Finals. While high school cared enough to only dish ‘em out once a year, we’re no longer so lucky. “So I’m supposed to remember everything since August? Is this cumulative? IS THERE EXTRA CREDIT?!” (Sidenote: Who else is psyched that EC opps still exist in college?). So what’s a girl to do?

Simple. Start now. And follow these lovely (simple, and rewarding) steps to prep yourselves for hell week.

The 6.5 Steps to Finals Success:

Get papers out of the way: Papers are majorly lame. Are they going to get you an A on a final? Nope. So knock them out of the way first in order to focus on the heavily-weighted 100 short-answer exam you have coming up in your Psych class.

Breaks: So important. Has your mind gotten clogged up with calculator functions yet? Take this opportunity to f*&k s#!t up at the gym between 3-page increments of that research paper.

Hard work (Dedication!): Keep your eyes on the prize. By now, you have a ballpark idea of what your final grades could be. Let there be no slippage! And hey, coming home with a 3.5 (or better, obv) before Christmas will definitely boost your chances of seeing a shiny 4S under the tree (or by the light of your menorah)!

Rewards: Finally turned in that research paper? Good job. Treat yourself to a re-run of the VS Fashion Show or a well-deserved blackout!

Outlines: Get this crap out of the way ASAP. Literally… just re-type those study guides your professors gave you all the time and build up this study skeleton with a healthy dose of factual meat. So mindless, yet so helpful.

Sleep: Awkward that I need to remind you… but I guess that’s what happens when you move outta momma’s house. It’s been scientifically proven that you’ll be 100% more alert if you sleep before an important exam or project than if you pull an all nighter. (And I didn’t even need to research that! Thanks, common sense.) It’s more efficient to do a bit of studying before bed, say 11:30ish, and rise half an hour earlier to put in that much more effort. You’ll retain the information better because it’s being repeated at another time, and you won’t wake up ugly. Win-win!

Rewards: Yeah, there’s the other .5. Go rage again, you deserve it. Or be mellow and buy a holiday latte. Your call.

Good luck, fellow freshies! Break is right around the corner.

Leah is a freshman at the College of Charleston whose hobbies include underwater basket weaving, painting hopscotch blocks for inner-city schools and harassing unfaithful celebs and politicians via Twitter (@leahsparagus).

My first day of college? Well, much of the same: ditch mom and dad after they take me downtown to eat at an expensive restaurant but don’t marvel at the used, rusted bed frame, desk and chair; shove any and all syllabi materials into a folder and go back to texting on my BlackBerry, chase down the closest seat to the cutest cutie in the room (but don’t get too close, you’ll look desperate), eat lunch surrounded by strange, potential friends and wait for my final class to end to call mom and dad.

I wish I could have pressed rewind and told my six-year-old self to remember exactly how I felt on my first day of kindergarten because 12 years later I’d be retracing my steps as a freshman in college. Reason #4353453578768 why life should come with a remote.

Unfortunately, life doesn’t come with a remote. (I mean, really, what are the Apple geniuses and Bill Gates of the world doing if they’re not inventing people-activated remotes yet!?)

So, uh, like I was saying… oh, yeah, life doesn’t come with a remote and ultimately we end up repeating a lot of the same life lessons and experiences in different contexts and locations. That being said, let’s connect the dots of kindergarten and college! I guarantee the same smooth moves you were making in your Velcro LA Gear Light-Ups you’re still making today in your slip on TOMS.

How, you may be asking yourself, does one come to know such things?

Setting aside my refined, exclusive investigative talents and my keen sense of intellect… it’s all in the playbook; the rules; The Dummies’ Guide To; The Barron’s Book of… all right there, folks.

I’m shouting out all you soon-to-be freshmen right now. The life lessons you already learned in your first few days of kindergarten you get to learn again in your first few days of college. It’s like holding the answer key to your chemistry test while retaking the exam. Bingo!

The first rule is to make a friend. Anyone. Anywhere. Now is not the time to be picky. Just pick someone. Like the days of playing in the sandbox outside Mrs. Jones’ classroom, you just need that initial human contact to get the blood flowing. Once you make a friend, you’re golden. The luxury of kindergarten is that friend might be attached to your hip all day but in college, that might not be the case. Instead, think ahead. In kindergarten it was new station, new friend, so in college just follow that same system: new class, new friend, new dorm, new friend, new lab, new friend… you get the idea, right? Chances are that by the end of your first two months of college (maybe even kindergarten, too) your initial friends will now just be acquaintances. You’ll figure your own friend circle out soon enough and you’ll coordinate when and where to meet for lunch, whether or not you have classes together and how close your dorm rooms are from one another. Until then, I’m begging you, just find a friend.

The second lesson you learn in kindergarten is partners. While in kindergarten your teacher is in charge of picking partners, on the college end you can blame (or thank) the registrar for picking your “partner.” When you’re six, your partner is the person that hangs that book-bag up next to yours, stands in line next to you, walks to and from recess with you, shares a chore with you, reads books with you and makes sure to check that you’ve pushed in your chair and cleaned off your desk. At college they’re really upping the ante with this whole partner thing. In this day and age, you actually live with your partner. Forget the three o’clock bus driving you to safety! Meet your new partner, your roommate. You will either love her, hate her or be totally indifferent toward her (a.k.a. you hate her but are trying to be above such negative language). Luckily, kindergarten and college make it possible for you to opt out of this whole partner situation. If you really don’t get along with your partner, cry. Cry, cry, cry. Your kindergarten teachers will do something to make the circumstances livable and if they can’t, they’ll give you a new partner. The Higher Up’s at college make it a little more complicated. Request a move. Talk to your R.A. And if you must, cry.

Try not to become a hysterical, sobbing mess if and when you get lost.  Kindergarteners and freshmen in college are the easiest targets to spot in a school setting because they always have that Mom-just-caught-us-with-the-lights-on look about them. As a former kindergartener (many, many moons ago) and a former freshman (in more recent history), I’ve been in your disoriented, lost and confused shoes one too many times to count. It happens to us all, even if we are too prideful and say it never did, rest assured because it definitely did. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt, college freshies, and carry a map. Or go explore campus during freshman orientation. Walk from class building to class building and try to at least familiarize yourself with your surroundings. I’d tell you to take notes on where to go, but lets face it, I didn’t and neither will you. For all you Kindergarteners out there, if you lose your way and all else fails remember this: you are a tiny, six-year-old little, harmless adorable human. Someone will find you if you are lost. But if that person takes too long, you have every right to cock your teeny, tiny head toward the clouds and wail your heart out.

“Everybody else was doing it”…. eh, not such a good excuse anymore.  If Jimmy and Tommy were throwing rocks at the girls at recess, then Johnny, that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for you to do it, too. Bad, bad, bad idea. Even worse idea when you start throwing around phrases like cops, LSD, underage drinking, destroying school property, drawing on your R.A.’s door and flooding all the toilets on the first and third floor bathrooms. To all my future trouble makers: although it may be exciting and spur-of-the-moment because all your trouble making friends are doing it too, do yourself a favor and do it better so that you don’t get caught. Five o’clock in the morning phone calls home begging for bail money isn’t exactly the best way to get on mom and dad’s good graces.  Plus, if mom and dad find out you were in time-out, kiss Nick at Night and dessert goodbye!

This last lesson might take longer than a week for little kindergartener’s to truly get a firm grasp of but all you veteran high school folk and freshly college freshies should know this one like the back of your hand.  Get involved! Be outgoing. Try new things. You’re in a whole new place with a once in a lifetime opportunity to reinvent yourself any which way you choose. Paint with your fingers or your toes. Hell, paint with your earlobes. Don’t be afraid to join a totally outrageous club or link up with the Librarians for Literacy movement. Go for a Naked Bike Ride or dread your hair. Who cares! You’re young and fresh, man. (Get it? Get my really good play on words? No? Okay. Fine.)

After feeding your eyeballs and brains with enough knowledge to last you your first week of kindergarten and college four times over, here’s my last piece of educated advice. Spend as much time as possible doing what you love. Keep doing it. Forever. Even if it’s playing with Legos or braiding Barbie’s hair. Let your passions drive you.

Now, as excited as I am to immerse myself in a completely new part of the country and whore my friendship out to anyone who seems halfway genuine, I’m also (understandably) somewhat apprehensive. While I embrace the fact that my classmates will be in the same awkward, n00bish and painfully freshman situation that I will be drowning in, to no degree does knowing this dull my nerves. It’s common knowledge that first impressions carry weight in relationships of any sort.

So here is my proposition to my fellow freshmen-to-be: take these last few months to become the younger version of the person you see yourself being as an adult. Let go, free your mind, go crazy (within reasonable, mostly-legal, bounds) and enjoy the summer. Immerse yourself in culture, as well; attending exhibits (recommended: Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty at the Met), securing an occupation in a new environment (jobs are hard to come by right now, but internships and volunteer positions are perfect for bulking up your resume! Don’t be afraid to work for free, for now), and going to music festivals are all great potential conversation topics. And personally, I know I’ll be needing a lot of those.

Summer is also the opportune time to switch things up looks-wise, so experiment freely with your hair/makeup/clothes. Unleash your inner beauty by tweaking your outer beauty, while keeping in mind that your aesthetic is one of the first things your new classmates will notice about you. Let it out, and come away with a unique, finished product by August. And don’t forget to take advantage of the broiling sun and awesome beach weather!

No longer a ______ , but not yet a _______. Fill in your own blanks this summer. Take some time, figure it out (or don’t) and make the most of this pre-college pause without labels.

My college is pretty secluded, so when I am here, I am in a little college bubble. Sure, I take care of myself and am independent, but I am surrounded by people I know, or people who would be happy to help me at any moment. Life is pretty simple here, if you ignore the fact that we’re constantly stressed from homework and no free time. But still, if I spent four years within the college limits, I would never learn how to really take care of myself.

Getting away from this bubble at first made me nervous, but now brings me relief. Since I am so close to Boston, I can take the bus into the city and just roam around. I can eat real, non-dining-hall food, and walk past faces that I don’t recognize. And I can be on my own.

College is teaching me all about how to learn. I will leave it with a degree and lots of facts in my head. But hopefully this small-town girl will also learn how to take public transportation, walk through a crowded sidewalk, and be comfortable alone in a city. Getting off-campus can be just as educational as staying on it. And by the end of my four years, I want to say that my time her taught me not just how to learn, but how to live.

This is the first time in my life where the amount of time spent in the classroom is significantly less than the amount of time doing work outside of class. Homework used to be a couple of hours a night, which seemed impossibly cruel after spending all my morning and most of my afternoon plunked in a desk at school. Now, class is brief and concise. There’s no taking attendance or explaining the homework. All we do is learn.

I like that I don’t have to spend unnecessary amounts of time doing absolutely nothing in class. But these short classes lead to another change from high school—lots and lots of out-of-class work. Although I have many more hours free than last year, I still feel as busy as ever. But almost two months into college, I think I’ve found my balance. The library has been my savior more than once on a Saturday when my friends and my cozy bed tried to beckon me away from my papers to write. Bringing my food up to my room to eat has given me an extra half an hour to read over a paper before it’s due. Most importantly, I’ve noticed that I have resources through peers and professors which I’ve never encountered before.

All in all, I know I may seem insanely busy to those around me. But there’s a difference between the busyness of this semester and my hectic, stress-filled days of high school. I am choosing these classes; I am choosing to write these essays on these topics; I am choosing to work harder than I would be if I were back home. For once in my academic life, I am busy learning, not busy doing useless assignments. So bring on the papers, I am ready to work.

Of course I would spend every high school moment from that morning bell—which seemed to ring earlier and earlier as my senior year wore on—to the final bell with my friends by my side. I was part of a bunch of different groups, all of which met after or before school and surrounded me with people. But at home, I had solitude.

With both my parents working and my brother off at college, I spent many nights doing homework, watching bad television and heating up leftovers all by myself. Some may think that would be lonely, but I really liked the peace and quiet.

It’s never quiet here. And sometimes I like it; with all the commotion, I haven’t had time to get homesick or have a culture shock freak out. There’s a feeling of community when I walk around campus and see someone I know or when I strike up a conversation with a stranger in the dining hall. Yet every once in awhile I realize… I never have a moment to myself.

I don’t sing anymore. No, I wasn’t a good singer, but I used to belt out lyrics while driving to school or doing some late-night studying with the radio on, my iPod providing a soundtrack for every occasion. Now, even when I’m sitting alone in my dorm room, I know anyone can walk by and hear me. When I’m walking alone around campus I know there is probably a person around the corner. And when I study in the library, I have to stop every three minutes to talk to a person who saw me and wanted to say hello.

In some ways I love that there are people always wanting to say hello. I’ve never been so friendly to so many people before, and I think some of them will actually become life-long friends, not just Orientation-buddies. But I also love the sound of silence, and there is precious little of that in college. Someone is always chatting loudly on her phone or blasting bad rap music from her car or playing the piano in the common room. Endless chatter, the bass of a car stereo and the notes of a musical instrument: this is my new soundtrack.

And soon I will learn to sing along with it, but for now I will start with just a tap of a foot, and maybe a hello in the library.

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