Move Out, Ending Your Freshman Year

Another year passes and again we find ourselves packing up all our belongings for a big move. This time, we’re moving back home. After months of complete freedom, early mornings, late nights, cramming sessions, junk food, and grueling classes we are finally taking a break, because summer vacation has arrived.

As a freshman, it’s a bitter-sweet ending, because while I look forward to a break and endless sun and fun I realize that the friendships I’ve made here are the types of connections I want to keep forever. Never again will I live with the same people, in the same building, doing the same things and it’s sad. I know that I will see these people again, but I can’t help but feel nostalgic for all the memories we’ve made.

But time keeps moving and as always I have a list of things you should do before moving out of your freshman dorm.

1. Make notes or little cards for the people you’ve enjoyed most this year. It will give you a chance to put on paper how much you’ll miss them and how amazing a time you’ve had with them.
2. Collect addresses. This way you can keep in touch and even send each other little packages during the four long months of separation.
3. If you can, plan trips to visit each other. If you have family that live close by take the opportunity to see those friends you made, or if your family will be vacationing nearby, take some time to visit.
4. Have one last dinner, lunch, or breakfast with as many people as you can manage. It offers a chance to say goodbye and be together one last time before you all start leaving.
5. Actually make a conscious effort to stay in touch, especially if you promised you would.
6. Keep things like pictures that will remind you of the fun times you had.
7. Make plans for next year, like lunch times, or shows you want to watch together.
8. And lastly, make sure your dorm room is spotless so you can avoid any fines over the summer (sorry guys I had to add advice that seems more practical and less sappy).

Thanks for keep up with me this year. I hope your freshman years are filled with as much fun and investigation as mine was. Have a great summer, see you in the fall!

Pests, Crawlies, and Cleaning 101

Everyone values good hygiene. Good hygiene, can give you a sense of confidence, it will keep your friends close, and offers some protection against sickness. But hygiene is not restricted to just your body and hair, it also includes your clothes and especially your dorm room.

How do you stay clean and keep things like bed bugs out of your bed? You wash your sheets once a week, you do laundry now less than every two weeks, and you invest in some of the products below.

To help you in your fight against bacteria and contracting the flue from your roommate there is Lysol. Lysol sprays on quick and you just swipe with a paper towel or a sponge and presto you’ve got a clean doorknob or desk.

Avoid cockroaches or any other creepy crawlies by getting rid of any crumbs that might have fallen when your unsuspecting friend stops by with cookies in tow. Things like a Swiffer, will easily attract and trap crumbs left by others and give you peace of mind.

If you have your own bathroom guard against all kinds of things like mildew and germs with Clorox disinfectant.

Remember, your dorm is your home for about 10 months out of the year. It is also a tiny enclosed space that may seem inviting to many critters. While I’m not encouraging cleaning frenzies and bug paranoia, I do want to stress that your dorm room requires more than just one spring cleaning.

Visiting Rights

All college campuses have different policies on visitors, and all residence halls have differing policies too. But what most people forget to consider are the policies you should make up on your own.

Like all other college students I had plenty of friends and family from back home that wanted to visit me. And I couldn’t wait to show them everything from my room, to my roommate, to the buildings I had class in, to the places where I went to eat.

So naturally I invited my best friend over for the weekend. I thought to myself, “we’ll paint our nails, talk about each other’s lives, dish gossip, go to a party, stay up all night, she'll meet my new friends, and it will be so much fun. But of course, none of this happened. Somehow my one visitor turned into two, she had decided that her boyfriend would tag along. And while I knew I wasn’t allowed to have boys in my room past a certain time, I also knew that my RA was extremely nice and she would let it slide. I don’t think even Allen Poe could have made a more frightening story than what I experienced that weekend. Not only was I third wheel, I was left on my own and frustrated most of the time.

This is what I learned about visiting rights:

1. Number one, check out the residence hall policies on visitors. You don’t want to be unnecessary trouble just because your friends decided to visit.
2. Check and double-check with your roommate that she’s okay with you having visitors over for the weekend.
3. Never invite more than one person unless you know you have the room and you know you will all hang out together, without leaving anyone out.
4. Call them in advance and tell them what to bring. If they, however, forget or ignore your instructions, tell them they either have to make do with that they brought or buy new things. Nothing is more annoying than having to lend out things you don’t want to let others borrow, can you imagine letting your best friends boyfriend use YOUR OWN towel?
5. Plan the weekend out. The more downtime there is, the more opportunities for your guests to say, “I’m bored,” there will be.
6. Lastly, try to have fun no matter how unbearable the weekend may seem, because your friends will always remember the weekend they came to see you at college.

And I just want to point out that not all weekends with visitors turn out as appallingly horrible as mine. Encourage your friends to come see you and make plans to go see them, because they are after all your friends.

“Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget.”

-Unknown                           

To Live on Campus or Not to Live on Campus

October rolled around and I was starting to feel at home. I was starting to feel like I belonged and like I knew what I was doing. I couldn’t predict how off balance I would soon be feeling. While my mind was on the next test grade and how much homework I had for the night, I was informed that it was time to make some decisions. Decisions? What decisions? The hot topic around college campuses in October is whether you’re living on campus or off campus, and who you’re spending your next year with. I was totally unaware that it was time to either go apartment hunting, or new roommate hunting.

While I felt that I couldn’t have asked for a better roommate, I knew she would be living off campus next year, and I would be staying on campus. It just seemed like the best alternative when considering my parent’s financial situation, but I was left with a dilemma. Who would I be living with next year?

When faced with this dilemma there are several things to consider.

• Who is paying for this?
• Where do you feel more comfortable?
• Who are you planning on living with?
• If you don’t know who you’re living with next year, how are you going to find someone?
• What’s your price range?
• Are there any places that you could live that work with your budget?
• Safety, is this place nice?

I ended up staying on campus because it was the best choice for me and I met a very nice girl who I will live with next year, but what about you? Have you made any decisions? Don’t wait until it’s too late.

Freshman 15

We’ve all heard of the dreaded freshman 15, and for college freshman, it’s a very real reality. The fact that we’re forced to walk everywhere on campus doesn’t change the fact that pizza, campus cookies, and all different kinds of junk food are readily available well into the early morning hours. Then of course, there is the handy-dandy bus system and you’ve got a recipe ready to wreak havoc on your figure.

Here are a few helpful tips to help you keep the weight off, and your body image intact:

1. Your school invested in gym equipment and a gym- making time to use it at least once or twice a week can’t hurt.
2. Snacking-it’s an alarming temptation. Once potato chip leads to six and suddenly you find that the whole bag is gone. If you’re prone to snacking make sure you keep plenty of healthy snacks on hand. Things like: fruits, veggies with ranch, crackers, and juice instead of soda.
3. While the buses that run around campus may seem convenient, they’re not conducive to a healthy lifestyle, especially when it only takes about fifteen minutes to get from your dorm to class. Walking is a good source of exercise and it doesn’t require any fancy set-up.
4. Lastly, nothing will make a bigger difference than plain common sense. If you had pizza last night at three in the morning after coming in from a party, the next day you should probably head to the gym. If for breakfast you ended up downing some chocolate milk with a waffle covered in powdered sugar, walking to class all day long will make up for it.

Remember, it’s not about losing any weight; it’s about staying healthy, comfortable, and avoiding the freshman 15.

Bathroom Therapy

 

“For marriage to be a success, every woman and every man should have her and his own bathroom.”

-Catherine Zeta Jones

“There is a jungle-cat in the bathroom!”

-The Hangover

Sharing a bathroom is never a fun experience, and when you get to college, getting up close and THAT personal is not really on your list of things to do. But guess what? Most of us do end up getting way too much information. When I got to school I was definitely hoping for a suite style room, which meant that I would only be forced to share gross habits with my roommate and two other girls. Lo and behold, I was stuck with a communal bathroom. After the initial panic subsided I spent a lot of time thinking of strategies on how to survive the countless repulsive situations I was sure to encounter and this is what I came up with:

1. Invest some time in learning how to hover. I mean obviously I won’t go into detail, but even when a bathroom is cleaned daily things can get dirty pretty quickly-especially when there are 20 girls using it.

2. Buy a toothbrush cover. Enough said.

3. If you don’t want people to use your products, don’t leave them in the bathroom. As a victim of the “sneaky person who keeps using my stuff when I’m not around,” I fully endorse this rule. While you hope that everyone is respectful and asks to borrow your stuff, there is always that one person you suspect of using your shampoo after you smell it in their hair.

4. Remember that just because someone is cleaning after you, does not give you license to throw caution to the wind and make a mess everywhere. Be kind, and clean your crap up!

5. Deal with the embarrassment early on. This is your home, your roommate’s home, and all your other hallmate’s home and all of you have to use the same potty. So get over it.

If you get stuck sharing a bathroom with other people, it’s not the end of the world! Not all sharing experiences are made for Hollywood Horror movies.

Party it Up

Partying is an inescapable part of college. I don't mean the crazy, get hammered, and forget what happened last night; I mean partying in the sense that there will be plenty of dancing, and hanging out with friends in small places with music. Although not everyone is attracted to hard partying, it has become a common phenomenon, one that that has been ingrained into the social psyche. While the ways of the party, dancing, loud music, and dark, crowded places have been quickly learned by generation after generation, the part about staying safe hasn't quite caught on. The following are some tips I've learned to avoid disastrous results.

• Never go to a party by yourself. The buddy-system is a lesson that will take you far, but going to a party in a group and leaving together is even better. Not only does going to a party together keep you from feeling awkward or alone, but whoever said that the phrase, "safety in numbers," definitely knew what they were talking about.
• Don't drink during the day. If you're underage you shouldn't be drinking at all, but let's face it lots ignore this law, so if you're going to drink do it safely. Drinking during the day only pushes you to drink more than you normally would, especially if you end up partying during the day and then also at night. Remember that the sole reason to go to a party isn't to drink, it's to have fun and hang out with friends, no one likes a chick that passes out at 11 at night. 
• Don't throw things. If a crowd gets rowdy and uncontrollable, try to leave, because alcohol and angry people don't mix well. Just this year, the JMU Springfest Blockparty in Forest Hill, turned dangerous when the crowd started throwing glass beer bottles. Private property was damaged, people left bleeding, ambulances were called, and the riot squad cleared the area with tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets.
• Lastly, listen to the police. If you do get caught in a situation like the one described above listen to the police. Yes, the threat of getting arrested for underage alcohol consumption is scary, but the consequences for ignoring police instructions is much worse.

So party, but party safe. Until next time guys!

Moving In

Moving into your first college dorm room is always an experience. Whether your new roommate is someone you’ve always known or a complete stranger, things can get a little awkward from time to time. For me, making friends with my roommate was easy. She was funny, pretty, confident, and most of all excited to be here and get to know me. It made getting along easy and to this day we still haven’t had a single fight. However, not all of us have this same happy joining, some of us actually have horror stories we end up passing on to siblings and friend. To avoid any type of ghastly scenarios that might be waiting to pounce on you always do the following:

1. As soon as you get into your dorm make your side your own. It’s important to feel at home here even if you won’t live there for more than 10 months out of the year. Bond through all the things you brought from home, because every picture and every trinket has a story to tell about you.
2. Make sure you’ve got the basics down like at what time do each of you have to get up in the morning, or which one of you is the morning person, is coffee going to be a necessity for the both of you?
3. Spend some time really developing your friendship with your roommate because they are the person you will be spending your first cold with, your first college parties, your all-nighters, and your boy/girl drama.
4. If anything ever bothers you make sure you talk it over with them as soon as it happens. Don’t wait until you’re too fed up with the other person to compromise.

I can’t stress the last of point on the list enough. My roommate and I have managed to skip any fights that might have come up, but it has been because we have been honest and understanding with each other (not an easy thing to do in a small, enclosed, sometimes crowded dorm room).

Murphy's Law

After the first couple of weeks life starts getting back to normal. You develop a routine, you decide whether a dry erase board with all your appointments is really necessary, and the friendships you’ve made start to set in. This is when trips to go back home if you live close enough start being planned and by now you can even get around campus without getting lost. Don’t be fooled, this is not the time to slow down and start thinking that things are going to get easy from now on, as I learned the hard way.

At this time in my life I thought I was finally getting everything right, that things might get easy and I might be able to coast for a few weeks, but of course everything went wrong from alarms that didn’t ring, to getting sick for the first time while away from home, and no one can forget the first time they lock themselves out of their room with only a towel for protection between them and the whole word. Not to mention the honeymoon period for you and your roommate is just about to expire. 

What can you do to avoid life crisis after life crisis? Accept that disaster is inevitably headed your way, in other words: anything that can go wrong, WILL go wrong. Every time you leave your room without keys double check that it’s not locked, keep Dayquil and Nyquil on stand-by when the flu hits, set up more than one alarm to wake you up, and lastly make a conscious effort to keep the grumpiness directed at your roommate to a bare minimum. It’s important to keep a positive attitude and smile even when you don’t feel like it.

The Drop Off

So, you’re finally in college, the parental unit has driven away and you ask yourself, What do I do now? Let me tell you a little secret: we’ve all been there. No matter how prepared to cut the umbilical cord we were at home the realization that you are now essentially on your own hits you like a ton of bricks. Suddenly the list of choices and decisions that you have to make your freshmen year seem impossibly long and Mommy and Daddy aren’t there to chose for you. 

This is why you’re here. Nearing the end of my freshmen year, at JMU this blog will take you through all the things I learned, heard, saw, and avoided. Survival guide? Maybe. A life boat out in the ocean of endless possibilities? Definitely.