College Clubs and Organizations

There is a lot more to college than your college classes. At first, you may just go between your dorm room and classes without really exploring all that college has to offer. While that may be okay for the first few weeks of college while you become acclimated to your new environment, it isn’t a trend you will want to continue throughout all of your years of college. Getting involved in college organizations, clubs, and more will broaden your college experience, help you make more friends, and help you feel even more like you belong at college. The problem is how. How do you get involved in these clubs and organizations?

The big thing that you will want to do is keep watch of college bulletin boards. These change pretty often, so you will want to check a couple times a week. This is where you will find out about plenty of things, from other college students selling textbooks that you may need to upcoming clubs and when they meet. There may even be announcements of club and organization fairs that you can attend to check out the different clubs your college has to offer. You don’t even have to be limited to one club or organization – get involved in as many as you want, but make sure you can handle them with the rest of your workload. 

Talk to professors – you may know that your professor is involved with organizations on campus for topics that you’re interested in. Talk with your professor, find out more about the organization and what you can do to join. Once you start joining clubs and making new friends you may even find out about more organizations you can join from those friends. 

Joining in a club or organization can be quite scary at first and you may want to immediately leave as soon as you go to the first meeting. In fact, it will take a few meetings for you to start to feel comfortable. This is a good kind of scary feeling though – it’s taking you out of your element so you will feel nervous at first, but once you start getting involved more, you’ll be glad you stuck through the nervous feelings because your college experience will be more fulfilling.

Establishing a Routine in College

When you’re in college, you’re going to be living on your own for the first time. You’re also living far away from home, whether it is an hour or another state or country. That means your mom will have no idea what homework you have to do for your classes and when it is due. When you were living at home, your mom may have given you reminders to work on your homework and get off of your phone. However, when you’re at college, there is no one there to remind you to do these things. Not even your professors will give you reminders about homework. As you can imagine, starting out college with this much freedom with your homework can be rough. It can be all too easy to not read a certain section of a book for English because you want to play video games, or you think you remember pretty well from your classes what will be on the exam and don’t feel you need to study. 

Unfortunately, if you start these habits early on, it will be hard to change them later and you’ll find college isn’t as fun as it used to be. You don’t want to retake classes or graduate at a later date because of this early established pattern. The way to help yourself get through all of your homework while still having free time is to establish a routine.

First of all, invest in a good planner and keep detailed notes of when things are due on the larger daily planning slots. In the overall month at a glance section, write less detailed notes on the due date so you can see your entire month and what you have to do.  This will help you plan out what time you do have to spend with your friends.

Don’t wait until the last minute to work on homework. You’ll be more stressed, you’ll be rushing more, and you’ll find it actually takes up more of your time. Also, if you find you have a large chunk of free time in between classes and all of your friends are in class, don’t spend that time texting them. Use that time to your advantage and work on your homework, especially if you need the library or computer lab.

Make a To-Do list for each day with things you need to work on in order of importance. For example, things due sooner will be to the top of your list so you can get them done. That way if there is something that isn’t due for a while but you wanted to work on it, you can skip it for that day if you need to in order to have some free time.

You will need to build in time for studying. Make a study schedule and stick to it. It doesn’t have to be “Monday I’ll read from my History textbook from 3:30-4.” Make it more general – Monday from a certain time you will work on whatever you have to do. You need to build in study time to your schedule and stick to it. Make a new version of your schedule with your classes blocked out and block out time in your day that you set aside for studying. With certain times for studying, you won’t feel so overwhelmed later and like you’re not getting anything done. You can even set a routine for how you study and how you do your homework to make things easier for you.

What to Find Out When You Get Your Roommate Assignment

Finding out your roommate assignment can be exciting and a little stressful. There are going to be a lot of things going through your head when you find out your roommate assignment. You’re going to be living with someone other than your parents, and you’ve never met them before. This is a whole other person’s personality and schedule that you have to get used to. You don’t want to avoid talking with your assigned roommate until move-in day. Chances are, you’re going to find out your roommate’s name and contact information before then, so don’t just toss the information in the garbage or in a folder and wait to talk/see what happens on move-in day. You’re going to want and need to communicate with your roommate before you move in to find out certain things.

Your college may not just stick you with any old roommate. They may do a small survey and try to find out certain things to attempt to give you the best match. They may ask study habits, when you prefer to go to bed, and other basic study habits and personality traits. The thing is, you don’t want to just leave it up to the college and expect them to make the best match and assume that your roommate is exactly like you. Even though your college asked each of you those questions, you want to make sure you ask them yourself.

Once you know your course schedules, you’re going to want to share them with each other. Not so you can get together in between classes and hang out (although if you want to, that’s great!). You’re going to want to know if your roommate has an early class that requires them to get up at 6 in morning and you’re also going to want to know if they have really late night classes so you can schedule your study times accordingly.

Work out who is bring what large dorm items – who should bring the TV and who should bring the microwave, mini-fridge, and other large shareable items? You really need to work this out with your roommate – your Residence Hall room is going to be too small to have two of each of those large essentials. If you need to buy things, such as the microwave and the mini-fridge, you don’t want to split the cost of purchasing. Work out who will buy what. The reason for this is the end of the year – if you’re evenly splitting the cost of an item, then who gets to keep it at the end? 

One thing you may not have thought of talking with your roommate about are guests. Before college even starts, work something out in regards to having guests over, whether it’s your best friend since Kindergarten or someone you’re working on a project with for a class. Have a set system in place, even if it’s as simple as asking your roommate a couple days before if it’s okay if the guest comes over. Don’t just have them come over and have your roommate be surprised. You have to live with this person – don’t do anything sudden that could upset them. 

Talk about anything else you can think of – talk about what TV shows, movies, books, or music they like. Get to know your roommate beyond the basic things that you need to know in order to live with this person. If you don’t do these basic things, you’re doing yourself a disservice in the end, and could end up having roommate problems. Trust us, you don’t want roommate problems. You won’t be able to simply walk up the RA or Director of Residence Life and tell them you want a new roommate and/or new room. The Residence Hall may be full and they won’t be able to accommodate your request. Plus, they’ll immediately ask you if you talked things over with your roommate, anyway. Start college out right from the start and get to know your roommate without having to use your RA as a mediator later.