Adjusting to College

Adjusting to College

Top Ten Ways to Successfully Adjust to College Life

• Get involved. Involvement with others and campus activities are healthy pursuits. Involvement can breed positive thoughts and feelings and is related to good self-esteem and academic success.

• Stay positive. Work toward maintaining an optimistic attitude and interacting with others in productive ways. Be accepting and tolerant of yourself and others.
• Go to class. Attendance in class ought to be one of your top priorities. Your academic success and successful stress management is dependent upon good attendance.
• Party smart. If you enjoy partying, do it in ways that don't result in harm to yourself or others, and doesn't result in poor academic performance. Do everything in moderation.
• Stay on campus when you can. The college years are a time to develop independence and autonomy. This occurs when you become your own person and develop new relationships in your new community.
• Eat and sleep well. We function at our best when our bodies are appropriately nurtured.
• Practice good stress management. While some stress is inevitable, there are things we can do to prevent or reduce stress. Seek out and learn these methods.
• Communicate productively. Be assertive with others so that your own needs are met, but do this in ways that respect others and their differences.
• Maintain healthy relationships. Work to avoid "toxic" relationships, but also do a lot of give and take with your friends. Put effort into resolving conflicts in ways that honor yourself and others. Stay in touch with those who support you.
• Stay focused. Academic life requires students to focus and concentrate.  Work to avoid or reduce things that interfere with your concentration.

Homesickness

Survival Tips for Homesickness

• Set your room up with something familiar from home
• Make an effort to talk to someone new
• Try to leave your door open sometimes when you are sitting in your room; someone might pass by and say 'hello'
• Get into activities which build up a storehouse of good new memories for you
• Talk to someone else about how you feel - any new student will probably feel much the same as you do
• Invite a friend from home to visit, sharing with them aspects of your new life at college eases the transition
• Respond to the invitations of others to places or events where you will meet more people
• It is hard to let go of home, but calling home too often in the first few weeks may prolong homesickness for you
• Recognize that this is a grief experience. Have a good cry; it is nothing to be ashamed of, when you're really feeling down
• Jot down thoughts, experiences, and dreams in a journal, and try to make some sense out of the different pieces
• Be kind to yourself - it is okay to miss home and perfectly normal. After all, you have spent most of your life there until now, so tears can be cleansing
• You can get help to work out creative ways of dealing with homesickness from the counselors in Counseling & Psychological Services