Welcome to college.
Now that you’re here, the last thing you want to do is make a bunch of mistakes, but mistakes seem to be inevitable. Year after year, freshmen make the same mistakes, caught in a vicious cycle of just not knowing how things work.
If you’re reading this, I hope you’ll make fewer mistakes than your friends because of it.
No. 1: Don’t wear your letter jacket anymore
You’re no longer in high school. No one in college cares that you were a four-year letter winner in football unless you’re now an OU player.
Letter jackets do not make you look cool. In fact, I find it hard to believe letter jackets ever made anyone look cool, and I wore one all through high school back in my day. Their only purpose now is to be a warm coat that also screams, “Punch the wearer of this jacket in the throat” to everyone around you.
Not cool, man.
No. 2: Don’t try to cheat the parking system
Whether you think you are, you are not smarter than the swarm of parking enforcers.
Sure, it might seem like a good idea to hold onto those annoying yellow envelopes with a parking ticket inside to stick on your windshield when you don’t want another one, but those parking folks check. They have computers and stuff to check that sort of stuff for them, and they’re paid to enforce the parking rules (read: write tickets). You honestly think they won’t check your car because there’s a million other ones in that lot, too?
You might find a loophole you can exploit, but don’t exploit it too often or it will disappear like your spending money after you build up a semester’s worth of parking tickets.
You can fight the battle, but you will always lose the war.
No. 3: Don’t assume you can be on time to class if you park at the Duck Pond
There’s a lovely parking lot east of the football stadium that rarely fills up, even if the garage and closer lots do.
It’s the worst.
Don’t get me wrong, not having to wind all the way up the parking garage just to realize there aren’t any spots is a positive. However, needing 15 minutes or more to transverse from the empty expanse of the eastern side of campus to class is a definite downside.
This is a lesson I learned the hard way: If it’s 9:15 a.m. and you’re just now pulling into the Duck Pond lot for your 9:30 class, run.
No. 4: Don’t eat Chick-fil-A for every single meal
It’s delicious, I know. I was once a bright-eyed freshman with meal plan. Be cautious, though. I also can tell you the freshman 15 thing is totally real if you don’t eat smart.
Your meal plan and meal points are a great privilege — albeit one you or your parents had to pay a lot for — so remember that “with great power comes great responsibility.”
Also, your meal points are more valuable than gold to upperclassmen who are forced to survive on Ramen noddles and taquitos, so use that to your advantage or be generous and make older friends who can protect you from bullies or whatever.
No. 5: Don’t miss out on student football tickets
I don’t care if you hate sports (well, actually, I do care) and going to a football game sounds like the seventh level of hell to you — buy tickets and go to at least one game while you’re here.
College football is king at OU. You can either spend your entire college career avoiding it, or you can give it a try. Maybe you’ll like it. Or maybe you’ll triple the money you spent on student tickets by reselling them.
Either way, it’s a win-win for you.
No. 6: Don’t switch your major 15 million times
I’m sure being a doctor or lawyer or astrophysicist sounds fun to most people, but after you flunk biology or English or Diffy-Q, you can’t just give up.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with getting your gen-eds out of the way early until you’re sure what you want to be when you grow up so you don’t lose time and credits switching back and forth.
— James Corley, journalism senior
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court 9 months, 1 week ago
i have no prob seeing ppl wear lettermen's jackets because where i went to hs, students didnt recieve them until the LAST semester of senior year. not to mention had to shell out almost $1000 for them on top of that! if they want to wear them, wear them! i thought less of those ppl than i did the ones who showed up for 8 am classes dressed like paris hilton (or ANY class!) thats a lesson you left out: its college, not a runway/streetcorner/pubcrawl!
ahmed1381 9 months, 1 week ago
"Also, your meal points are more valuable than gold to upperclassmen who are forced to survive on Ramen noddles and taquitos, so use that to your advantage or be generous and make older friends who can protect you from bullies or whatever."
Seriously James!!? are you sure we both go to the same OU!?