So besides information I now know about the international criminal court and how to conjugate Spanish verbs, here is some life knowledge that I’ve gained:

Do not bring a lot of t-shirts from high school: This is more of a personal issue. I have so many Class of 2010/National Honor Society/Cross Country t-shirts that I don’t know what to do with them. After assessing my clothes situation the other day, I realized that I don’t even wear those shirts since they’re irrelevant and instead, I could fill that closet space with better clothes.

If you hook up with a guy that you know, make sure you see him the next day to avoid future awkwardness: This is a tried and true method, my friends. If you don’t see him the next day, the awkwardness and overanalysis of the previous confrontation just builds up and then explodes in your face later on. By seeing him, you re-establish a chill connection immediately after the hookup and it doesn’t give you (or him) time to overanalyze and freak out.

Take fruit from the dining halls: Guys, scurvy isn’t a joke. Neither is cookie addiction. If all you have in your room is junk food, that’s all you will eat at night. However, if you have some carefully and sneakily procured fruit on your desk, you could add a little bit of healthy vitamin C to your night-snacking diet.

Don’t be afraid to take early morning classes if you love the class: Yeah, you’ll be tired, but loving the class is great incentive to wake up for it. As an added bonus, being awake longer gives you more time to accomplish stuff. And yes, catching up on old episodes of ‘Teen Mom’ counts as accomplishing something.

Work out if you’re having trouble sleeping: If you typically don’t work out and find yourself being an insomniac lately, take that step into the gym and work out a little bit. Even if it’s just walking on the treadmill for half an hour, it’ll help you get to sleep at night (not to mention help your butt look better come bikini season).

Do not depend on other people to help you with your econ homework: While this can be tempting, because doing homework together helps both of you learn more, if one person starts to slack, the other person will typically start to slack. Do your homework on your own, and if necessary, check with another person who you know is dependable.

Have bonding nights with your roommates during finals week: Finals week can be a really stressful time and you’ll see your roommates a lot less than you usually do. Take a group study break and pop in Love Actually; it’ll be better than a massage.

Hopefully I’ll remember everything that I’ve learned from this portion of my life and use it for next year and beyond, but until then, what are some life lessons you guys have learned over this semester?

Margaret’s been through a lot during her first semester at college. Check out what else she’s been dealing with all semester long.

College classes are the perfect example of things that can be accurately judged from a first impression, no matter how fleeting. Let’s take a look at some of the most common experiences you might have on your first day and what they might mean about the class ahead.

What happens: Your prof shows up 10 minutes late, frazzled and smelling heavily of espresso.
What it means: Feel free to come to class in your PJs and contribute to class discussion with garbled comments that aren’t fully formed, since your prof will neither care nor be able to tell the difference.

What happens: A PowerPoint presentation is already up on the screen when you enter, and the prof has a writing implement in his or her breast pocket.
What it means: Watch out, sister! This prof isn’t going to take any shenanigans. S/he is likely to be a hard grader, so start assembling your study group pronto with the cute dudes who sit near you.

What happens: The prof hands out the syllabus, reads it word for word, asks if everyone has the textbook, and dismisses you early.
What it means: Don’t be fooled by the early dismissal. This is a by-the-book prof who isn’t too keen on original ideas and probably doesn’t want to hear yours. Learn to read and regurgitate what’s in the textbook, and fast.

What happens: You all meet at the coffee shop and the prof buys everyone drinks and pastries.
What it means: Count your blessings. Your prof is either really nice or really insecure—better hope it’s the former.

What happens: You do an icebreaker activity with the other students in your class.
What it means: Your prof used to be a corporate motivational speaker. Polish off your phrases of cynicism, because you’ll probably need them for the kind of crap you’re going to hear in this class.

Ready for the big time? Start studying your profs’ mannerisms, fashion sense (or lack thereof), and office decor (yes, that does require you to attend office hours). It might be a pain, but it’s not a waste of time. When you supplement your in-class comments with similar body language or slip in that “Far Side” reference that reflects a cartoon your prof has outside his office door, you can start welcoming those A+’s with open arms!

I remember the days of running around Bed Bath and Beyond with my parents, frantically scrounging the aisle for that perfect plastic bin to stash all of my Ramen. Talk about a brutally long scene of events.  I stood in the florescent-lit aisles of so many department stores I started dreaming about shower caddies, futon throw blankets and Audrey Hepburn posters.

However, my parents were more than generous when they stashed the cart with college-goodies.  Especially food.  I think my mother thought I was going to eat all my food the first day, never have the desire/money to buy anymore and end up looking like a famished kid come Christmas.  Bless their hearts, ma and pa provided me with everything I would ever need in a my 8X8 dorm room.

And they didn’t even realize the half of it.

Although my parents made sure I had just about everything to satisfy my college-soul when I hightailed it to party-town, there are some sneaky things they didn’t even realize they’d purchased.  I’m not saying I smuggled a box of Trojans in between my binders; I’m simply stating there are some things out there your mama and papa can buy you that serve a college purpose they’ll never know or understand.

Allow me to explain.
Note: I really hope my mother never reads this. I love you, Ma!

1. Bed Sheets
As you cruise the household aisles for the sheets, make sure to snag some with the highest thread count best potential for toga parties. Read: a solid set. How will the parental units ever know?  My mom always insisted I had an extra set of sheets “just in case I never had the time/drive to wash ‘em.” What mama didn’t know, however, is that changing a set of sheets on a dorm bunk is a lot less satisfying (and a lot more work!) then looking positively fabulous at your first college toga party.

2. Plywood Board
This is easy; all you have to do is tell your parents the bottom of your bunk sinks in when you sleep on it. Then boom, you have a make-shift beer pong table. Before you know it, you will be bouncing ping pong balls (those you probably have to buy on your own will) and sipping warm Keystone from a red cup. In your own dorm room. ‘Where the party at?’ is your new motto.

3. Socks
What other reason would your parents think of where you would need socks – other than keeping your feet warm and stank-free? The sock on the door trick when you’re getting busy in the bedroom? Exactly, my friend.

4. White Bar Soap/Whiteout
With all that personal decorating in college (i.e. posters, re-arranging massive dressers, etc.) nicks on the wall come in packs of HUGE.  And you know what that equals: lots of money come the end of the semester to repair. But with some handy bar soap or a nice bottle of Whiteout, you won’t have to tell daddy-o he needs to match the paint (or write another check) after you terrorized your room while when you ripped the posters from the wall in a drunken rage the other night. All you gotta do is take that bar of soap your parents bought you in September and fill in the holes in the walls. Voila.

5. Snorkel
Come Spring Break season, parents won’t bat an eyelash when you beg them for a snorkel for your Cancun trip. You want to see the coral reef, the wildlife, the ocean. Where is the harm in that? Before you know it, you will be examining the Nemo’s under the sea filtering keg beer into the snorkel’s spout to the tune of ‘Freshman, Freshman!’ coming from the surrounding crowd.

6. Fruit
There’s this delicacy I like to call WHM…

7. Garbage Bags / Dawn Dish Soap
My freshman year, a ton of students took to the quad late at night with dish soap and garbage bags.  No, they did not scrub the sidewalks and pick up empty beer cans.  They constructed a slip n’ slide. If you want to be as awesome as they were for creating one of the messiest and happiest nights of my life, match their stride. Load up on the bags, ladies.

8. Permanent Markers
You want to label your folders, work on school presentations, or do art projects…. on people’s faces/your brand new beer pong table (See #2).

9. Birth Control Pill
My mom still thinks I am on birth control to regulate my period while living around so many other women. And I just keep letting her believe it.

10. Vitamin Water
“But Mom, when I work out I want to gain back all of those healthy electrolytes so I can efficiently study.” Except replace “work out” with “follow a tequila shot with a keg stand and then come home at 3am with only one shoe and a slice of pizza in my purse.”

Moving forward. As August rounds the final corner of it’s first week (I can’t believe it’s almost time to start thinking about getting ready for class again), here is the week that was.

* I went to New York this week and Williamsburg was infested with them.  Hipsters. And New York isn’t the only place feeding the crop of PBR drinking people who don’t smile. Time to hate on the hipsters.

* It’s that time of month again. . .the time of month where you don’t feel like doing it. Wait. . .what?

* Since college is creeping around the corner, time to pimp out your dorm room so you can show it off to all of those drunkie boys you will be showing it to. At 2 am. Don’t worry, they will appreciate your David Beckam poster. And they will like it.

* Now, focusing on school.  CollegeCandy points you in the right direction better than a Target employee. Time to get school supply shopping.

* And while we’re on the subject, we are here to help you get through those beginning college blunders.

* Speaking of college-woahs, why do grads guzzle so much booze in college? There has got to be more valid reasons other than the withering economy.

* First dates are harder to analyze than advanced Sudoku. This could help.

* We provide a fabulous guide of things to accomplish before you turn the big 2-5.  I highly suggest you check every task off the list.

* We discovered the world of college hooking up is a difficult philosophy to decipher. Do insecurities ride? Or is hooking up all just fun and games?

So you’re going to be a freshman. Thanks to your advisor/mom/campus tour/Bed Bath and Beyond advertisements, you think you’re ready. You learned how to do laundry, you’ve purchased the Twin XL sheets, you measured your future dorm room (and cried when you realized you could touch all 4 walls from the middle of the room) and all those A.P. classes have prepared you for the workload that comes in college.

Congrats. You now know about 10% of what you need to know to survive freshman year.

The truth is, there is a lot that happens your first year of college that no advisor (and especially not your parental units) is going to know about. And that’s why we’re here – to get you from Welcome Week through final exams in one glorious piece. And to try and stop you from making the same mistakes we did. Again and again.

You wanna survive your first year of college? Avoid any and all of these freshman year faux pas:

1. 8am class.
Despite thinking that 8am really is not that early, there is no way you are actually getting up for this class once you begin to discover that there is potential to party every night of college.  Do yourself a favor and don’t even try. 99% of the time, this class will be offered at another time or another semester. If you have to re-work your entire schedule and eliminate time for lunch between classes, do it. I promise, it’s worth it.

2. Hooking up with an older frat boy…and thinking that he will automatically fall in love with you.
In reality, college boys have been waiting three years to finally be big men on campus and use this status to hit on freshman girls.  Have fun, just try not to get too attached.

3. Puking in Public.
You’re in college.  Great job! This means you have pretty much unlimited access to alcohol.  This does not mean that your tolerance has gone up since high school. While the people around you may be able to slam 10 beers in 10 minutes, it might not be the case for you. Don’t be stupid. And if you are, excuse yourself before you become “girl who puked in her hands.”

4. Skipping Class.
I get it: skipping lecture where there are 300 people and no one takes attendance is tempting. But don’t do it. Lecture notes are incredibly important to your academic success and oftentimes the professor will discuss things that are not in your assigned reading but are in your final exam. Getting to class isn’t hard, so suck it up, bring some snacks and get to it.

5. Showing up to a frat party with male friends.
The rule of frats is simple:  chicks are in, and guys are always going to have to wait.  Do yourself a favor and make your group at least a 2:1 ratio in favor of the female gender.

6. All Sweats, All The Time
Ah, sweatpants. Love ‘em. But despite the comfort they provide (especially after you #3 and you’ve got a #1), they don’t love you back. Between the drunk eating, nasty dorm food, and major beer calories, you will gain weight. And without the guide that only a non-elastic waistband can provide, you’ll never know it. Put on some jeans once in awhile.

7.  Overdressing in theme.
Theme parties are great, but remember that as a freshman, you will likely be party hopping (especially if you mess up on #4 and can’t get in to the party you dressed for).  Don’t go all out for a “CEO and Corporate Hoes” party unless you plan to stay there all night.  Otherwise you may end up wearing a bra and a pencil skirt at an ’80s party, and that’s just not cool.

8. Spending all of your time video chatting.
While your home friends are great, so are the people at college!  Branch out, and learn to put away your Skype for some real person time so that you actually make new friends.  While a little bit of homesickness is normal, a relationship with your computer is not.

9. Winging an Exam.
If you did fine in high school not studying, good job.  That’s not how it works here.  Even those of us who do study can’t always make the grades, so don’t hurt yourself before you even take the exam. This is what you’re here for, after all.

10. Drunk Dialing Your Parents
It’s funny at the moment, but no one’s laughing the next morning when your mom calls at 9am and gives you “the talk.”

[It's pretty obvious that the average CollegeCandy reader has some very strong opinions. Opinions that she likes to share with everyone on the site. We love a strong woman, so we thought we'd give her a real forum to discuss her thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. Every Friday I'll be featuring a hot topic (like healthcare reform!) and leaving it up to you, the readers, to duke it out. So, read it and get your debate on in the comments section below!]

There’s all kinds of advice out there about your freshman year, but more than what classes to take or how I should bring my own Solo cup to parties, the the biggest piece of advice I heard back then was “don’t get a boyfriend right away, play the field.” Of course, being the serial monogamist that I am, I didn’t listen. And got a boyf faster than most students unpacked their boxes. But now I have to wonder if I would have been better off if I had listened to those wise sages. There’s a definite up and down side to the first semester boyfriend, and I think we owe it to all the ladies getting ready to start freshman year to talk it out.

The temptation of the first semester boyfriend is almost insurmountable. You’re in a new place, surrounded by new people - new, attractive people – who don’t know about that time in high school when you slipped in chocolate pudding and had to walk around all day with a brown stain on your butt. All of a sudden you get to pick the kinds of classes you take, the activities you get involved in, the events you go to - which means your chances of meeting someone who’s really compatible with you is way higher than when you were just meeting guys who lived in the same school district as you.

And freshman year is a time when everyone’s coming out of their shell, meaning you could end up meeting a great guy who’s just not the type you’d have ever dated before. Having someone to go out with could encourage you to go places and do things you might not do on your own; and let’s not ignore the fact that freshman year can be a little scary – having someone to share that with (whether he’s a freshman too, or is just remembering it) could be a real comfort.

Maybe the biggest problem of all with avoiding a BF when you start school is that it seems so arbitrary. College is supposed to be a time when you can let loose and do what you want to do instead of what you’re “supposed” to do, so why shouldn’t you date whoever you want to whenever you want to?

The downside, of course, is what getting a boyfriend at the start of college keeps you from doing. By being tied down to one person early on, you could be held back from doing things because your significant other doesn’t want to do them. We’ve all encountered the problems of balancing friends with a BF, but at the beginning of college, when you don’t have many friends to start with, it’s easy to spend all of your time with the guy, keeping you from getting close with others.  And while not all of them are fun, those learning experiences that you’re “supposed” to have starting out (like which guys at the party to avoid after you’ve done tequila shots) can be important, and you will miss some if you’re playing the couple.

Finally, (though some do make it) most people who start dating in freshman year end up breaking up down the line,which could mean that you’ll have wasted a lot of time and opportunities – trust us, you don’t want to have regrets. People evolve, particularly in college, so the person you start dating as a freshman, may not be the same guy when you graduate.

Well girls, what do you think? Is it worth the risks to get a first semester BF? Should you swear off serious dating at the start of college? What did you do your freshman year? Or what will you be doing when it starts? Sound off in the comments!

My college has a week of orientation, so it never really felt like school until I walked into Geology on Tuesday morning. Before that, I had been watching movies with other freshmen, exploring—well, really getting lost in—the campus, and trying every imaginable ice cream combination at the dining halls.

From the moment I walked into my class, I realized I can’t just watch movies and eat ice cream for the next four years. Buying textbooks before the class was its own problem—really, if a book is used, shouldn’t it be dirt cheap, not just a fraction less expensive than the new version?—but being in a room filled with strangers, most not naïve first years like me, was unnerving.

In high school, the first day was one of my favorites. Sure, I hated knowing I had a year of work ahead of me, but I loved seeing old friends, catching up on summer gossip. Here, I sat down and immediately started taking notes. What part of this lecture was important enough to write down? Who was the person sitting next to me? Was I allowed to raise my hand to ask a question?

And then came the dreaded syllabus, something I’ve never used before. So now I have four separate syllabuses from my classes, all confirming that I will be piled down with reading and papers for the next few months. Not only is it overwhelming, but it’s making me feel hopeless to even consider joining clubs or having a semblance of a social life in college while keeping up with work. Sure, I worked hard for the last four years. But that was nothing.

What really scares me is I just don’t know what to expect. One professor told me to call him by his first name, but I’ve heard that another thinks “Hi Professor _____” in an email is too informal. Upperclassmen have told me that some professors expect students to drop by during office hours, while others think it’s a nuisance. How am I supposed to gauge what is expected from me?

From new subject matter to new academic expectations to new professors, I am overwhelmed. When I look at my cluttered dorm room and list of homework in my agenda, I still can’t believe I’ve been here for less than two weeks. And I can’t help but partly wish I were back at camp, not college.

Okay, so I guess I let Hollywood feed me that stereotype.

However, once I started freshman year I started meeting some great girls (who were none of those stereotypical adjectives) and who were also in sororities. The contrast baffled me, so I decided to investigate.

Sororities are pretty big on my campus and something like 35% of girls go Greek. That fact and all the nice girls I had met led me to sign myself up for the 2 week long process of rush. My floor friends all signed up too, but I was still pretty iffy about the idea. I told a few home friends and their reaction was…well less than enthusiastic. I got responses like; “Are you serious?” “Why would you do that to yourself?” and “You are not a sorority girl!” Even my mom, who went Greek in college, said that it might not be for me. These people were the people that knew me best, so I thought that they were probably right, and I prepared to pull my name off the list of about 700 girls.

I deliberated for a while and ended up setting everyone else’s input aside (where it should have been in the first place). While my friends meant well, what did any of them know about being Greek? It is simply impossible to judge such a huge population of college girls based on Legally Blonde. So I kept my name on the rush list, for the primary reason that if I backed out before I had given it a fair shot, I knew I would feel regret and always wonder “what if.”

So I rushed, which at my school is literally rushing around. You go from house to house, sometimes in heels, meeting tons of girls. There are four rounds, “Go Greek”, “House Tours”, “Philanthropy”, and “Preference Rounds”. At the end of each round you rank the houses and they, in turn, rank all the “rushees.” Not gonna lie: it was a little nerve-wracking and exhausting. But as I walked around the houses and met the girls it became easy to sense where I belonged and where I didn’t quite feel comfortable.

In the end I picked a house and they picked me and I got to meet so many people that I would not have otherwise. People that are now my best friends and sisters. At such a big school, going Greek provided me with a smaller circle, girls to have fun with and girls to study with, girls to take care of me when I needed help and a place to feel comfortable.

Rush, of course, doesn’t turn out the same for everyone. Some people find houses, others don’t. I have a friend who regretted not rushing freshman year and rushed as a sophomore. In the end she dropped out of rush, but at least she could now say with certainty that it wasn’t for her. Even if you rush and end up not liking it you will meet so many more people. You could meet girls you like and choose to be friends with, but not sisters with, after the process. Or you could meet girls that dislike rush just as much as you end up bonding over disdain for the process. Or you could rush and find a sorority that you want to be a part of. You could find yourself a place where you are comfortable and happy, and what could be better than that?

Either way, I encourage rushing because it’s something you don’t get to re-do later in life. Give it a shot and you’ll be regret-free either way.