Starting college is both exciting and challenging at the same time. The feeling of being a college freshman feels surreal! After hard work, dedication, and consistency, you land your college!
It could have been a process for you to reach out to various college paper writing services to come up with that acing essay that helped you accept your college or the student service you provided in your school years.
As you get into college, these acts of yours feel rewarding!
But some situations could be not so favorable. Therefore, to save yourself from it, you need to avoid mistakes.
Occurrences of mistakes could be intentional or unintentional, but if you know what to do and what not to do, you’re well aware of your actions.
We have created this article to help you sort your way into enjoying great college days as a freshman!
We contacted professional assignment writers on how they understand freshmen and what common mistakes they seem to be making!
Here is the list of six mistakes to avoid!
Top 6 College Freshmen’s Mistakes to Avoid
To make the most out of your college experience, here are the six common mistakes to avoid as a college freshman.
1. Procrastination
As mentioned earlier, college years are exciting and challenging.
You’re away from home, on a journey to pursue a career through higher education. This is the time when procrastination can be your biggest enemy.
Procrastination is delaying or putting off the task until the last minute or past the deadline.
This could be one serious mistake because it affects your study, your mental well-being, and further activities in your daily life.
Procrastination tops as the most common issue that first semester of college students face.
Therefore, you must be aware of it to steadily and gradually improve academic performance, mental well-being, and overall productivity.
Some ways to overcome procrastination could be setting clear goals and following them, creating a schedule for your day-to-day activities, taking breaks between rest, and eliminating distractions.
Further, you could reward yourself upon completing a specific task. This way, you’ll be motivated and procrastinate less.
Overcoming procrastination is gradual, so you must be patient and celebrate small accomplishments.
2. Skipping Classes
Skipping college could be more of a temptation in the very first. You might enjoy being out during lecture periods and roaming with your friends.
It is a mistake you must avoid at all costs. While it initially sounds fun and exciting, it might gradually become a habit.
Study shows that students who skip classes have chances of dropping out. The reason could be because of determination.
When you skip your classes, you miss out on various educational content.
It also results in missed information, being laid back in projects and assignments, and needing to catch up in coursebooks, negatively impacting academic performance.
Attending classes is an aspect of the learning process that allows you valuable opportunities to learn, interact with your professors, participate in discussions with your classmates, and stay up to date with projects and assignments.
So, you must avoid skipping classes and regularly attend them.
3. Overcommitting
College life is all about finding a balance between various activities in your daily life to make yourself available for all the important things but not overdo them.
While college is important and they are valuable aspects, it’s not a wise decision to overextend yourself.
Overcommitting is a common mistake for college freshmen to avoid.
The transition to college can be overwhelming, requiring students to join many extracurricular activities, take several part-time jobs, do various volunteer projects, and get involved in all academic activities.
While getting yourself busy and productive is an excellent deal, it can also lead to many negative consequences.
Often, we encounter students with overcommitment facing many issues like burnout, poor time commitment, neglecting academics, and lack of focus.
Therefore, you must first learn to prioritize your values and interests and find a balance between them.
This will help you manage your day and learn to say no to things that don’t match your interest or need.
4. Neglecting Self Care
College days might only sometimes be fun. In the initial days, you might find difficulty adjusting to the environment. Further, there arises a feeling of being alone. As a result, freshmen neglect themselves and their emotional and physical health.
College life has a demanding nature! But you should make sure to prioritize your health. You may suffer negative consequences like stress, burnout, and declining health upon neglecting self-care.
As a result, this impacts your focus and productivity, which hampers your education.
It is a must to prioritize yourself and have a defined self-care routine. This just doesn’t have to be a proper meal and exercise but gaining your mind a time to meditate, be in peace.
Some ways to promote your self-care could be establishing a routine that includes important activities like rest, exercise, healthy meals, and relaxation.
It could be prioritizing your sleep, getting sound sleep, eating a balanced meal, including physical activity, practicing mindfulness, managing time efficiency, etc.
5. Ignoring Finances
Graduating from college takes a lot of money. Much of the sum goes from course fees to rental, food, transportation, and parties. Therefore, it’s a must that you don’t ignore your finances and have a better track of income and expenses.
After all, college can be an expensive endeavor.
Your financial decision as a freshman in college could have a long-time effect on your future. When you graduate, you don’t want to have much student debt to repay.
Instead of having nothing at the end of the month, being mindful of your expenses and budget will help you avoid unnecessary debt.
As a freshman, when you decide to join a college, you must check out the financial aid and scholarship options. This will further help you with your college costs.
Ignoring finance can lead to various consequences like accumulating debt, financial stress, and missed opportunities.
To ensure this mistake doesn’t happen, you must create your budget, seek financial aid, and limit unnecessary spending.
Further, you can educate yourself about finance, saving, and investment.
A part-time job could also be a good fit to handle your finances.
6. Failing to Explore Opportunities
Even when you’re a freshman, college offers various opportunities. They offer scope for professional and personal growth scope by offering internships, study abroad programs, and various other research opportunities.
As a freshman, you could avoid this particular mistake by exploring the opportunity for growth and discovery.
These opportunities will help you enhance your development.
You could look out for academic opportunities, extracurricular activities, internships and work experience, networking events, personal growth opportunities, cultural diversity programs, community engagement, and such.
Wrapping Up
College experience is rewarding and the moments you will cherish for your life.
It is going to be a transformative journey with fair challenges now and then.
By avoiding common mistakes like procrastination, skipping classes, overcommitting, neglecting self-care and ignoring finance, and failing to see opportunity, you can create a meaningful journey for yourself.
Along with that, a few other suggestions to college freshmen are prioritizing time management, seeking support in the time of need, and maintaining a healthy balance between college and personal growth.
College will be a time for you to self-discover yourself, grow, learn, and embrace the lessons you learn along the way.
With high determination, resilience, and willingness, you’ll be able to make the most out of your college days.
Also, make sure to take these mistakes into consideration and try to avoid them.
What mistakes do you seem to be making? How do you overcome these mistakes? Got anything to suggest? Do let us know!
