Failing in First-Year…
By the time you’re reading this, you will surely have been inundated with first-year advice columns and Instagram carousels with warnings against worrying too much about your grades, encouraging you to say yes to everything, to create a routine, and to generally just do all kinds of things. The truth about this kind of advice is that you won’t understand why people are saying this until you go through it yourself. Everyone secretly hopes that they are the exception to these things, that bad things won’t happen to them, but you will inevitably oversleep or turn in a bad paper or bomb an exam and it is only then that these points will really get hammered home.
Rather than tell you to not be afraid to fail, I encourage you to fail, and spectacularly. The earlier you experience failure, especially in the closed environment of a college campus, the more well-adjusted and able to handle hardship you’ll be. This alone will carry you through the lows of exam season and whatever other periods of academic and social stress that you’ll encounter. Sometimes life is about doing things a little badly and while looking a little chopped! My practical advice is to prepare fun facts, two truths, and one lie. And to be earnest.
Things to do:
– GO TO OFFICE HOURS!!!
– Get to know cool professors and upperclassmen
– Procrastinate by scrolling on CourseTable (actually don’t)
– GET MOVING – Go on a run or walk to East Rock, dance with your suitemates, skip down the streets when no one is around, take the longer route simply because the weather outside is nice
– Write and make art badly
– Send physical mail!
– Cherish your platonic relationships
In case of rust…
Stay up to date on your tetanus shot in case you step on a nail on York Street, and it goes through the sole of your shoe. This is also a danger in frat backyards. Watch out, and keep your combat boots strapped.
– Zoe Frost MY ’27 (and someone whose friend recently punctured his foot at Luther).
Short, sweet, and scientific…
Take a gut science while you’re still young
Make sure to go to…
The Timothy Dwight buttery; your friends’ concerts and shows, no matter how much work you have; East Rock, especially at sunset; Elena’s, while you’re there; your bed; the YUAG, YCBA, Peabody, and all other various acronyms; and, of course, whatever place you make feel like your home.
A few notes from a senior:
Screw my cliched sermon about spontaneity. For the majority of my lower-termer years, I wandered aimlessly, frightened by the lack of grounding beneath my feet – grounding that so many of my peers seemed to possess.
First, it’s fake. No one really knows what the heck they’re doing. And a desperate need for stability—coupled with a concerning want of introspection—sorts quite a few of us into the Big Three (finance, consulting, and SWE – not Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades).
And second, eventually the wandering leads somewhere. It has a habit of finding, or making its own, destination.
I’ll spare you my bio, but let’s just say that when I entered college I never would have thought I’d end up a writer, optimist, and—albeit still dorky—frat guy. And I can’t imagine my life any other way (though I could live without another Champagne & Shackles for the rest of it).
Change of scenery. This next bit is slightly less heartening, but equally important. At some point here, you might start to lose that light, that curiosity, that verve that once animated your every movement. Take a step back, focus on the things you care about and that truly make you happy, and talk to people. We all like to put up a façade around here—that we’re perfectly happy and busy and not-at-all insecure—but most of the people you know are going through more sh*t than you think. And talking about it all can really help.
Fuck floating duck syndrome.
I’d give you more specific advice—like to start setting anchors for your day-to-day after those first few hectic months, or that going to sleep past 4:00 a.m. is almost never the sign of a night well-done—but I’ve found that experience is your greatest teacher.
Just, please, make sure that you do experience. You only get four years when all your friends live within a ten-block radius, when there’s always something happening and all you have to do is look. Yale is a helluva roller coaster – but you’ve gotta get your ass outside to ride it.
P.S. Read this piece, this piece, this piece, and this piece. They might help, too.
– Ami Gillon SY ’27
From a freshly former-first-year…
First-year is incredibly difficult. It’s also incredibly beautiful, and there will be no other time in your life when your world expands at such a swaggering pace. In the span of a few weeks, you will meet people who will be lifelong friends; you will discover ideas that will shape the way you live your life; and you will encounter things you never thought possible. Amongst that, it’s also easy to feel lost, and it’s easy to feel lonely. When you inevitably do, it helps to remember that the many generations that came before you too went through the exact same feelings of isolation, confusion, and general adriftness that you now confront. It helps to remember that what you are feeling is uniquely human, and that those who came before you survived the exact same feelings, and that you, too, shall survive whatever hurdles you encounter this first-year.
A bit of romantic advice…don’t sleep with your professors.
But make sure to…flirt with your TFs.
And, of course, the platitudes:
look for friends who reflect the better version of yourself that you are working towards; take it slow; go to bed; get your language requirement done; don’t get bogged down in extracurricular politics, do what YOU want to do, and don’t let others’ toxicity get in the way of that; and, throughout all of this, remember that first year of college is a wonderful, stressful, and absolutely terrifying time in your life, and that you will be alright, no matter what. You will feel immensely lonely, joyous, excited, driven, lazy, and all of the above in the span of twenty-four hours. You will meet people who make you feel amazing and others who do not do so. You will discover parts of yourself that you did not know exist, and, most of all, at the end, you will end up becoming yourself—whoever that may be.