Hello newbies and freshmeat. I am just messing around; you won’t get the same treatment as some of you did high school, but you will still be very noticeable on campus. You will be the kids looking lost on the first couple days of school and you might walk in the wrong classroom once or twice, but trust me in a week or two, you will find your way. College in itself is a learning experience and even from day one when your parents leave, you will be learning all different kinds of things.
I am here to tell you a couple things that you might want to focus on because throughout college you will either depend on it or you will wish you would have done it. Even till this day I struggle with a couple of these things, so I like to tell every freshmen these things so they can work on it. The most important thing I wish I would have figured out is time management.
Throughout high school, I had a set schedule every day and only had to manage times on weekends. Some of my plans would mix together and end up collapsing on each other, but when I got here, I began to actually notice that my management was getting in the way of my plans. You must learn a way to organize meetings, office hours, homeworks, papers, tests and anything else you want to do. It will definitely become second nature at some point, but the people who master it faster will spring to the top. Time management has given me more time to study for exams, fit in concerts and make time to take naps before homework. For me, I forget a lot of things very easily, so I either have to write it down or simply do it right then. I would suggest using your computer or phone calendar and making alerts for all events. At the beginning of each semester, I put all my tests and papers in my calendar and make sure to make an alert to prompt me a week in advance. These will open up more opportunities to prepare and spend your time more wisely.
The next thing I would suggest is meeting as many as people as possible in the first semester and first year. This is the time when everyone is trying to make friends, and hey, why not make as many friends as possible? You’ll be surprised who will be in your classes in the next couple years. You’ll be surprised how much better a class will be just because you have a couple friends or someone you know in one your classes: you have people to talk to, ask questions to and study with. On top of that, a great part about USC is that everyone is so diverse and from all over the world. I can travel to most major cities in America and a few around the world where I know that I will have someone to hangout with. Some of these cities range from Chicago, NYC, San Francisco, Houston to places like Shanghai, Hong Kong, and even Antwerp, Belgium. This will open the world to you and give you a little taste of every part of the world. Plus, these people could even help you in the future with finding a job or connecting you with someone you would like to meet.
These are only a couple of things that I would suggest to incoming Freshmen because these are two things that I worked on Freshmen year, but still wished I would have done more. College is some of the most fun you will have in your life, so why not give yourself the most time you can and spend this time with great people.
