Kollege Knowledge: A Grrl's Guide to Surviving the First Year

By Courtney Fenner

You've been accepted to college, you know what state it's in, and you sorta-kinda-almost know your possible major. But how should you schedule your classes? How do you handle your roommate's hoarder habits? Why are your clothes suddenly getting tighter? Kollege Knowledge to the rescue! This concise collection of advice is a girl's ultimate guide to successfully adapting to the first year of higher ed. Couched in humor but as honest as your big sister, you'll find that Kollege Knowledge will become more than a to-do list; it will become your BFF!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483504971

Book preview

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1: Home Alone

Housing Choices

First stop in your new college city or town: your dorm!

When I was an undergrad, there were four housing options available to first-year students: Old Dorms (built in the 1940s), New Dorms (built in the 1970s), Brown College and Hereford College. Old Dorms tended to be for more traditional students who wanted a standard hallway full of rooms that held students who were inclined to Greek (sorority/fraternity) life. New Dorms were suite style—several rooms situated around a living room—and tended to draw a more diverse group of students. Brown College was for smart hippies and Hereford College was for quieter types who wanted a small community that reminded them of home.

I lived in Old Dorms in a single room—because I didn’t want a roommate¹—in a former storage closet that had been converted to a bedroom. No joke. But it was my choice to live in that closet, and I could not have been happier. For the first time ever you will get to choose where you will live, at least this is how it goes at most schools. If you don’t get to choose, tough tootsies.

For those who do, there will be so many options for how and where you can live. A few choices that may exist at your college or university:

• Academic communities – You’ll get to live in a building with people who are the same major as you (if it’s a major with coursework starting in your first year).

• Language communities – This is life in an immersive language environment. For example, the French house, the Russian house, the Spanish house, etc.² It’s a terrific way to become fluent in a language other than English.

• Focused communities - In this type of living arrangement, building a sense of real family is important, so there are scheduled party nights, potluck meals and required group dinners each week. I was kind of jealous that I was never part of one of these communities in school.

• Single-sex housing – Most college residential buildings are comprised of both women and men with each hallway being single-gendered. But in SSH, the entire building is same-sex, which might be a welcome comfort for those who are uninterested in having to endure the funkiness of college-boy smell (which will burn your nasal passages).

Also, check for small details like whether there is an elevator or air conditioning. If these are must-haves for you, you’ll either need to choose housing that has these accommodations or get a ginormous fan for the window of your hotbox dorm room and get used to burning thighs as you climb the stairs home.

Consider the distance from the center of campus as well. If it’s super-far and only accessible by transportation, you’ll be away from tons of student activities.

However you choose to live, give it some real consideration; this is where you will spend at least the next nine months.

Some colleges have living and learning communities where you can live with people who have similar interests as you. If you can get into one your freshman year, it can help make big dorms feel smaller when you don't know many people yet. I was in a Women's Leadership Program focused on science and medicine and lived with 12 other girls during my freshman year. We all took our two chemistry and English classes together. We had 8 a.m. Friday lab for four hours and had 15-page lab write-ups due. So while everyone else was going out for Thursday night college nights, we were all sitting in the hallway writing up our labs. It made not being able to go out a lot easier, and it also made it highly unlikely that any of us would blow off our write-ups just to go out with the rest of our floor. – Chelsea

Packing

Your university will supply you with a packing list. Pay close attention to the things that are not allowed. For example, extension cords are not allowed most places and neither are space heaters, as they can both start fires easily.

Some things I couldn’t live without:

• an ironing board

• a TV

• a raincoat and umbrella

• all-weather boots

• several pairs of sneakers

• my stuffed dog, Barkley

The things that mattered most to me I brought and kept the year long. But don’t bring everything you own to college, especially when it comes to your clothes. There will not be enough storage space. Follow this schedule instead:

Keep hoodies, a light jacket and a raincoat at school year-round.

If you’re going to a school that’s too far from home to frequently visit or to one so far north that it can start snowing in October, then of course bring as many clothing items as you’ll need.

This drop-off/pick-up method will be more efficient for your closet and drawers, not to mention that your mother will secretly smell the clothes you’ve left in your old bedroom and think of you when you’re gone. Sweet...and creepy.

Move-In Day

You will have a resident assistant/advisor (RA) assigned to you in your dorm. She (most RA’s are the same gender as their residents) will be the most cheerful person you meet during move-in weekend. An RA’s general job is to look out for the safety and welfare of her residents—that’s you. During your first year, she lives in the same hallway or suite as you. She is there for you as a resource; it’s fine to inundate her with questions and ask for help. Bear in mind, dear one, that she also serves as hallway police and is legally obligated to report you if you break a serious school rule or commit a crime. While she might be friendly, that doesn’t mean that she is your new BFF.

Generally on move-in day, there will be lots of people pushing and pulling, unloading and hauling, sweating and cursing. Not only will there be the chaos of transferring many lives into a few tiny buildings, but there also will be separation anxiety swirling from parents and students alike.