We asked your fellow Badgers what they wish they had known coming into freshman year and what they wished they had learned at SOAR. This is the advice they had to share with you:
“I would have definitely joined a lot more organizations. I would have done more sports, the intramural, co-ed stuff.”
—Chelsea Britten
senior, criminal justice and psychology
Highland Park, Ill.
“It doesn’t matter who you were in high school, you can change so much just by the people you hang out with, so I think it’s really important to find people that you really enjoy and like because that will make your experience much better.”
—Connor Ford
sophomore, computer science and pre-med
Madison, Wis.
“All of the support groups that the various schools have, like the College of Engineering has several drop-in tutoring sessions and they don’t really cover that at SOAR.”
—Terrence Townsend
senior, nuclear engineering
Green Bay, Wis.
“You feel like you’re being unleashed upon the world when you first come here cause you’re like ‘Oh, I don’t have my parents here and stuff,’ and then you get here and it’s just like it’s time to be an adult, but it’s not as scary as you think it’s going to be.”
—Sarah Gudmundson
sophomore, undeclared
Oconomowoc, Wis.
“The classes were not as tough as people would say. I’ve found that the classes tend to be easier and that the [teaching assistants] and professors tend to be more understanding than a lot of my friends who went to school before me were saying.”
—Devlin Murphy
junior, political science and economics
Oakland, Calif.
“I wish I knew about [My Course Guide], they didn’t say a word about it. You plug in the classes you want to take, and it arranges the schedule that works out. It spits out 10 or a dozen or a hundred schedules that work with the classes that you want to take.”
—Alex Ames
junior, engineering and astronautics
Stillwater, Minn.
“I wish I knew that teachers’ office hours were actually important. Getting to know your teachers and [teaching assistants], because I never went to them early on and then I started going and it helped me out a lot more.”
—Austin Frahm
senior, secondary education and mathematics
Appleton, Wis.
“As a freshman I wish I really would have known the bus routes really well, like all the times that they come, especially the 80 ... and that the campus bus stops are free, because they get you around so much faster. Even the city routes, because you get a free bus pass with your tuition, so that would be really good to know.”
—Sam Hicok
junior, Southeast Asian studies and Asian-American studies
Peoria, Ill.
“I wish I had known how many people actually smoked weed ‘cause that was a huge eye-opener. Way more than I expected.”
—Dustin Stark
senior, economics
Bloomington, Minn.
“I think the first thing, as lame as it sounds, is to try to buckle down a little bit freshman year. That’s probably my biggest regret, was not getting as good of a GPA and having to make groundwork for it now. So even though freshman year’s supposed to be a fun party year, go out and meet a ton of new people, but try and find a little bit more time than you would think to get some studying in. And then, honestly I would say my freshman year was probably a lot more exciting than this year, so at the same time, trying to make the most of it. Meet everyone on your floor, it doesn’t matter where they come from, what they’re about, you can learn so much from so many different people that you never would have thought of learning about before. So, I think a wide array of friends, whether it’s on your floor to clubs that you want to get involved in, is the best groundwork because then you’ll have so many more options to network in the future, whether it’s career-wise or even more friends-wise, I think that just opens up your experience even more.”
—Haley Sinklair
junior, sociology and legal studies
Monroe, Wis.
“I think that everyone should take calculus as soon as possible because it’s so important for so many fields … it’s something that a lot of people have a grudge against from the way that they learned in high school, but if you think that you’re going to do kind of a range of things later, it’s just good to have it in your back pocket. And I think that it’s also a really beautiful kind of math and so if you hate math, then maybe you’ll like calculus.”
—Madeline Schatzberg
second year master’s student, agriculture and applied economics
Madison, Wis.
“Take classes that are interesting because you’ll do better in them than taking ones that you think [are] going to go under your major necessarily... My favorite one, which has nothing to do with my major, is Gender & Women’s Studies; it was the health, body and disease. It was really interesting and that was just one that was just open and I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll take it,’ and I really liked it.”
—Kimberly Washnesky
senior, political science, legal studies and criminal justice
Hartford, Wis.
“I think overall just organization. I didn’t know it was going to be so hard having breaks in your schedule throughout the day, not just like being in classes all day. That was really hard to deal with for me. Especially like if you had a busy morning and a busy afternoon and you had maybe an hour break for lunch, if you forgot that that was your only time, then you just weren’t able to eat.
“For my first whole year, for both semesters, I kind of just was led by my advisor on what to take but she didn’t put that in context to how that would affect the rest of college for me... If you already come in and you have an idea of what your major is going to be, do research and look up all of the requirements and then start planning out how you want your four years to go, how fast you want to get your gen eds done, and if you don’t know what your major is, I guess just pack on whatever you want.”
—Elena Wittneben
fifth year senior, music performance and percussion
Oostburg, Wis.
