Undergrad Secrets

When I came to college, I was not locked into a major. When I applied, I wanted dance. The first week of school, I wanted to rehabilitate serial killers. A month in, I thought I'd prefer working with emotionally distressed teens. Then I bounced around some other professions before I settled on English at the last possible second.

What nobody tells you about is all the listserv messages you miss by being an undeclared student. If I had been receiving these major specific emails, I would have heard about the Undergrad English Students group, publication opportunities and Student Media. Then I could have had my life consumed and my GPA suffering long before my senior semester.

My tip: Even if you don't know what your major is, try to sign up for as many message boards, listervs and bulletins that you can.

I was at first hesitant about living in on-campus housing. Especially as I was 21 and had experienced living on my own before I went to college. But my lack of driving ability and car made it impossible for me to choose another option. What I discovered though were two close friends and an awesome community living experience. Both have continued to be my roommates for the rest of my college life, completely eliminating the awkward random roommate assignment.

My tip: Live on whatever on-campus housing is available. If there are group specific floors, it's a good way to ease into public living with people who have simlar experience or interests. If it sucks your first year, you've got three more to go and try alternative housing.

Food on-campus is often issue . . . but not for me. Stop bitching and just eat it. It kind of grows on your.

Sleep is good. Get some. Even if you have to sacrifice the quality of your paper. Paper is perishable, Sleep is eternal.

The library is a good for place for books. If you are an English major, try to stay away from here. Inevitably you will find 100 books you want to read and turn your 1-hour of study time into endless book skimming and maxing out your lending limit. Besides, my experience shows that close reading your source text is preferred to hundreds of secondary sources (unless it is specifically a research paper, of which I have had 2 as an English major).

Student Unions. . . . unless they serve alcohol I'd stayed away.

Campus Clinic. No matter what is wrong with you, they have a drug to fix it. Do not stay in your room spreading germs to everyone living in the dorm. This is how stomach flu epidemics get started and they start putting Purell everywhere, covering keyboards in Saran Wrap, and revoking salad bars (yes, this really happened). If the clinic is free there's no reason not to go. You know you're just going to skip class anyway, why not make it less miserable by getting drugs. . . (prescription that is)