Advice from a Second Semester Senior

As my last semester at Penn begins and graduation nears closer and closer everyday, I can’t help but find myself nostalgic and reflective. I reminisce on all the friends I’ve made, experiences I’ve had, things I’ve learned, and milestones reached. I’m proud, but I also feel a deep sense of duty to my underclassmen friends and to prospective students. College is a time when advice, solicited and unsolicited, tends to bombard you from every corner of your life. It’s an inevitable part of being among so many young people all trying to figure themselves out at the same time. And inevitably, with time, you become the one giving advice too. So here’s some of my classic pieces of advice to any prospective student or underclassman.

1. Get over yourself!

Sounds harsh, I know, but once I explain, it’ll make more sense. I think so many of us enter college with an immense amount of unspoken anxiety. That anxiety, at least for me, manifested in me trying very hard to “play it cool” most of freshman year. While I still had a great freshman year, I feel like I would have benefited from throwing caution to the wind and just being the silly and outgoing person I am, instead of restraining it all for the sake of being “cool.” While I eventually realized this before my sophomore year, I highly recommend going into freshman year understanding that it’s ok to embarrass yourself and put yourself out there when making friends, even if it doesn’t always work out.

2. Office Hours, Office Hours, Office Hours

I wish I had gone to more office hours over the course of my four years at Penn. While I managed to make great connections with professors who taught me in smaller seminars, I generally didn’t make an effort to connect with professors who taught me in larger lectures, even when they made themselves very available. Oftentimes, it’s those conversations with professors that can help you figure out what you want to do after college, or what you want to major in, or just simply what class you want to take next semester. For the most part, your professors are eager to get to know you, so you should reach out!

3. You’ll make friends at every point in college!

There is a LOT of unreasonable pressure to “find your people” within the first few weeks of freshman year. Not only is that not sustainable given that you’re probably living away from home for the first time, taking college-level classes for the first time, and adjusting to a new environment, but it also reinforces a completely false idea. Speaking from experience, while I was lucky to make some great friends freshman year, it certainly didn’t stop there. I have very close friends who I didn’t even know existed until my sophomore, junior, and even senior years.

While it’s great to have a good group of friends that ground you while you experience life as a first year, don’t forget that you’ll have opportunities to make lifelong friends later on too.

- Karin H.