10. Be friends with your HF
If you think that you are completely on your own now that you have left the nest, think again. University Housing is keeping an eye on you, and that smiling (or grimacing) upperclassman helping you move pounds of your knick-knacks up several flights of stairs on move-in day could make or break your dorm experience. Come those Saturday nights when you are so drunk you can’t keep your tongue in your mouth or prevent yourself from crying loudly outside your house fellow’s door at 4 a.m., you will be glad that you are the kid that listened at the last floor meeting.
9. Use your bus pass (or your bike) and explore areas outside of Downtown
Part of what makes Madison so great is that there is always something to do. As a freshman, it’s easy to get caught up in the madness of State Street. You should definitely go to State often, but don’t forget to give the rest of Madison a try. If you have a bike, perfect. If not, for the astounding price of zero dollars, you can have yourself a Madison Metro Bus Pass courtesy of our student government. Beyond the UW campus there are shops, restaurants, thrift stores, movie theaters and concert venues just waiting to be explored. Just remember to figure out where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. Just because a man is wearing cargo shorts and hiking boots and has a rustic beard doesn’t mean he’s into rock climbing. During my freshman year, my friend and I found out the hard way that that isn’t the wisest way to find the rock climbing complex we were headed to. Grab one of those maps on the bus so you don’t creep out a stranger and end up out $8 for cab fare.
8. Find your classes in advance
The first week of freshman year, I arrived at my French class 20 minutes late with pit stains that would make the Great Lakes jealous. After running up North Charter Street and four flights of stairs inside Van Hise in the early September heat, I couldn’t help but curse myself for not taking the time out of my hungover welcome week state to locate my classes. Although there is no shame in carrying around a campus map and winging it the first week of school, chances are you will save yourself a lot of stress (and sweaty first impressions) if you take this simple advice.
7. Don’t be ‘too cool’
High school is over—you no longer need to worry if people will think you are weird for enjoying that experimental funk street artist, knowing how to do interpretive dance or being engaged in something other than the private lives of the Kardashians. So don’t pretend you’re too cool to explore all of the incredible options UW-Madison has to offer. Spend time at the terrace, go to a football game and a free show at The Sett, attend the Wednesday night fire-juggling circle on Library mall, or whatever tickles your fancy. You may surprise yourself by how cool you can actually be.
6. Learn to deal with dorm hygiene
It should go without saying—ALWAYS wear shower shoes. Regardless of how often the custodial staff frequents your floor, shit will get nasty. Someone will probably throw up in your shower, there will be beer cans in your toilets and by the end of any given weekend your floor might be short a few faucet handles. This isn’t meant to scare you. Instead, think of your first-year dorm experience as one long camping trip, but instead of potentially encountering bears, you’re going to have to avoid that kid on your floor who had one too many Keystone Lights and looks like he’s about to return all those Juston Sticks he just drunkenly devoured. It’s best just to learn to deal. Take it from your Page Two editors (that’s us), who shared one very intoxicated and very misguided night on the floor of a Witte hall bathroom: A few germs (or a lot) won’t kill you. But if you roll on the floor, you’ll probably get pink eye. Just sayin’.
5. Learn how to exercise, but eat a lot of Babcock ice cream (find a balance)
Your parents may have told you that balance is key in college and they’re right—you should see how many scoops of Babcock Creamery’s Union Utopia ice cream you can balance in one dish. You should also remember that balancing the abundance of ice cream and pizza with a healthy(ish) lifestyle will do you many favors. UW’s gyms are free for students and both the SERF and the Nat are located ridiculously close to dorms. My freshman year, after a semester-long binge of Ed’s nachos and almost no exercise, I decided I should try to train for a half marathon (logical, I know). I didn’t end up making it past three miles on the treadmill, but after consistently running for a couple months, I did have a slightly easier time trekking up Bascom for class. You should never feel guilty about skipping Zumba and grabbing a second plate of fried cheese curds but do remember you have a variety of fitness resources at your fingertips.
4. Give everyone a chance
If you can gather anything from my ad nauseum discussion of pit stains and vomit, you might notice I am not quite a girly-girl. That is why, when I saw my future roommate’s Facebook profile picture featured her with Snooki-esque hair, wearing a cheetah-print dress on a plush pink rug, I was nothing short of aghast. Luckily, my stereotyping was incorrect (although she did take a few stabs at my “hippy blues and greens”) and we became incredibly close. Long story short, the classical high school tropes are now in your past—you never know who might be the next Kenan to your Kel, so don’t rule any friends out based on assumptions.
3. Sign up for as many orgs as you can at the org fair
With a school with so many people and so many resources, there’s no way you won’t find one (or 10) clubs, teams or organizations that interest you. The student org fair occurs at the beginning of every semester and it’s the perfect way to meet people with common interests. Always wanted to scuba dive? Want to save the world? Really, really like cookies? There’s a club for everything and there’s usually no obligation if you want to test the waters. Your Page Two editors found common ground at a club we both ended up leaving. That said, here we are, two years later, best friends and co-editors at a paper we love working with people we love. Be brave and go to a club’s introductory meeting and see what it’s about. You never know, you may meet someone who shares your love of snapback hats and Whitney Houston.
2. Go to office hours
Hate to break it to you: You have chosen a school with nearly 30,000 undergraduate students, and your professors are most likely more interested in their recent publication or research project than making academic life easy for you. That being said, your teaching assistants care. A lot. Taking some time out of your busy schedule to go to their office hours could not only help you understand the material in a more personal setting, but it could be the difference between your name being just one on the class list and one that screams “give me an A or you will look bad to your graduate school advisor.” Work the system, baby.
1. Be yourself
It’s easy for us to give you advice about what to do and what not to do in your first year, but part of what makes the freshman experience so fun (and also really fucking terrifying) is that, for the first time, you have the freedom to do what you want. No doubt you’ve heard that college is your chance to start over and it is. You can and should drop the baggage from high school but don’t let it change you. So really, the best advice we can give is to be yourself and do what moves you. If you’re brave enough, you can and should try everything. It may not always work out (read: my efforts to train for a half marathon) but you’ll learn a lot about yourself along the way.
