. So there’s nothing to be intimidated with with being called on. If the class is geared more towards your major, I find that those classes are more interactive because they want to show you what it’s like to be in that major. For example, I’m an education major and my classes for those are much smaller than my general courses. My education classes are much more interactive and feels like a typical high school, project-based kind of vibe, but college. It’s still lectures somedays, but a lot more discussion and fun things like making videos, posters, or portfolios.

As to if a teacher talks super duper fast? Depends on the teacher. Some teachers talk like they have no breath and it can be hard to keep up and take notes. But then there are teachers who go at a reasonable pace and stall because they know students are still typing or wiring. I like those teachers. I think the best thing is to know the teacher and to figure out which ones talk fast and those who are moderate or slow and then adjust how you take notes and what you take notes on based on the pace.

But really at the end of the day, the notes are for you, so really take notes that will work best for how you learn. Do you have to take a bunch of notes? No. And if you’re teachers are nice enough, some post their lectures online (or my school does) so if you miss something you can go back and fill in the gaps later.

All classes are big and intimidating.

No. Like I said previously, you will have bigger classes and smaller classes. Typically general courses like Biology, English, Botany, or math might have a lot more people because everyone needs to take the general courses in the first two years of college. Hence, why there’s so many people in one room. This can be imagined as those large lecture halls you see in every movie/film. Are these big classes intimidating? Yea, kind of. When you first walk into the room to THAT many people, especially if you attended a smaller high school, then it will be overwhelming. When I walked into my first lecture hall, I was LOST. I kept thinking where do I sit? Do I sit next to this person who looks like they don’t want me to sit by them? Do I sit in the front? Do I sit in the back? What do I do?

So I’m here to tell you what you can do. Sit where you feel comfortable or where there’s an open seat, of course. Typically, with a big lecture hall, if you have bad eyesight like me, sit towards the front because no one likes to sit in the front, so there will be open seat anyway. And that way you can see and no one’s head is going to be in the way. It also feels more personable when you’re that close to the teacher because then, you don’t have this sea of heads you look at the whole time during class, which can make you feel even more overwhelmed by the mass amount of people. But if you like people-watching or if you show up late to class, do everyone a solid and sit in the back. I liked sitting in the back for one of my general classes because I would show up later because I had another class that would let out ten minutes before the one I had to go to. Sitting in the back wasn’t fun and I was always disinterested, but after a while you get to see the same people and pick up on where they sit and who they are. Not in a creepy way, just an observant way.

Or if you don’t like the front or the back, the middle is honestly the sweet spot. For moderate sized lecture classes, I like the middle because with a small amount of people in a room, sitting in the front, the teacher’s more likely to call on you and if you sit in the back, the teachers more likely to call on you. It’s like a typical classroom vibe, so sit in the middle 👌🏼.

Papers are PAGES long.

I thought they would be, but truthfully they aren’t. Unless you’re doing a dissertation or something, then your papers are going to run at most ten pages double space, but typically the average paper I found that I had to write in all my two years of college were three to five pages double space. And some were one page double space. DOUBLE SPACE. You can get away with double space my friend! So two or three to five pages isn’t that much if you think about it. Honestly, I write over for those a lot of the time, but then again I write a lot.

But I think teachers do this because they have hundreds of students papers they need to read and they don’t have the time to read 15 page papers from hundreds of students and give feedback. So it’s a good thing for us!

I don’t have to go to class.

Honey, you BETTER be dragging your butt to class unless you’re sick or have an emergency! 😆 You are not paying thousands for an education for you to sit on your butt in your bed watching Netflix. You can do that any other day. I mean, what else do you have going on at 11 o’clock in the middle of the day that you can’t at least go to your gosh darn class? Like what are you doing if you skip all your classes? I don’t know! Go to class!

I haven’t skipped class because personally I like to learn and I know I’m paying for it. But don’t skip it. You really need to there to learn from the teacher and pick things up. Sure, if a teacher posts lectures online, it’s like, “What’s the point?” Truly, it’s much better to sit in a class filled with people learning and a teacher teaching than sitting sad and lonely at the library or in your dorm room, taking notes on a lecture you really don’t understand. It’s boring and it sucks. So go to class, be with people, interact, have a social life, go to learn.

No one’s going to force you to go to class and as much as I can say it here, you might not. But know that some people don’t get an education or have the opportunity to a higher education—-they would trip over backward to be where you are now. Don’t take that for granted. School can be hard and draining, I get it, I’ve been there, but be appreciative that you can learn and educate yourself each and every day. So take advantage of this time to learn. Because one day you won’t be in school and life willl be much harder and you will think, I’d much rather just be in a classroom right now.

Don’t take education for granted. It’s a gift.

Finals are pain incarnate.

So far, not really. I think maybe with more years of college, tests might be harder, but so far, they’ve been like what tests are like in high school. A lot of teachers do multiple choice scantron things. Some give you test questions and answers during study sessions, so go to those. Because literally all you need to do is remember the answers they give you. Some teachers do short answers, so it’s best to know the broad idea of a concept and to conceptualize it best for you. Others give essay prompts where you really have to look at the bigger picture of what was taught to write an essay. If you touch on all the points that the teacher asks of you with the essay, for the most part you’ll do fine.

But you DO NEED TO STUDY. Studying is your friend. Don’t study the night before or the day before. Study weeks before. Months before. Keep that knowledge going in your brain so when it’s the week or the day before the test, you would have built up all this knowledge that you studied over the course of months that you don’t have to worry to cram in a day or a week because it’ll just be there.

Also, test difficulty depends on the class and major. For instance, a health or engineering major will have far more difficult finals than a kinesiology major (not to shade kinesiology majors, what you do is difficult as well, maybe just not as intrusive as health and engineering). As an education major, my tests have been hard, but the teachers are highly understanding and they don’t make it super difficult because they want you to succeed. For my general classes, like biology, math, or whatever, those tests are harder because they’re not what I’m interested in. So I guess it’s also what you know what you’re good at or not.

Other finals tend to be projects or videos and those are fun. Be creative with those. My high school was a project-based school, so we did a lot of projects, so give it your all on your projects and create something you’re proud of.

Freshman 15 is real.

Gosh no! People will try to scare you into feeling like you’re gaining the freshman 15, but honestly, no. Don’t listen to them! Do you! Because you’re what, 17 or 18 when you’re starting college? You’re a baby! You’re still growing, your body is naturally going to fill out and, yes, put on weight. It’s not unhealthy weight, it’s natural weight for your growing body. So if you do put on weight, don’t blame it on the freshman 15 fear, but know it’s just you’re still growing and that’s fine.

I think a lot of people are scared of the freshman 15. So I’m just going to say this, you make it real or you don’t—–a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you say, no, I don’t want to have this looming over me, then you won’t. Here’s my advice, eat right, eat in moderation, stay active, get enough sleep, and check in on your mental health. That’s all you gotta do: take care of your mind, body, and soul, and you’ll be fine. If you want to eat pizza one night, eat a pizza. You want to eat ramen one night, eat ramen. But know you don’t always have to reach for the cheap “unhealthy” option. There are options. You can choose healthier choices like salad, cauliflower crust, low carb ramen noodles, high protein shakes, or whatever that fills you up in a healthy way. I know healthy eating is expensive and not all college students have the means to eat healthy, but if you do, be sensible with how you spend your money on your food and don’t waste it. And if you don’t have the means, you can try make healthy swithes and find healthy and cheap options.

Always move your body too. Take a walk. Go for a run. Join a sport. Go to the gym. Move. Sitting on your bed or at your desk isn’t always fun and when I get up and move, I know it helps clear my mind to think better. And it’s also good just to move your body and this will help make you feel good inside and out.

Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep is so important. Truly, there is no point staying up late when you are not productive because you’re staying up late doing nothing. So sleep. Do your work in a timely manner so you can get sleep. If you need to stay up a little bit late, do so. But you don’t need to pull an all nighter. Absolutely not. It’s not going to do you any good.

And check in with your mind. If you feel anxious, take a breathe, move your body, read a book, take a nap, or do something else. Take a break. Do something for you. School can be overwhelming and it’s not healthy to be school, school, school all the time. It has to be you in there too.

Take care of yourself 💜

You’ll meet the one in college and you’ll fall in love.

I really do hope that for you! 💕 I really do! In the movies they always show two people finding love in college because it’s a transformative time in a person’s life, and it is, but I think just be patient with this one and don’t be too hard on yourself if it does or doesn’t happen. Because timing is everything and when the person is right and the time is right, they will find you and you will find them and it will be meant to be. Don’t put pressure on yourself to be in every single relationship in college, but also don’t be closed off to maybe dating someone or just going out to get to know someone. It’s okay to date in college. Just never settle for someone because you feel like you have to.

I won’t have time to do other things besides studying, working, homework, and school related things.

As a reader this was my concern. Like how was I supposed to read all the Colleen Hoover books that keep popping out like babies and all the Cassandra Clare books that are huge when I have textbooks and so much work to do?! Suffice to say, you do have time for what you love in college, and that includes reading for fun. Like I mentioned before, it can’t all be school, school, school, so to break it up, pick up a fun book or do something fun for you. You might not read hundreds of pages like you’re used to, heck, maybe you only read twenty pages a day of your book and that’s fine! Balance school with what you love 😊.

I have to do all the typical college things like party, drinking, and all those things.

If that’s not who you are, then don’t. Don’t drink irresponsibly or do anything that you wouldn’t be proud of the next day. Just try to make the best decisions you can. No one will tell you you can’t do these things and I’m not but please, please be safe and careful. If you don’t want to party, don’t. If you don’t want to drink, don’t. It’s up to you. Don’t feel pressured from your peers/friends or society to do something not true to you. And if you want to try a sip of a drink because you want to, okay. If you want to go to a party see what’s that like, then cool. Be safe and be responsible. Know your limits and know yourself 😊.

I have to be “popular” or “cool” to be in a sorority.

I didn’t join a sorority, but I know some of my friends did. And they might not be seen as “cool”—–pretty hair, pretty face, pretty clothes, lots of money, etc. But to me, they’re cool! The people i know who joined a sorority are brilliant/intelligent, kind, respectful, and funny people and there are soooo sweet. You absolutely don’t need to be this image of what a sorority girl/guy might be. Sororities are there to help people make connections. My friends joined them to make more friends and to be more active in the college environment. So maybe if you’re having a hard time making friends or you want to join a group, a sorority I hear is a fun option. I didn’t join a sorority because that’s not really my vibe, but if it is, go for it!

Also know though, that sorority’s cost money to be in. Or at least the one at my university does.