As I write this, I am about to embark on my final semester of my college career. Weird, right? It almost seems like yesterday when I was a little freshman moving in to my dorm. Except for the growth part, a lot has changed in these three and a half years. I’ve learned the hardships of picking the right classes and managing my social life and my studies, but it was all worth the ride. It’s cliché, but some say that college is the best four years of your life, and it’s true. They go by in the blink of an eye, so take the time to cherish your college life.

1. Make a Bucket List

While it should be on nearly all seniors’ to-do lists, making a bucket list at the beginning of your college career can help you get to know your campus a lot better. Who knows? If you accidentally stumble upon one of your campus’ landmarks, you not only knocked something off “the list”, but have a great story to go along with it. If your school has a great basketball team, sit in the student section and go to a basketball game. The student section of a sports game has its own little bubble, and that’s where all the excitement is. Whatever is on your list, don’t miss out and start making it happen.

2. Take Advantage of Campus Resources

The thing about college is that it offers a variety of resources that very few students actually take advantage of. From coffee houses with free Wifi to free entry to recreation centers, free printing, and basically anything with the word FREE next to it, be sure to snatch up these opportunities now before you have to pay for the real thing once you enter the real world. Syllabus week is the best time to get freebies from bookstores, so don’t miss out!

3. Learn How to Balance Academics and Activities

This is a pretty simple rule to follow, but sometimes, a freshman’s first semester can get a little out of hand. You’re on your own for the first time without Mom and Dad deciding your every move, so it’s up to you to determine if you’re going to that 10 a.m. class or if you’re going to go out every night. Here’s a handy tip: Go to all of your classes during syllabus week. While you should be attending them all semester long, this way, you can decide whether it’s worth dragging yourself out of bed every morning. And while it’s fun to go out, know your limits and know your deadlines. Don’t go out the night before you have an exam, and instead of pulling all-nighters and cramming, study for an hour a day until you have the material down. Studies have shown that you retain more information the longer you study. Plus, you can still have free time to do whatever else you want.

4. Go to Your Professor’s Office Hours

Like the rule before it, this is another handy tip for freshmen. If you’re stuck on an issue or don’t understand the material from lecture, go to your professor’s office hours as soon as you notice a problem. Professors have taken an hour out of their day to meet with students to help them succeed in the class, so it’s harmless to take an hour out of your day, too. Plus, if you go early on, you can get to know the professor and see what a future exam might be like, and if you take the time to meet with the professor, chances are if you’re on the border for a grade, he or she will bump you up.

5. Have Fun!

Simple and easy. The opportunity to be a young undergraduate only comes once, so live it up to the fullest!

I mean, high school was easy. All throughout high school, I had one goal: Get into a good college. I knew I had to turn in my homework, to get A’s on tests, to play sports, take on leadership positions, etc. Everything I did, I did with the idea of, will this help me get into college?

Except then during senior year, I felt like that was complete crap and embraced my inner crunchy granola self and spiraled more into the question of does this really matter?

And that’s the mentality I’ve come into college with. For the first time in my life, I am no longer shooting towards a singular goal. It’s like, I’ve always been told to go up a mountain, but now that I’m on top I realize that I’m on a precipice looking into an ocean that is infinite. I have to jump in, but where do I even swim?

For that reason, freshman year Margaret has experienced a huge jolt away from high school Margaret. I’ve been really apprehensive about joining clubs because I’m always concerned about things I could be missing out on by committing myself to one thing. I haven’t been doing homework as intently as I could be because another side of me is asking if my econ problem set will actually be something I’ll care about when I tell my grand kids about my life of adventure.

There’s so much advice out there for college kids. Apparently, we’re on the margin of being able to change ourselves, to change our generation, to change the world. But the problem is that all this advice is contradictory. All those cliché phrases you hear in commencement ceremonies and find so inspirational – Do what you love. Cover all your bases. Step off the beaten path. Listen to your mother. Get straight A’s your first semester. Money doesn’t matter. You don’t need to think about your career. Pick a major you like. Find a high paying internship. – what exactly do you do with those?

It’s enough to drive you crazy and I know that from one too many days of crazy. Which is why right now, I’m just letting it all wash over me. I don’t know what to do, what direction to step in, whether my choices will ultimately be right or wrong. But I think that it’s okay.

I’m floundering, but I think this is just my first taste of being an adult – to have infinite possibilities around me, to have to decide, to have to move forward. That’s what I have to get used to and – fingers crossed – one day embrace. Let’s just hope the 3 1/2 years I have left here are enough…

Catch up on all of Margaret’s freshman year adventures (and lessons) here!

Just get creative (and a permit from public safety)!

Here are a few ideas on how to have some extraordinary (in a good way) fun on Friday and Saturday night, based on things my friends and I have done or aspire to do at some point this year. Although it’s always nice to have a plan in mind, I’ve found that the most spontaneous things end up being the most enjoyable, so don’t be afraid to just go with the flow when the sun goes down!

Screen a musical outside and have a massive sing-along

A couple of weeks ago, a program house on campus screened Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and the musical episode of Buffy on the porch. If you’re a techie (or have friends who are), you can gather up all the theater geeks and have your own musical screening on the side of your dorm! Just be sure you have the necessary permits to do so.

Set up a bowling lane on your hall

This one’s really easy. All you need are assorted shampoo bottles/hairspray canisters and something that rolls, and there you have it – a bowling alley! If you want to raise the stakes, have a tournament for prizes, or simply for bragging rights. Not that knocking down a few bottles of shampoo with a grapefruit is that impressive, but it’s still something, I guess.

Have an old-school slumber party

Remember those elementary school pastimes of making prank calls to guys and stuffing your face with candy at a friend’s sleepover? Since college is technically one giant sleep-over, why not have a night of nostalgia and junk food (minus the confining sleeping bag/pretending to be snoring when someone’s mom comes down to check on you)? Play “Never Have I Ever” and “Truth or Dare,” and if you’re really bold, play a prank on your next-door neighbor. It’ll be even easier if they’re falling-over-themselves drunk, so you’ll get twice the hilarity out of less effort!

BAKE!

Even if you’re really bad at baking (like me), take advantage of the empty common kitchen and bake some cookies, or brownies, or both! The ends will definitely justify the means, no matter how frustrating the actual process is. Plus, who can resist sampling (read: wolfing down) fresh cookie dough? It certainly can’t be worse for your health than what’s cooking at the dining hall.

Host a marathon of a TV show

Yes, I know, watching DVDs gets old after a while. But when you’re trying to squeeze an entire season into an evening, things get interesting very quickly, usually by the eighth straight hour of viewing. If you’re really ambitious, screen a season of 24 in one sitting. I’ll personally shake your hand if you accomplish in one day.

Play the Wikipedia Game, extreme edition

I mostly use it as a procrastination tool, but I imagine it can get competitive with enough spirited people involved. You also might learn a thing or two from it, and isn’t learning what college is all about? Am I right? …hello? Bueller?

No one should be expected to sit in the library or stare at their dorm room walls every day of the week with their nose in a book. Everyone needs something that helps them unwind, especially on the weekends.

Sometimes finding something to do – especially on a campus where parties are a rare occasion -  is hard. I knew when I signed my life away as a Hollins woman, I was going to be living in Roanoke, Virginia,and that I wouldn’t have a big city as my playground on the weekend. I knew I wasn’t attending a huge state school where fraternity parties are the social factor and that club activities would be endless. As a prospective, I remember asking about the student life on the weekends only to hear the same fib that my fellow peers heard themselves as prospective students: “Don’t worry about it, you will always find something going on.”

Oh, but that is very far from the truth. Options on campus are very bleak. From the first weekend as a first year, I realized as no one was around on the weekends I would have to be entirely responsible for finding something to do Friday and Saturday nights. While not feeling bogged down by having too many social activities planned, I like that Hollins has a sleepy atmosphere (especially for those weekends I need to do a lot of work), but for the most part – I don’t understand why we can’t have some sort of decent entertainment when the weekend rolls around.

The social scene at Hollins on any given weekend can be summed up in three ways:

1) You leave on the weekends

2) You rely on an apartment party or a party hosted by NEFA (a specialty housing dorm)

3) You hope the Student Life/Activity Board has something planned

A huge chunk of the student body leaves on the weekend. Girls carpool for the entire weekend up to Hampden-Sydney, an all male college two hours away and sleep on random futons since making the drive back in one night is out of the question. If Hampden-Sydney isn’t someone’s bag, other colleges like Washington and Lee, Virginia Tech, and Roanoke College can be visited. However, if you don’t know someone who goes to those schools, good luck finding a party or meeting people. What does the rest of the student body do when they leave? They go home! Students who are from Virginia or even close cities in North Carolina find themselves frequently going home because of the lack of campus activities. The only time students make plans to stay is if a formal is happening, which only happens twice a year.

Occasionally an apartment party or a themed party through NEFA will happen, but the frequency of this is rare. Also, these parties aren’t for everyone. Many girls don’t feel comfortable going over to the campus apartments because they don’t fit the cliques that live in many of the apartments. NEFA, a housing dorm for the campus’ artsy folks, throws unique, unforgettable parties, but most of them are not for the faint of heart. What if you just want a small get together? What about a dorm room?

Parties in other dorms do not happen, whatsoever, which can be very frustrating. Say it’s 11pm on Friday and you want to “Just Dance” along with Lady Gaga and your two best friends? Good luck getting through the song before someone calls Campus Safety to complain and a knock from an officer interrupts you. Every hour in all the dorms seems to be quiet hour. Whenever students speak up about the lack of social atmospheres, the Activity Board usually says “We have monthly mixers with a DJ and we invite other schools” to combat the complaints, but it does not suffice when no one actually shows up to the poorly planned and advertised school sponsored parties.

For a small university, Hollins is very diverse in its beliefs and types of students. Regardless of the variety amongst us, I have heard over and over again that not enough is done on the weekends in order to give students something to do. Yes, Hollins shows a movie every weekend in the auditorium and they have a shuttle take students to the mall, movies, and Wal-Mart, but that is not enough. When over half of the campus departs on the weekend to other colleges or home, something more needs to be done. How can a campus have a close-knit community when everyone leaves by 2pm on Friday and returns by 6pm on Sunday?

I am not asking for endless activities on the weekend. I think that students should be responsible for coming up with something to do, but I do believe that the university should endorse a more sociable atmosphere. Whether that means allowing students to have dance parties at reasonable hours without getting campus officers sent up or providing well planned mixers with other colleges, something needs to happen in order to help the social scene from sinking even more than it continues to do so!

In asking for other opinions from students on campus, Hollins sophomore Jennifer Old sums up how actions should be taken on campus to improve the overall weekend situation: “I think people are hesitant about the parties and other social events held on campus. Parties are broken up much more quickly at Hollins and the threat of the Roanoke Police has become very real. As for the social scene outside of the party sphere, I think there should be a community forum every semester. HAB (The Activity Board) should hear the collective desires of the campus and cater to the diverse interests of Hollins women.”

Obviously a social environment is very important to college life. Now tell me, how do you spend your weekends? Do you think your college provides enough entertainment and amusement for students? What do you want more of in your school’s social scene? Dish – I want to hear what I’m missing!

When walking around campus, you see her. She’s rocking the casual look like it’s nobody’s business. And she’s doing it well. Her bootcut jeans are accompanied by a perfectly worn-in t-shirt layered under a zip up hoodie. She’s wearing black Converse or a pair of well-worn sneakers, the laces tight enough to keep them on, but loose enough to allow her to slip in and out of them easily. Her haircut is low maintenance, but totally chic.  She’s rocking plastic rimmed glasses, no contacts; a watch, no jewelry.

You don’t know her, but you want to.

This is one co-ed who has got it together. She is the kind of girl who is naturally pretty, has a killer body and is completely oblivious to it. She is friendly, kind, and her easygoing, low maintenance attitude makes it easy to get along with her. Even her professors are drawn to her, always chatting with her before class and helping her after.

She has a large circle of friends, filled with a variety of different types of people. Girls love her, guys love her, nerds love her, athletes love her. And though you don’t know her, you kind of want to love her too.

She is funny without being raunchy, boyish but not butch. She prefers drinking beers in a pub to shakin’ her thang at the club.  She’s comfortable at a Death Cab for Cutie concert, but has no problem listening to The Beach Boys or the Avenue Q soundtrack.

She rocks her GPA, has a hot (yet totally down to earth and awesome) boyfriend, and seems to excel at just about everything she puts her mind to…without getting frazzled.

In short, this girl just exudes cool. And as she walks by, you aren’t sure which you want more: to know her or to be her.

[Photo courtesy of Wild Rose on Flickr]

Proper protocol is usually required to get to the bottom of a situation. Sometimes you have to start with an RA or the Dean of Students; each issue has its own designated driver to get to the bottom of what’s going on. However, when you reach the end of the line and nothing is solved, going past the usual set of rules and skipping to the top becomes the only option if you want action!

After going all freshman year without much success from the Dean of Students and the Housing and Residence Life, my mom and I decided to set some time aside to schedule a meeting with the President of my university in hopes to get everything sorted out. Eager to put an end to the continual issues that beleaguered me throughout my first two semesters in college, I expected results and an apology from my university’s president.

Before going into the meeting I compiled a list of all the things that happened and how they were handled. I remember looking down at the list as we walked into her large office thinking that it really was one thing too many. As my mother and I spoke openly about my experience at Hollins and the issues that I have seen on campus such as bullying, harassment, and the roommate debacle I survived, President Gray (a very cheerful, articulate, and warm woman) sat across from us with a look of disbelief on her face. In telling her about the botched responsibilities of the Student Life administration, she spoke about not knowing these issues beset her campus. Apologizing for the terrible experience I have had on the campus, President Gray looked forward to making my university a better place with input on how to improve.

Working through the main issues my mom and I brought up, President Gray thought of ideas to help take preventative measures for other students on campus. For example, she came up with the idea of putting peep-holes in every first-years’ door, so they could look out and see who was at their door. I thought it was a great idea because maybe if I heard someone outside my door when words like bitch and whore were slewed in erasable markers on my whiteboard, I could have caught them.

She thought of implementing a bullying policy into the 2007-2008 student handbook, which I thought would help the administration define in better terms what bullying actually is. And to help me feel safe and calm in my living situation for my sophomore year, President Gray promised me that I would not have to live in the first year dorm again (which was where I was placed in a single due to a shortage of singles in upperclassmen housing) and that some type of housing compensation would occur for the price distinction of living with a roommate and on my own, in a single.

Leaving the meeting with her, I finally felt relief.

Fall 2007 rolled around, and it was time to go back to school. And then it became clear – all promises were off. Suddenly, the school had no available single for me in any building except the building President Gray agreed with my mom that I should not live in again. The only option was for me to live in a double room, as a single. However, the university decided that if I did that, they would not pay damages of lasts years woes in the form of a single room, like they formerly planned to do. When inquiring about this with the president, she said via e-mail that she didn’t remember deciding I would live elsewhere than the single I reserved in the first year dorm, in the first place.

Just as all these promises seemed to not be carried out, the president herself seemed to vanish off into the sunset for a week or two long vacation. Leaving me with the option of living in the overly expensive double as a single, I moved into my dorm early to help out with first year orientation (expect a story next week about this orientation) feeling cheated, ignored, and taken as a joke yet again by Hollins and its administration. After dishing out an extra $1,000+ or so, after I was told I wouldn’t have to, I couldn’t help but feel lied to … especially when I ran into the President during freshman orientation and she asked if I was pleased with the start of my sophomore year at Hollins. Seriously…give me a break!

Although she can talk the talk of being a professionally polished president, she failed at keeping her word. Disenchanted yet again by the university I chose to attend, I felt like I had nowhere to turn. If the President will listen, but not act or take her own promise earnestly – who will?

Just because the president doesn’t follow through on the school’s mission statement or promise doesn’t mean your issues as a student should fall on the back burner. Everyone deserves an education worth achieving and a student life worth living, and the appreciation of this keeps me pushing through to help make my university a better place, even in spite of its substandard character traits and underhanded administration.

Maybe it’s just the classes I am taking—and of course, I know the freshman 100-level classes are the easiest—but I don’t feel too freaked out. Well, maybe I’m a little stressed, given that most of my teachers think that assigning long essays is better than assigning a final test. That leaves me with hours of work to do this weekend. But I’d rather write an essay than study for a test, so I am not too worried. I’ve found these classes pretty reasonable, which proves to me that all those AP classes actually did simulate the college experience.

What I’m feeling this week more than nerves and stress is relief. I’m relieved to have conquered the first semester of college. It’s not that I expected to have a terrible first semester, but I never assumed it would be so easy. I was terrified that I would be the girl who made lots of so-so friends, but never made a real connection. In high school I liked to stand out in class, and I thought I would hide in the corner in college classes. And I thought I’d miss my old friends and my family like crazy. I’ve seen other freshmen here go through that. But for me, everything seemed to fall into place.

Have I changed? Yes. But I didn’t expect to stay the same. I’m no longer the girl who lived in the same house her entire life, who had the same friends for almost a decade. Maybe last year I would’ve found this finals week excruciating, but I’m not that girl anymore. I can handle this, just like I’ll learn to handle the harder finals weeks to come. That’s what college is all about.

This series is meant to provide advice for getting the most out of college, rather than just getting through it. So far we've already discussed having a professor as a BFF, checking out what's going on in your college town, and now we're going to talk about extracurriculars - the ones you never thought you'd join!]

This generation of college gals are smart, savvy, and driven. Do you want to be a CEO of your own company one day? You’re probably already president of your college’s Business Leaders of Tomorrow club. Are you an up-and-coming style maven? No doubt you’re involved with your school’s Passion for Fashion group.

Yeah, being involved in career-minded clubs are definitely a must these days if you want to make connections, but what about joining a club…just for fun? It may seem difficult, especially when it’s so hard to manage school, friends, guys, a job, and elusive “me” time. However, if you take the plunge and join a club you never thought you would, a lot of things could happen.

First of all, joining a club for fun might lead you onto a completely different career path. Not that everything you do in college has to be future-oriented, but there are plenty of roads to success that don’t follow a “traditional” educational route. Have you seen Tina Fey’s awesome impersonations of Sarah Palin on SNL lately? She didn’t get a degree in Hilarity Studies to snag that gig. If you’re the “funny one” of your group of friends, or just a big comedy fan, why not stop in on a meeting of your campus’ improv group? You may discover you’re just as good at scoring laughs as Ms. Fey.

By the same token, f you’re always the one busting a move at mixers, or glue yourself to the couch whenever So You Think You Can Dance comes on, look into joining the dance troupe. And if you were always good at Spanish in high school but chose to devote your undergrad years to chem labs, maybe drop in on Foreign Language Club meetings to rediscover an old passion.

Furthermore, joining a new club will get you out of your dorm and into a new social circle. Sure, we all have our core group of friends, but do you ever feel like you’re doing the same old things all the time? If you’re looking for excitement, joining a new club just might jumpstart your social life. Most clubs will not only meet on campus but host or sponsor events in the community. Poetry or literary clubs will often hold open mics throughout the year–something to look into if you’re an inner poet or rapper who wants some exposure. Cultural clubs like Hillel or the Asian Student Union will certainly throw parties on holidays like Rosh Hashanah and Chinese New Year (plus, who doesn’t love free food?). And the pals you make from joining a new club can connect you to other fun things going on around campus you may never have heard about.

And joining a club for fun means there’s no “political” pressure to run for treasurer or president just so it looks good on your resume. You can attend meetings when you like, socialize with who you like, and get involved at your own leisure. Best of all, college is a time when you have an enormous amount of opportunities to try new things at very little cost and without expectations of following up. If you want to take a dance class after graduation it’ll cost you at least $15 a pop. So what do you have to lose? Get out there and break a leg!

[Come back to find out the next must-do on my list: Live With Strangers!]

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