Another school year is about to begin!\u00a0 August rolls around so fast every year.\u00a0 VSU is excited to welcome their incoming freshman, the class of 2018!!<\/p>\n

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Move in day is coming up fast!\u00a0 The first weekend away from your parents can bring mixed feelings.\u00a0 For some it will be exciting to have freedom at last.\u00a0 For others it will be somewhat anxiety provoking to be so far away from home.\u00a0 Others will feel dread at classes starting and feel overwhelmed already looking at their syllabus online.\u00a0 Other new freshman may feel a little lost, a little lonely and wish they had gone to the school where all their friends went.\u00a0 Others will feel like they\u2019ve walked into their high school class reunion.<\/p>\n

There are so many different experiences while starting college.\u00a0 You\u2019re figuring out a whole new living situation and trying to find your way around campus.\u00a0 You can\u2019t believe how many new people you\u2019ve met in just a few days.\u00a0 So many new Twitter followers, yet so little time to actually Tweet.\u00a0 You realize that 2am is early to get to bed, yet somehow you still signed up for all 8am classes.\u00a0 You may make a mental note to change that for the spring semester.\u00a0 It is a crazy time full of adjustment.<\/p>\n

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Some adjustments will be easy.\u00a0 Others will be hard.\u00a0 Some people are born to party and make new friends easily, yet will find they struggle to make it to class and finish the semester.\u00a0 Other people will thrive in their classes, but feel anxious every time they have to find someone to eat lunch and dinner with every day.\u00a0 Just know that everyone goes through some hard times their first semester.\u00a0 College is a lot of fun, full of great new experiences.\u00a0 However, it is also stressful and full of moments of doubt.\u00a0 Each experience is going to shape you and help you become someone you won\u2019t even recognize at the end of your four (or five) years of school.<\/p>\n

It is okay to take risks and try new things.\u00a0 If you make a mistake, do your best to learn from it and move on.\u00a0 Don\u2019t be too hard on yourself or have too high of expectations.\u00a0 Especially watch the expectations.\u00a0 So many new college students have this image of being the perfect student, or getting into the best sorority or fraternity, or finding the perfect boyfriend or girlfriend, or going to the best parties every weekend.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have to be perfect and you don\u2019t have to be involved in all the right clubs or organizations or be in a relationship to have a great college experience.<\/p>\n

Just take this opportunity to explore the opportunities before you and make changes as necessary.\u00a0 Ask for help when you need it and take responsibility for yourself when you don\u2019t.\u00a0 Have fun, but not too much fun.\u00a0 Study hard, but not too hard.\u00a0 Don\u2019t go to any extremes.\u00a0 My advice for new college students is to find balance.\u00a0 All work and no play isn\u2019t good for you, but all play and no work won\u2019t get you very far either.\u00a0\u00a0 Make sure you find time to eat, sleep, and exercise.\u00a0 This will help reduce stress and keep you focused when those really hard weeks during midterms and finals come around.<\/p>\n

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One of the top things I talk about in my counseling office, besides relationships, is stress.\u00a0 Time management is key.\u00a0 In college you really have to know how to manage your time.\u00a0 Take the next few weeks and try to find a good routine and schedule for studying, hanging out with friends, and getting involved with other activities on campus.\u00a0 If you take on too much, try to back off on a few commitments.\u00a0 If you find you are bored and spending too much time in your room, look for ways to get involved with things that may interest you.\u00a0 Tweak your schedule as you go through the semester until you find the right balance with your time.\u00a0 This will be key as you go through your time in college.<\/p>\n

Good luck out there!!\u00a0 I hope you have a great first year!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another school year is about to begin!\u00a0 August rolls around so fast every year.\u00a0 VSU is excited to welcome their incoming freshman, the class of 2018!! Move in day is coming up fast!\u00a0 The first weekend away from your parents can bring mixed feelings.\u00a0 For some it will be exciting to have freedom at last.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,6,9,4],"tags":[35,38,25,24,32,41,18,37],"class_list":["post-164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anxiety","category-being-positive","category-friendship","category-stress","tag-anxiety","tag-being-positive","tag-college","tag-college-freshman","tag-friendship","tag-loss","tag-relationships","tag-stress"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4s1Yj-2E","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/counseling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/counseling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/counseling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/counseling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/counseling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/counseling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/counseling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions\/170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/counseling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/counseling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/counseling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}