Angstbot

Wear jeans/pants that “breathe” and bring a sweater, even if it’s scorching hot out, until you know which building blasts the AC to 60 degrees F and which feels like a sauna

Backpacks with thick straps are your friend!  Messenger bags are cool and all but if you’re commuting with a lot of stuff, symmetrically styled backpacks are better for your back

You are your own person and you can walk out whenever you need to or want to, so long as you’re not disrupting the class.  Meaning you can go to the bathroom without permission, take a breather if you’re anxious, answer an important phone call, etc.

If you don’t like the class on the first day, if you can- DROP THAT CLASS AND TAKE ANOTHER ONE!  It’ll only get worse from there!

If you can, take a class outside your major; it’s a good break from your expected studies.

You are in charge of your schedule.  Your adviser and guidance counselor is there to ‘advise and guide’ but if you don’t like certain classes and you can substitute for others, that’s your choice.

Consequently, if you are changing anything drastic in your plan, talk with your adviser and instructors.

Pay attention to your credit hours and grades.  Never leave this to the last week of school, you will be sorry and stressed beyond belief!

Unless it’s a lab book or otherwise specified, go to the class for a week or so before buying an expensive textbook.  Some classes, while having it on their required list, do not actually use the textbook a whole lot and you might find some of it scanned online.  Rent if you can or buy used online (schools actually don’t give discounts).  Use your best judgement on what you think you need.

Tell the people who go up to you selling or advertising things you are not interested in that you are in a rush to class and don’t have time to listen to them.  It’s less rude and they’ll leave you alone.

The smaller the class, the better it is to have some sort of acquaintanceship with a couple classmates.  They might save your ass if you are absent one day or need to study.  And talking with them makes the time go by faster without it being so insufferable.

You don’t need to join a club or sport, but internships are cool and useful!

If you can afford it, take a day off once or twice each semester if you’re too exhausted.  Just be aware of what you missed and if it was worth missing!

Your health is the most important, this goes for mental health too!!  Note: College-age/upper teens is when mental disorders like depression and anxiety are most commonly diagnosed.  Most schools have therapy services, especially during exam time.  Look into it if you need to!

Communicate with your professor if you are having trouble with something.  Anything.

Eat and stay hydrated.  Bring a water bottle and snack to class.

All-nighters will happen but never go over 36 hours without sleep.

ADDITIONAL ADVICE

Don’t let a mental health day turn into a mental health week because you will be so screwed.

Pay attention to the syllabus and do not lose it. A lot of professors put all of the assignment due dates in there and ONLY in there.

If your school has blackboard or moodle etc. CHECK IT. a lot of professors will only post certain info there and not talk about it in class

READINGS ARE NOT OPTIONAL.

I REPEAT. READINGS. ARE. NOT. OPTIONAL.

Put them in your schedule, read BEFORE class. And summarise it. For bonus points, come up with some questions about the text and go introduce yourself to your professor either after class or during office hours, and ask them about it. This will make them much more likely to remember you in a positive light (and possibly bump your grade up if you hit a hard patch.)

Your library will have a copy of your textbook. If you cannot afford to rent it, you can go to the library and borrow it from the front desk for a few hours whenever you need it. It is there for you, okay? 

- Wait a week or two before you drop $$$ on the required textbooks to see if you actually need them. Some classes would ask you buy books and then barely use them.

DEFINITELY buy used textbooks whenever possible. I am aware there is some fuckery now with digital textbooks being required, which can’t be resold, with required digital workbooks also. But anywhere you can buy used or previous editions, go for it. If someone can figure out how to pirate the ebooks, go for it. Textbook prices are a scam.

Read the syllabus and note how many absences are excused each semester. I liked to save a few of those to use to skip class and finish up projects/papers when I needed some extra time.

BACK UP YOUR FILES. Get a dropbox account or something to sync to your computer and backup your files. Then if your laptop dies you can still work on your papers and not be late.

Books (and other resources) that a professor has asked the library to set aside for a class are called “course reserves”. The rules for checking out course reserves can be different from those for other materials–if a book needs to be available to the whole class, they can’t let one student keep it for three weeks. Make sure you know what the policy is!

Try not to put yourself in a position where you and everyone else are trying to get the same course reserve item the night before class.

Libraries also have subscriptions! If you find yourself needing a paywalled article, search for it through the library catalog, because odds are good that the library has paid the paywall for you.

If you have trouble accessing something ask the library staff! Publishers of ebooks and online journals love to set up weird hoops for people to jump through. Trust me the librarians are just as annoyed with this as you are.

Larger universities have Subject Area Librarians, that is, librarians who specialize in researching Art History or Spanish Literature or Computer Science or Sociology or whatever their area is. Talk to the librarian for your major and discover databases you never dreamed existed.

But you are responsible for your own safe spaces. You can block tags, block words, block people.

“But i thought fandom was supposed to be a safe space” —yeah you have to curate it.

Unfortunately one persons’s safe space may be another persons’ trigger. That’s ok. Simply block them, block the tag, block the word etc. They can do the same for you.

I don’t know who said it first, but “I need to be able to express my anger without shame” and “I need to be away from yelling and loud noises” are both valid needs people can have for a safe space that really aren’t compatible with each other.

So are “I need to process my trauma” and “I need to not meet any trauma.”

Or “I want a safe space to tell/read the stories that speak to me” and “those stories are distressing to me.”

Insisting that your needs are the only needs anyone should have is not a safe space, it’s its own act of violence.

It's usually an extension of assumptions that people in the past were just less intelligent than in the contemporary, just being like "I know that the sun is a star millions of miles away that the earth orbits, but this ancient religion describes it as a chariot flying through the sky" and not really bothering to learn the context and just (consciously or subconsciously) settling on 'that's a crazy thing to think and was probably believed in because they were Stupid'.

part of the human condition is that everyone is stupid about something and some people are stupid about a lot of things. how many people ever actually gave a fuck what the sun really was? how many theologians who dedicate their lives to making sense of the world actually managed it?

You WILL discover that you were wrong about some shit you felt pretty strongly about before. Maybe you never realized how often your mom ACTUALLY cleans the bathroom and it turns out she asked for help really rarely. Maybe, much as it grates to admit, putting $50 into a different savings account every paycheck really IS the ONLY way to save any fucking money. Maybe that big rolling trashcan you resented your roommate putting in the kitchen, and got in that big fight about, really WAS super convenient and now you have to buy one for yourself after they move out and take it with them. Maybe blanching vegetables so they retain their color when cooked actually DOES enhance a meal, pretty food slaps actually, and the reason you didn't think it was worth the effort is because you were depressed.

You WILL also discover new shit that works SO much better for you than everything you'd been taught. Maybe you'll discover that dropping trash off at a recycling center at your convenience works way better for your brain than getting it picked up on a set day. Maybe you'll realize you don't actually hate tofu, you just hate how your family cooks tofu. Maybe you'll love being able to walk around the house naked whenever you want. Maybe you'll find you thrive in a space with giant framed nude photography, or taxidermy animals, or fandom themed Everything. Maybe you'll realize that keeping the thermostat set like 5 degrees colder (or hotter) than is typical makes you sleep better than you ever have before in your whole life.

The natural next step of this thought process should be "ok, now women are in the workforce, they are not dependent on men in the way they once were, how can we change the structure of work such that it doesn't make everyone fucking miserable" giving up on feminism because your predecessors fought for the right for you to have a well-paying job and your job sucks is such an intellectually lazy conclusion to come to.

They even know what 'accident' and 'I'm sorry' means. Anyone who has ever accidentally stepped on their dog's tail or done something else that hurts or scares them, and laments how they can't tell their dogs they didn't mean it?

• taylor swift. who is not a poorly written woman because she is from real life.

• various people tagging themselves. you are not a poorly written woman because you are from real life.

I fucking LOVE vaccines, friends. Give me the science stab. I’m so ready. it’s a beautiful day to not die of a Bajillion and one diseases that carried off like half the population before they had even reached age 10, and a significant portion before they made it to old age, 150 years ago

Or... "What if they had Ao3 on the Enterprise-D?"

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