[generic retrospective title]

First semester of freshman year is probably the most looked forward to thing in the entire world except maybe a trip to Amsterdam or the moon or something like that. For the most part, college (at least at a NCAA D1 school) lives up to all the hype. The dorms smell like dudes, every room has at least 3 open packages of food and 2 sweaters on the floor, people draw pictures of dicks on the message boards and throw up on the elevator, etc.

Class work hasn't been overwhelming, but for me the course load here is slightly easier than high school. Then again, I ended up taking 13 credit hours and having classes that aren't exactly work intensive. The work we do here is less of the insipid busy work that made high school so much fun. Academic success lies entirely upon how much work you are willing to do. If you want to skip a ton of classes, feel free. But you'll probably manage to miss getting into the j-school and have to switch majors, appeal for credit, or a host of other things you really don't want to do.

Make sure to enroll early for your classes you want next semester, and have a good idea what you want to be when you grow up before the end of your first semester. If you won a scholarship, prepare to be run all around campus and subjected to academic check ups that you run on yourself. It's just as stupid as it sounds, but the money is just too good to pass up.

Residential life is pretty much all it is cracked up to be. The food will make you sick, the PAs and CAs will be buzzkills, the halls will occasionally smell like a locker room, people will come up from other floors to smoke on your balcony/vomit on your toilets. People will go out and drink on Wednesday night, and if you are really lucky, one night you might hear a sorority girl throwing up at 3:30 on a Tuesday night.

Rooming is fine, being forward with about rules is pretty important, because they will probably all be disregarded within 10 hours of meeting your new roomie. As many people on the floor will tell you, the worst can and will happen. Food will rot, milk will go bad, clothes will go unlaundered, and a seething hatred for all things related to the person who shares your 9 x 9 will develop if you let it. To be successful room mates, you don't have to be friends. Just take care of your things, keep your room tidy, and don't show a flagrant disregard for all rules of social conduct.

Social life is much more prickly pear that you'll really have to crash your own way into. My advice is to be as welcoming and as friendly as possible, grab up as many acquaintances you can, and try to maintain at least 50% of those relationships. Knowing people will help you get out and about and an extensive list of contacts is an asset for any freshman.

Anyway, that's my advice for you incoming freshmen, and if you didn't read any of that:

Take care of yourself, do your work, shower daily, and make friends and things will be fine. Also, you're a college student, which means you get to do pretty much whatever you want, so do your best not to screw that one up.