Perhaps this wasn’t what you imagined college would be like. Welcome to UCSD.
If you’re a freshman, orientation likely wasn’t long enough for you to notice that there are only two weather settings in La Jolla: “London” and “Phoenix.” Sorry. Also, although that aerial photograph makes the beach appear only two inches from the Geisel Library, it’s actually a bit of a walk — so I’m betting you’ll go twice this quarter, tops. You’ll probably be too busy working on your running form anyway, trying to make it from York to Warren Lecture Hall in 10 minutes. The most overwhelming thing about college is the mountain of reading; you’ll already be behind on the first day of class, guaranteed. You’re likely already drowning in the obligatory flurry of club pamphlets and bureaucratic forms that come with every new school year.
Take heart: Thousands of students have made it through UCSD, and unless you’re worse than all of them, so can you. Most of the stuff handed to you is rubbish, so be a dear and recycle it.
Don’t bother with optional reading unless you have the power to slow down time or have concrete plans to ask for a letter of recommendation from the professor.
One thing you do want to read is the class syllabus. If you raise your hand to ask a question that is answered on the syllabus, the entire class will mentally slap you upside the head. If you actually ask a question that can be answered by “it may or may not be on the final,” someone in the class might actually do it. No one likes point grubbers — especially professors. And although you think you can be anonymous in a 200-person class, over the course of 10 weeks your nameless personality shines through. Your classmates will secretly nickname you things like “Extra Credit” or “Sweat-Panted Garden Gnome.” You don’t want to be “Grubby” for the rest of your college career, do you?
First, if upon walking into your section, the TA breathes fire and flaps his green scaly wings, bolt for the door and change sections immediately, for the TA determines your grade.
As you attempt to make friends, you will naturally engage in shallow, polite chit-chat. Unless you want to desperately disengage the person, do not talk about how high your S.A.T. scores were. No one cares. Especially since they changed the scale. As far as all the upperclassmen are concerned, we took the S.A.T.s on stone tablets, sometime around the sixth century B.C.
Another quick way to stop a conversation is to start whining about how there is nothing to do in San Diego. That’s sending a signal to tune you out. I’ve already tuned myself out writing this sentence. If you have questions, ask your Resident Advisor. RAs get food, board and Triton Plus cash just to answer your questions, so make them earn it. They’ll at least be able to point you to the beach, a burrito stand, Balboa Park, Old Town, etc.
After a week, you may notice that San Diegans wear flip flops at all times. If you find this distasteful, at the very least wear a rubber pair in the shower. You can go ahead and assume your roommate pees in the shower. I’m serious. Also, you don’t want to be the stinky roommate: Shower, brush and use deodorant. It will save you embarrassing and awkward conversations. I can go on, because I’m pompous — but I won’t. As the world’s leading expert in campus life and most important person ever, I don’t want to rob you of the opportunity to learn through experience — you’ll need the college blunder stories for your grandchildren. There are lots of little things to learn about college: Walking will always be faster than taking the shuttle, a parking permit is more like a lottery ticket than a permit, and keeping your keys on a push pin by the door will save you the grief of constantly misplacing them. But none of these are as important as joining an organization.
If you take away nothing else from your first quarter in school, take this: Join a student organization. The reason you’ve heard this 50 times is because it’s true. Above all, this is the single, unequivocal key to a happy college experience. You’ll probably forget half the things you learn in class, as well as three quarters of the people you meet there, but you’ll meet interesting people at student orgs, and if you’re lucky, find a passion therein. Everyone wants to meet interesting people who can become lifelong friends. There’s a student organization for everything: sports clubs, newspapers, religious groups, student councils, television stations, theater troupes, singing groups, community service organizations and pre-professional societies. UCSD has a place for the vegan socialist environmentalist and the carnivorous young Republican. Caricatures aside, UCSD is thriving with interesting, multidimensional people.
So go meet them! The best way to meet interesting people is to be interesting. To paraphrase William Dean Howells, the universally interesting are the universally interested. So make the best of your time here and go poke around different meetings. Perhaps you will develop a few interests. If nothing else you’ll take advantage of the free food bonanza that happens first week. Good luck!
