“Don’t wait for the perfect moment, instead take a moment and make it perfect ” – ZOEY SAYWARD
Freshly out of high school, trying to blend into the college life and navigate your way through adulthood. That’s the life of a fresher, sounds difficult doesn’t it? In reality, it’s even more confusing. From the first day of your college to your sudden change of lifestyle, it all seems like a game that came with no instruction manual. we are all winging it as we go. sometimes we make the right decisions and sometimes not so good ones, in the end this starts a new phase of our life. an important one.
Stepping into adulthood can be scary and confusing especially since we are asked to choose what we are going to do for the rest of our life and plan out our future 10 years from now, when we had to ask for permission to use the washroom merely months ago. Ironic isn’t it? In these dark and alone times, I am here to give you some tips that will help you throughout your college life. Things I wish somebody told me before.
- Learn to manage your finances
If you are anything like me, you also would have thought that the ability to manage your finances, savings and learning about investments, all that knowledge will come to you served on a silver platter. I spent most of my life thinking that I’ll learn about finances when I enter adulthood and unfortunately, that never ended up happening because I never put any effort in learning it. Learning how to manage finances, how to save and invest all are essential skills you should learn. these are the skills that will help you in the long term. Here’s where you can learn how to manage your finances in just 19 ways.
2. Don’t know what you want to do? Neither do most people.
With the ultimate confusion of being an adult and having no clue what you are supposed to do, society decides to drop another boulder over our heads pretending we are atlas. The boulder called “what do you want to do in your life?” expecting us to recite in precise details just how we have our entire life planned out. They instill the fear of being a failure so deep within that not knowing what we want to do gives us more anxiety than a Maths exam. It’s okay to not have your life planned out. Life is too unexpected for us to dot it down in precise details, it’s okay to leave your options open and go with the flow. It isn’t the end of the world if you don’t know what you want to do just yet, I promise.
3. Learn to Socialize and Connect
Now, for some of you introverts this may sound like a nightmare. but it is important to socialize and connect with our peers and professors, having someone to rely on makes your life in college a lot easier. bonus point of having more connection is having more opportunities. having good peers to lean on makes our freshmen year way easier because you realize that you aren’t the only one there with lots of question and confusion. In cases of emergency, these friends will be the one to help you out.
4. Learn basic survival skills
Let’s leave the misogynistic mindset in the rearview and talk about how important it is to know basic survival skills such as cooking, doing your own laundry and cleaning. assigning these skills to only one gender leaves the males out there helpless when it comes to living on their own. you don’t know what life might throw at you so it’s better to learn these basic skills than to wait for the worst case scenario to come to life.
5. Invest in your hobbies
Invest in your hobbies, your hobbies aren’t just something that you should put aside if you want to make it far in life, in fact, its the contrary. the more you invest in your hobbies, the things you love doing, the more skills you will have to showcase and you can start a side hustle with the same set of skills. Do the things that give you joy and happiness because life is too short to waste it on things we hate.
6. Life is not a race
The most important thing to remember is that life is not a race, you can do things at your own pace, there is no rush and no deadline on when you can do what. you can decide what you want with your life yourself, don’t listen to anyone else if it doesn’t resonate with what your heart says. Just go with what your heart tells you, with precaution of course but don’t be afraid to go wild and take that leap of faith!
Here’s a toast to adulthood, something that you will make you cry, make you laugh, turn your hair grey from stress and give you one of the greatest years of your life. Welcome to adulthood and college life. hope you’ll survive out there.
