How Not to Look Like a College Freshman
College will be an adjustment (in every sense of the word). Academically, you will be pushed to discipline yourself in new and different ways. Relationally, you will be forced to build a new friend circle and initiate more interactions.
Arguably one of the biggest adjustments will be adjusting to the college social life. Going from being a high school senior (someone at the top of the social hierarchy) to a college freshman (someone at the bottom of the social hierarchy) can be difficult.
In high school, you mastered the social norms. In college, you will be discovering and adjusting to the social norms. What would make you well-liked and even popular in high school probably won’t work as well in college.
You might fear not fitting in or looking lost (like many freshmen do). While you can’t avoid every awkward social mistake, you can do much to avoid looking (and acting) like a college freshman.
Below are 4 suggestions to help you not look like a freshman!
Be genuinely friendly.
In a new environment, you may feel pressure to reinvent yourself. Many new college freshmen feel this same impulse.
In my post, “New School Year, Same Me” I explain this struggle:
“In new surroundings, you may feel the need to adapt your personality or identity to be more likable or accepted. This urge is completely normal.
The new experience of college is an opportunity to start over, to start fresh. No longer are you trapped by the mistakes or choices of your past. You have the opportunity to be who you’ve always wanted to be. Finally . . .
While [this college experience] is a new place, a new year, and a new school, you are still you. As much as you may want to change who you are, you know deep down that you remain you.”
If you’re trying to reinvent who you are, you can easily adopt an extreme version of yourself. You may find yourself lonely and desperately wanting friends, and so you resort to one of these two extremes:
Put on an excessive friendliness when interacting with others.
Withdraw from social settings and wait for others to reach out to you.
Neither action will likely result in positive outcomes.
If you’re excessively friendly, your actions can come across as phony and abrasive. This is a put-off to those who ordinarily enjoy being with someone like you.
If you withdraw or hide away, you’re likely going to be seen as a loner or odd. This discourages those who would enjoy the real you.
Instead of moving to the extremes, be intentionally and genuinely friendly. Don’t force interactions with people who clearly don’t click with you. Don’t fake friendliness with people you probably don’t really want to be friends with anyhow. Don’t ignore attempts potential friends show to spend time with you or talk to you.
Ultimately if you want to have friends, you need to start by being a good friend. This concept means you need to be friendly toward others focusing on them (their feelings, needs, etc.). People with friends have to show themselves first as friendly.
Listen more, talk less.
You may or may not be an observer more by nature. (This likely depends much on your personality.) When you are in a new situation or a new environment, what do you tend toward?
Sometimes new situations can make you feel more uncomfortable and, as a result, you tend to be overly talkative. However, this behavior may actually make you stick out in a negative way.
You are usually better in new social situations to listen more than you talk. Watch more than you act or speak. You will begin to pick up on social cues and social norms that will be a guide for you on how college life works.
If you are already more of an observer than an initiator, please do not sit on the sidelines. (Notice the heading of this section isn’t “Listen only” or “Don’t talk.”) While listening and observing are good practices, taking action, initiating, and talking are critical if you want to understand this new college environment.
Expect to fail.
You read that correctly. You will fail sometimes at college. Whether you flunk a quiz, get rejected by a person, or say something dumb, you will fail. But failing isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Why is learning to fail well important? In Jeffrey Selingo’s book There Is Life After College, a human resources manager shares this observation of college graduates: “Most college grads have gone through college and were told they’re great, so they can’t accept negative feedback on the job.”
This manager goes on to imply that “knowing how to receive feedback and improve on that feedback” is one of the distinctive qualities of recent college grads who “make it” professionally. In other words, if you want a successful career (and possibly a successful adult life) you need to learn how to get up after failing.
You will almost always learn more from failing than you will learn from succeeding. Think of a quiz or test on which you missed a question. After seeing the correct answer, you are more likely to remember that concept long term. You learned much more from what you misunderstood, missed, or messed up than you learned from what you got “correct” or did successfully.
This is also true of social situations. You are going to act awkwardly, rub someone the wrong way, or say something you regret. That’s life. You learn from your mistakes and move forward with better knowledge.
Seek balance.
You’re going to be tempted to fall into the extremes: work tirelessly on homework or throw yourself into the social aspects of college. You need both, but you need a balance of both.
In Arum and Roksa’s book Aspiring Adults Adrift, they explore bad college habits that lead to a poor career. Arum shares: “The most important choice students can make [while at college] is whether they are on the party-social pathway through college or are investing sufficient focus on academic pursuits.” Their research found that poor academic performance in recent college grads increased their likelihood of unemployment, being fired, or being laid off.
If you are naturally a social person, you will need to guard your studying habits. Your temptation will be to prioritize people and experiences over grades. While people and experiences can be incredibly valuable, getting good grades is important too.
Earning good grades reflects more than intellectual capability or just being smart. Consistently earning good grades signals that you disciplined yourself and formed good habits. During this first year of college, you are setting up habits that you will rely on for the rest of your adult life (e.g. time management).
If you are naturally a book person, you will need to make time for building relationships. Social skills are often the biggest things employers desire in potential hires. In Selingo’s book There Is Life After College, he encourages students to “look for . . . experiences that will give you opportunities to work with others, rather than solely on individual projects, so you can learn to negotiate and showcase your teamwork skills to a potential employer.”
Having the knowledge to perform successfully is good, but knowledge isn’t enough. You need to be able to work with team members successfully too.
Rather than worrying about looking like a college freshman, focus on learning skills that will help you be a successful adult. You’ll certainly make mistakes and have regrets, but you can develop skills at college that make you stick out for the right reasons.
