“First day in a new place everyone feels the same, a little bit weird.”
In this chapter we’ll cover:
- Making friends
- Moving into dorms
- Places to eat
- Dances and parties
- The crazy, weird and religious People
How do you prepare for your first day of college? Clean shirt, a shave, a haircut- if that’s your thing. It really doesn’t matter. It’s like any other day just in a new place. You’ll feel a bit out of place for a sec but you meet people with similar interests, with a desire to be friends and soon you get used to the new surroundings and then, before you even realize it, you’re good. Because the most important thing I learned is realize that the more I relax, the more confidence I had and the more I freed myself to loose that critical voice that the teachers and parents put in my head, the better I felt in college. Just remember, free and relaxed doesn’t mean stupid.
About friends, if for whatever reason making friends in High School was not easy, you’re in luck, because nothing could be simpler in college. Everyone arrives with a blank slate, so be cool, be respectful, be yourself and if you still can’t find like-minded people, join some clubs. And of course, smile. People like smiles.
As I said before, at UCSD the window to make friends is really limited to that first week. After that people settle into their classes and into the groups they find that first week. That first week, right before arriving at the dorms, you probably hope to have good roommates, hoping they are relaxed, honest and helpful and you hope they are fun people to be around. And at the very least, know when to leave you alone. You hope that all of you can go out and have a good time that first week, meet all the girls/guys you can and make some good friends. You never know, you might make the friend who you will start a company like Steve Jobs and make millions of dollars or maybe meet that girl/guy you will marry someday.
Those first days I would hang out at Ronnie’s room and we would go to parties with people in the dorms, eat together and even study together. Some of his roommates were in my classes so when I showed up to class, I felt comfortable knowing some people in class because I had someone to sit with, exchange notes and study.
One thing I wasn‘t expecting is the crazy, weird and religious people. For instance, there was an older guy in the center of the campus wearing a suit. He would preach and yell for hours. His preaching consisted of calling girls whores and that all of us are going to hell. There were weird kids wearing weird clothes, sometimes bums came on campus, weird after a while became normal.
But this in a way was diversity. It wasn’t all bad, there were church groups and Muslim associations and Jewish cookouts. Compared to high school, it really was a lot more than I anticipated. With 20,000 people, there was something going on for everyone all the time.
seven year degree 