001: College Advice That No One Tells Freshmen
Millie: Hey it’s Millie
Gabi: It’s Gabi
M: We just wanted to take a few moments to introduce ourselves. I’m a current student at George Mason University, and I am studying music technology, and I’m about to be a senior, and I’m super ready to be done with it.
G: That’s very negative (laughing) but, um, I am from Christopher Newport University, and I graduated in May 2018, and I studied English-Lit., and it was super fun. I liked studying it; I was also ready to be done. But CNU is an awesome school, and I know we have CNU people in our church. We have Captains.
M: More Patriots, more Patriots.
G: Probably, but you didn’t even know your mascot ‘til a few months ago, so—
M: Oh my gosh, this is true, I didn’t.
G: Um, but this is Change By Degrees, and we kinda wanted to explain the title just a little bit because we went through a lot of titles and trial by error kind of things, but it’s kind of a play on words because “change” is kind of what we believe that young adults and college students, which is what this podcast is geared toward, is what our generation and our age can do. I think we wield a lot of power, whether in society or in culture, and, I don’t know, we just have a lot of influence, and I think it was important to put that key word “change” in the title. And then “by degrees” kind of has a double meaning because it means “little by little” but it also means “by degrees” in the sense of, like, if you’re a college student you get degrees, so it has, you know, kind of a play on word. So, Change By Degrees, um, is our title.
M: And a little disclaimer, even though these first few episodes—especially this one you’re about to hear, will be geared toward college students and giving them advice we wish we had as college students starting out for sure—as the semester goes along, we will have different topics on, like, just being a young adult in general. Like, you’re gonna start a new independent life. How to kind of start that out as a young Christian in particular, so we are really excited.
G: Yes, we are super excited. So, for our first episode, we are going to be talking about college advice that we wish we knew when we were freshman. So, we are gonna be telling freshman kind of, like, the college advice that we have garnered thus far. Well, you’re still in school, but that, um, that we think college freshmen should be told. So, the first one is about syllabus week. It’s a myth.
M: It is, it is.
G: At least at CNU
M: At George Mason, too. Everywhere.
G: I think people tell you that, ‘Oh you have syllabus week, you can—not hang out—but you can do-’
M: Chill.
G: Whatever you want and chill.
M: Mmhmm.
G: Do not do that because you will walk into your first class and the professor will hand you the syllabus more than likely, and then 5 minutes in he or she will be like, ‘Got it? Good.’
M: ‘You’re first lecture, here we go!’
G: And then slide 1! And you’re like, ‘This is not what I signed up for. I thought I had 5 days to not do anything.’ But even if it is, if they start the lecture, usually what I would do is I would go through all my syllabi. It didn’t matter if I thought it was gonna be an easy class a hard class, and I would take all—like a highlighter or pen or something, and I would just highlight all the test dates, major project dates, group projects, whatever, quizzes—so I had kind of my whole semester laid out, and I didn’t have any surprises, because the worst part is, like, flipping the page of your syllabus and seeing there’s test #1 on the very top, and that’s this week, right?
M: And its super helpful you don’t have to wait til the first class to get your syllabus. Usually if you have blackboard or something along those lines—
G: Yes blackboard—
M: You can check it out. They usually update it, if they’re good, like a day or two before. And you can print it out yourself, and that way you’re not, like, ‘What is this?’ When you walk in.
G: Yes.
M: Definitely. So, for our second point, even though that’s really good, I had to say, like, don’t rely on your advisor for everything.
G: No.
M: I think going in you have the huge lie that they’ll guide you every step of the way. And they’re there to help you, but not if your advisor is the same, um, mine weren’t super great, especially in the program I do.
G: That’s the very nice way of saying it.
M: I don’t know what your experience was. Mine was like…They were awesome?
G: No, they were good, no. No, they were okay.
M: Exactly, so mine, they were helpful, and I’m doing, like, a computer science minor, so like depending on the program you’re doing it may not be so a, b, c, d, these are the classes you’re taking. But really put in the effort for yourself. Like, go see your advisor, I’m not saying don’t see your advisor, but afterwards check, like, ‘Do I want to do this class?’ There’s still a lot of work that you have to do. So just going in knowing you’re gonna have to do that work.
G: Yes, because, I mean, it’s also, like, your advisor is there to help you, but it’s your college career, like, no one’s gonna care about it, hopefully, as much as you do.
M: Yeah.
G: So, take the responsibility and do it, you’re an adult. Also, you shouldn’t have to have an advisor to, like, tell you to—
M: Do this.
G: Whatever. But the next one is kind of, like, I don’t know, people are probably going to think it’s kind of stupid, but for me it, like, changed my life, at least at CNU because it rains all the time. Especially during hurricane season because we are on a peninsula. But rain boots. I did not own a pair of rain boots til I was, it was the end of my sophomore year, and then one of my friends was like, ‘Why don’t you just get rain boots?’ And I was like, ‘That makes so much sense because you’re walking everywhere, and it’s not like, I mean, you might have a really large campus. My campus was not huge at all, but it rains, like, all the time in the Fall semester at least, and then it would just sit; the water just sat because we were below sea level.
M: Mason too.
G: So, the water would just sit. There was no hill there was no—we had terrible drainage and it just sat. So, you’d be walking through ankle deep water to class, so when I got rain boots, it changed my life, and you’d see, like, all these other students walking with rain boots on. Like, everyone knew that was—
M: That was what you do—
G: That was what you do and I—it took me, like, 2 years to figure it out. But it’s fine.
M: Yeah I’ll be the girl in, like, sandals ruining her life.
G: That was me.
M: Don’t be me, don’t be me.
G: I would be in like flip flops or whatever, and you know it would be, like, just like, we’d have flash floods for, like, an hour and I’d be like, ‘Oh it was supposed to rain today, great.’ I would be that idiot walking down the hallway with like my shoes—trying to walk in flip flops when I just walked through ankle deep water, and it was just horrible.
M: Don’t do that to yourself, um, but for our last point, something that I found the most helpful out of everything is to go check out your buildings, not the first day of class, don’t leave that til the end, um, but the day before. If you’re already on campus, usually you have orientation on your, like, class schedule. It’ll tell you what building and the room number. Go find the building, go find the room number. I did that and even doing that—I’m not kidding, you guys— it took me, like, 5 hours to find every single building. It was just one that took me—I think I walked the most steps that day. It was like 10,000 steps, okay?
G: Which I still don’t understand how you missed the building—
M: It’s me. It’s a big old circle, and I circled that circle like 3 times over, and I’m like, “Oh it’s this building.’ So don’t do that to yourself. If there is something that you can do before the first day, I think it’s super helpful. Like, the first day of college is already super stressful. You have new things. If there’s something that you can plan out, whether it’s the syllabus or having rain boots ready or at least knowing where you’re going. Like, that just takes off so much stress, I think. Um but—
G: Yeah like why add that extra—
M: Exactly.
G: —Thing you have to do. Just know where your class is, and you can get the seat that you want too, because then you’re the first person.
M: You’re early…I just thought about that. Be there early.
G: Be there early. At least for the first week. Because you have to get your unassigned assigned seat.
M: Mmhmm.
G: And if you walk in 3 minutes before, and you get the crappy seat in the front—because no one takes the front row. Let’s be honest.
M: I do, I do.
G: You—okay.
M: I’m sorry.
G: I’m a second-row kind of person.
M: Well, that’s good.
G: I want the professor to know, like—
M: Let the professor see your face—
G: Yeah, I want the professor to see my face and that I’m, like, putting effort forward, but I don’t want the professor to think I’m gonna be the one to raise my hand every single time.
M: No, don’t—
G: Like I’m here but, like, don’t rely on me.
M: Good advice, so be a second-row person.
G: Second or third row, but not first. But you’re a first? That makes sense.
M: We’re just wondering as we come to a close if you had any college tips to either do before the first day. Anything helpful, like, that’s just from our experience; what helped us and what we would have done differently, but we know you have probably great tips to share. You can comment them down below this video or you can also follow us on Instagram and Twitter @changebyd3greespodcst. I really look forward to hearing what your tips are.
G: Yes, we are really looking forward to interacting with everyone and seeing everyone’s tips. Thanks for joining us for our very first episode, and we are planning on uploading every Thursday and hopefully we will keep that plan. We have it all planned out. Um, at least for the first kind of semester of this podcast through December, and, um, yeah. We pray that everyone has a great start to their semester.
M: Let us know how it’s going.
G: Yeah, college students going back to school and freshman—
M: Or anyone else.
G: —Who are just starting their college career; we hope that it goes well and, uh, we’ll see you guys next time.
M: See you then.
G: See ya.