Starting college is both the most exciting and the most frightening event of one's life. The next four to five years will make or break the dreams that dictated your school of choice. At least this is what you feel like when you pull into the parking lot on move-in day.

I'll never forget how I felt when I moved onto campus. There are the normal fears like: "Will I get lost? Will my roommate and I get along? Will I make any friends?" And then there are the mixed feelings. On one hand, you want your parents to quit blubbering and just get out of your hair so that you can go exploring. On the other hand, you don't want them to leave because them leaving means this is all real, and you're on your own.

I'm very thankful now that my family did finally leave me to explore. Over the next four to eight months, I learned some very important tips that made the following four years of school not just bearable, but spectacular.

• Calling home does not make you a baby. Homesickness doesn't just affect five-year-olds away from home at summer camp for the first time. Everyone experiences it at one time or another. Do not pretend it is not happening; that will only make you feel worse. Call home, go visit or if you do not have a car or driver's license, beg your family and friends to come visit you. It helps and eventually they'll start complaining you don't call or visit enough.


• When not studying or sleeping, if you are in your room, prop the door open. This is an amazing way to meet people. This is how I met most of my friends my freshman year. People wander around the dorm looking for people to chat with and an open door is an invitation to host a visitor. If you decide to be the hall roamer, be polite and knock. However, you do need to be careful. While I met many friends using this method, I also got mooned because of this method. The open door offers a general invitation, to both the interesting and the just plain weird alike.


• Read or watch TV in the dorm common room. This puts you right in the middle of dorm commotion. Make sure you choose a book you are willing to put down. Ignoring someone's greeting because it is a "good part" of the book gives some people a false impression of being stuck up.


• Listen carefully to gossip about professors. I do not mean that you should listen to petty gossip, but rather listen to people who have had certain classes and certain teachers and ask questions about class style and the professors' teaching style. Choose professors you think teach in a way that will help you learn best.


• Do NOT take all the gossip at face value. Some people will talk about how bad a professor is simply because they failed after they did not make an effort in class. Ask questions that will help you determine if they are giving you a subjective or an objective critique. A good example? I had to take a specific class in order to graduate, only one professor taught this class, and all I'd heard from others about this professor was horror stories. "I think his goal is to make sure every one of his students fail," one person told me. Looking back, having completed my degree, he was one of my favorite professors in my subject area. I found him extremely helpful and he even gave our research group an extension on a project when we hit a snag. While this talk helps you to choose the teacher who teaches to the best way you learn, it is still gossip, and not always reliable.


• BE YOURSELF! Do not try to reinvent yourself at college; you're still trying to find out who you truly are. Just be yourself because you are still changing. Get lost in who you are becoming, not in who you are trying to be.


• GET INVOLVED! Learning does not take place solely in the classroom. Join clubs, student government, whatever you choose, make it a point to make a difference on your campus. Make it your campus. When you work on something, you internalize it. You will enjoy college more when you let it be part of your life, rather than just taking up some time in your life.

• College is the best time you will ever have and you don't need alcohol. Life is strange enough without it.


• Fifteen people and two decks of UNO cards will make for one long, noisy, tense card game.


• If you knock on a door and are greeted at the door with a water gun; RUN! There is no guarantee that there is actually water in the water gun. I was chased down the dorm hallway with a water gun filled with lemonade.


• Trick-or-treating in September will turn heads and raise questions. Don't let that stop you.


• If your friend shows up to lunch with a bull horn, it is for the safety of your ears and sanity to not invite him/her along with you to Wal-Mart, unless your goal is to get kicked out of Wal-Mart.


• "Borrowing" a cafeteria tray from the school cafeteria to use as a sled when the first snow fall comes is normal, but you should return it afterwards. Asking permission isn't always in your best interest but saying thank you is.
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• Making pictures with glue and pepper from the school cafeteria is not appreciated by cafeteria staff. They'd rather you just take a lunch tray and go sled-riding.


HAVE A GOOD YEAR!