The College Life Experience

The college life experience is one of the things that students look forward to the most when planning on attending college.

When it comes to college, this is often the first time that you might be living away from home so you might be inclined to think that it's time to party without your parents to tell you otherwise.

Attending college – especially in your first year – can be a big shock to your system when you add up all the things that are happening.

There are many things you might find different from high school, things that you might need to quickly adjust to in order that you get the most out of your college life experience:

Workload: In college, you often find that you don’t attend as many hours of classes but your workload increases since you're expected to complete much of the work in your own time. Part of your college life experience is to learn how to manage your workload and get the work done without having to pull all nighters.

Class Size: While you might experience "small" college class sizes, you may also find yourself attending large lectures in theatres with hundreds of classmates. It can be hard to stand out when you're amongst this many people. With that in mind…

Anonymity While you might know many/most of the people attending your high school by name, college – especially larger ones – often reduces you to a student number. In my first year of college, I can't actually recall seeing my name written anywhere but I still remember my 7 digit student number that I always looked for when trying to locate exam results posted on the bulletin boards.

The Classes Themselves: College classes – in addition to being larger than what you are probably used to in high school – often require you to participate verbally and give your opinions. You might even be graded on your participation, something I experienced in many of my university classes.

Social Life: Certainly one of the biggest perceived benefits of attending college is the social life that it might provide. Some people I attended university with seemed to look at their tuition as an expensive cover charge to a bar because that's where they spent most of their time, at least until they failed out at the end of the year and didn't return.

Christmas Grad: Further to what we just spoke about in the Social Life section, the term "Christmas Grad" is an affectionate term for those who spend so much time partying that by the time Christmas comes, they're so far behind that they don't bother coming back for the second term and fail out. Unfortunately, Christmas "Grads" don't receive a degree or diploma for their efforts.

Adjusting To The College Life Experience

1. Before you begin college, try to visit the campus and familiarize yourself with everything relevant to you.

2. Go to any orientations that are offered. Anytime you can get a guided tour of all or part of the campus, it's good to take advantage of it. You might find out about services or facilities that interest you that you didn't already know about. If you have an counselor or advisor assigned to you, use them.

3. Don't skip classes. Back in high school, teachers might give you a detention if you skipped class. In college, your professors probably won't care because if you decide to pay thousands of dollars to skip classes, as long as your checks are cashing the only person losing out is you.



4. Don't forget to have some fun. Getting a balance between work and play can be a difficult one with all the tempting things you might be exposed to. While you want to ensure you get all your work done, having a bit of fun and relaxing is important too in order to keep your mind and body fresh.

5. Look for extracurricular activities. College will probably expose you to many opportunities for extracurricular activities such as athletics, clubs, associations and others. Look for ones that interest you that will help you have some fun and meet new people, too.

6. Stay healthy. Remember to eat right and be prepared to be homesick if you're living away from home. Following Points 1-5 will hopefully help to keep you motivated and happy which can help you successfully navigate through your first year of college.

For me, I found that I didn't really properly start managing the college life experience until my second year. If I had to do my first year of college over again, I'd try to get more involved in extracurricular activities and do a better job of time management with respect to my workload which would have gone a long way to helping me enjoy the experience more than I did.

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