Your mother fastens your suitcase with a heavy heart. Father firmly pats you on the shoulder, pledging a car if you earn straight As in your first college year. You know the path that lies ahead is wide and promising, but anxiety travels through your veins, mixing up your emotions.

Chin up! Your anxiety is perfectly normal, but we don’t want it to steal the show. Warm up for our top 5 tips every freshman needs to thrive at college and beyond.

Make The Most of Freshers’ Week

Colleges often hold special events to help freshers get into the groove. So wear your social butterfly wings and take off. Events will be springing up all around campus; make sure to attend as many as possible. Figure out what clubs and activities are on offer. Don’t feel pressured, though; you don’t have to join everything. Look at it as speed dating: give it a whirl, see if anything clicks, and if not, split ways peacefully.

Also, try to get to know people and catch your future professors’ eyes. Remember, you never get a second chance to make a first impression!

Devise An All-Inclusive Plan

With its hectic schedules and bursting social scene, university life is not for the faint of heart. If you wish to succeed, prepare for more schoolwork and less downtime. Face the accountability issue head-on. Start building your personal timetable. Jot down your academic duties and leisure activities. Make it as balanced as possible.

We’re not saying your schedule is a precious artifact set in stone, though. You might think your writing is all fine and dandy when suddenly, a nosy new professor swoops in demanding Oscar Wilde-level prose. Then you’ll have to make some room in your timetable for honing your skills with professional essay writers. So make sure your schedule is flexible and go over it every now and then. Life is unpredictable!

Make Sure You Fail Occasionally

Lots of fresh-faced students are eternally afraid to fail. If you’re feeling the same, it’s time to start embracing occasional loop-de-loops with open arms. Striving for perfection is really like trying to catch a cough with a butterfly net – good luck with that.

Life isn’t meant to be an epic tale of constant triumph; rather, it’s more like a mental rollercoaster where failure is just as important as success to help you reconsider priorities. Edison didn’t create the light bulb on his first attempt, and your burnt popcorn in the microwave doesn’t make you a bad cook. Rather, it shows that you’re a chef-in-the-making!

Remember, when you fail, you really bounce off a trampoline of experience instead of hitting the ground. It’s perfectly fine to fail miserably. Just remember to pick yourself up.

Work Out a Budget

Start exercising your financial muscles right now. Every student has to be clever at budgeting to become successful in college. Otherwise, the overt stress can get in the way of your academic success. Allocate part of your budget for bills, some for savings, and a lucky few bucks for more extravagant, guilt-free pleasures.

Overspending is not just bad for your wallet but equally so for your emotional health. We tend to buy stuff we don’t need since everything is so easily accessible in our century. That loser won’t be you, okay? Every time you hear a siren call, ask yourself: “Do I really need this, or will it end up in my closet with the other forgotten socks?”

Rest and Sleep

No matter how hard you work at college or how meticulously you follow our tips, your attention will suffer big time if you don’t get adequate sleep. Think of sleep as your mind’s VIP club, where ideas get enough time to refuel their creative potential. It’s like a power nap for your mind, essential to restoring all cognitive functions invariably.

And don’t forget to try and let your stress go for a hike, as it can get in the way of your rest. Don’t overthink when you lie down, and better still, don’t think at all. Silence your mind and let yourself drift off into Zzz-land.

The Bottom Line

And there you have it. You’re now well-prepared to welcome the unexpected, overcome obstacles, and start dancing to the pounding beat of college life. So put on your cloak of courage, draw your budgeting sword, and start savoring the sweet cotton candy of academic success. Best of luck!

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Dianne Sherron is a high school English teacher and blogger. Dianne works hard to instill a love of language in her students, constantly employing innovative techniques and unconventional study materials to help them fall in love with studying. In her free time, Dianne writes educational blog posts with the same goal in mind.

               Photo by Burro Millenial on Pexels