Hey, it's your friend, Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast.
Hey, it's Mel, and right now I am sitting in the passenger seat of my husband's pickup truck.
It's raining and we are driving home after moving our son Oakley into his college dorm for his freshman year of college.
And I'm just having this moment where I'm reflecting on the entire experience.
All the college shopping, the anticipation, the excitement, the nerves, and not only the experience of our sons, but the experience of this with our two daughters.
Even my own experience.
I remember it like it was yesterday, moving into my college dorm freshman year.
And before our son went away to school today, I got together with our two daughters who are 25 and 24.
And we just talked about what are the things that we wish we knew that somebody had told us freshman year.
These are the seven things that I wish I had known.
These are the seven things that my daughters wish they had known.
And these are the seven things that I just told our son Oakley when I dropped him off just a few minutes ago.
And as soon as I get back home, I'm going to get on that mic and I'm going to tell you those seven things too.
Hey, it's your friend, Mal.
I am back in the studio here in Vermont.
I am so glad that you're here with me.
First of all, welcome to the Mal Robbins podcast.
I am so excited to be able to spend this time together with you.
I'm so excited about what we're going to talk about today.
And thank you for taking the time to listen to something that could help you create a better life.
I just think that's so cool.
It's always an honor to get to be here together with you.
And if you're brand new, I want to take a moment and welcome you to the Mal Robbins podcast family and say, I just really love the time that you and I are going to spend together.
And if you're listening to this right now because your parents or a friend or an aunt or an uncle sent you this episode, I want to welcome you.
And I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to this.
You're going to love this because it is exactly what you need to hear and it's going to tell you exactly what you need to do.
And by the time you're done listening, you're going to feel so better.
You're going to have a plan.
It's going to be awesome.
And look, I know I said that there were seven things that I wish I had known before I went to college.
But since we dropped off our son yesterday, it's now the morning after, I've thought of another thing that I want to tell you.
So there are actually eight pieces of advice.
These are the hard truths that you need to know.
And the interesting thing about college drop off is it is such a pivotal moment in your life that I remember every single detail of being dropped off by my parents freshman year when I went to college and I went to college in 1986.
I mean, that is 38 years ago.
I can't believe that 38 years has passed.
And look, do not turn this off.
Like if you're a college student, you're going, what does this chick have to say to me if she went to college 38 years ago?
I assure you, the advice is not only for me.
It is also coming from my 24 and 25 year old daughters.
This is so relevant. It is going to be the kind of stuff where you're like, oh my gosh, that's true.
Oh my gosh, that's true too.
And before I jump into these eight things, I want you to know, I want to go all the way back 38 years and tell you something that happened during my college movement that has always stuck with me.
I mean, that moment when your parents are moving you in, that is a moment you will never forget because they're on edge.
They're kind of acting weird.
They're really sad and excited for you.
You're feeling weird. Your roommates are there.
Maybe their family's there.
That's what happened for me.
I didn't get to pick my roommates.
It was random assignment.
Shout out to Bernadine Wu.
Absolutely amazing roommate.
She was there. She had already moved in.
She had already picked her bed.
We come rolling in from Michigan and an 18 hour drive.
My parents moved me in and the room is all set up and we get to that point where now they need to leave.
But I don't want them to leave, but it's getting awkward.
And so I'm stalling. And it finally got to this point where it's like, okay, they got to go.
I got to step into this new chapter in my life.
So they walk out the door and I walk out behind them and we walk out to the car and we're going to say our goodbyes because I don't want to cry in front of my roommate.
I don't want to have that emotional experience in that cramped little dorm room.
And so we're standing in front of the car and I hug my mom and then I hug my dad.
And my dad says this thing to me that I will never forget.
He said, Mel, don't let studying get in the way of your education.
And at the time, I didn't really know what he meant.
Like, I thought, well, that's kind of cool advice.
Like, don't let studying get in the way of your education.
I kind of thought, oh, wow, my dad is giving me a license to party.
He's saying like blow off classes, have fun.
That's not what he meant.
What my father meant when he said, don't let studying get in the way of your education is that college teaches you about life and it helps you build these skills that you cannot learn in a textbook.
These are the skills that you learn by living, by going through change.
He was talking about the education of life.
Like college isn't the greatest school.
Life is the greatest school.
And the eight things that I wish that someone had told me were the exact types of things that my father was talking about that I would learn.
These are the eight schools that life teaches you and that the college experience forces you to learn.
And these are really important skills.
There are skills that are going to get you through life, skills that help you navigate absolutely every change that you're going to face in your life.
And that's what college is.
College is massive change.
And you are going to learn to ride the ups and downs that every single change brings in your life by going through the college experience.
Because you're learning so much, like beyond what subject you're going to study or what your major is going to be, you're learning how to be with yourself.
You're learning how to advocate for yourself.
You're learning to rely on yourself.
You're learning what you like, what you don't like, how to meet new people, how to do things that are absolutely embarrassing and then just keep moving forward.
And every one of the eight things that I'm about to unpack with you today that I just told our son.
These are the things that I wish I knew.
These are the things that my dad was talking about.
The education that college truly gives you, that you bring with you through the hardest moments in your life.
And the hardest things about these eight lessons is that you have to go through them in order to learn them.
Like, you can't just listen to this podcast and all of a sudden you absorb it.
I'm going to share these eight things with you so that you know that this is something that you need to learn.
And that brings me to the first piece of advice.
And I want to read something to you.
You know, I'm a mom, of course.
And so what do moms do? They of course send texts as soon as, you know, they start missing their kid after they drop them off.
And so sure enough, I woke up this morning, we dropped off Oakley yesterday.
And I couldn't help myself.
It was 647. And I immediately thought, okay, how did he do?
It was his first night in his dorm room.
How did he sleep? Like, how is he feeling?
Is he waking up like I woke up?
I woke up the first morning of my college experience in my brand new dorm room and I was in a full blown anxiety disassociative meltdown.
I was like out of my body, freaking out.
I didn't want to start crying because I didn't want my roommates to know.
And so I thought, you know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to send Oakley a text.
And so I'm going to read this text to you.
I sent this this morning at 647 AM.
Hey, Oak, good morning.
I'm so proud of you. I hope the first day was good and your bed was comfy.
And then I put a little blue heart emoji.
Be patient with yourself.
It takes time to feel like you're in a rhythm and things feel comfortable.
I remember it taking a while for me.
I also remember feeling like I didn't quite know what to do when I had free time.
There's this weird boredom or sense of the unknown those first few weeks and everyone feels it.
Do you know how much I wish I would have gotten a text like that?
I mean, I didn't have a cell phone back then, but I wish I would have gotten a text that first morning where somebody told me that there's this weird sense of boredom or sense of the unknown those first few weeks.
And that leads me to the first thing I wish someone had told me when I went to college.
If you're bored, there's nothing wrong.
In fact, it means you're doing college right.
Boredom is a huge part of the college experience.
Even when classes are in full swing, you will have days where you have five hours of time with nothing planned.
And so I'm telling you, expect boredom to happen.
Expect to not know what to do with the time.
This is particularly true in the first couple of months that you're there, where you're going to find yourself with three hours and you've got nothing to do.
You got nobody to hang out with.
It is a sign that you are in the middle of college and you are in the middle of a major change.
There is nothing wrong.
There is so much free time.
You have no routine. You've got these massive swaths of time that are going to happen on the weekends.
And here's the thing that happens is if you don't know that this is normal, that feeling bored or like, what do I do with an entire Saturday?
Your default is going to be to sit in your dorm.
That's a huge mistake. Whenever you're bored, I want you to do the opposite.
I want you to walk out the door.
Do not sit in your dorm room because there is so much going on around campus.
And every time you find yourself with a few hours to kill, here's what I want you to do.
I want you to walk out of your dorm room.
I want you to go walk around the campus and find something new.
Explore the new cafe. Go to a different dining hall.
Walk into an academic building.
Anytime you're bored, go explore facilities.
Go look at these posters everywhere that have all kinds of programming and lectures and art things.
Just take advantage of everything around you.
Do not sit in your dorm room on your cell phone.
Every single person, once they graduate from college, you know what they regret?
They regret not exploring and taking advantage of everything that's on campus and in this new little town.
Instead of sitting on social media, get out the door and go do something.
Go to the free swim hours.
Go climb up a rock wall. Go check out and watch a sports team that's practicing.
Go to a pottery class. Go to every dining hall.
Go to the health center.
Go try out the clubs. Go back into the back of a classroom and listen to a lecture.
Go do something. There is so much available to you.
You know, I remember there was a particular moment the first couple of weeks that I was a freshman in college and I was in this big kind of campus center at our college.
There was one place where all the mailboxes were and that's where you went to get your mail.
It's also where the main dining hall was.
And so I went and I got my mail and I got a letter from home and I was so homesick and I was so sad.
And there are all of these people all around me and that's the thing about being homesick.
You can be surrounded by a bazillion people and still feel really lonely.
And I didn't want anyone to see me crying.
And so I darted to the nearest stairwell and I went down the stairs, something I hadn't done in the two weeks that I had been there.
And I found myself on the lower level of this building that I'd been in every single day since I had been dropped off.
I had no idea this lower level existed.
And so here I am, you know, with my letter, I'm feeling homesick and sorry for myself and I find myself in this basement level hallway and I start walking down the hall and I realize, whoa, there's a photography lab.
Whoa, there's a woodworking studio.
Holy cow, there's a print workshop thing.
And the final one at the end was this jewelry design studio.
And I looked in and the lights were on and there was this older dude there with a long beard.
And he was like tinkering away with some sort of silver ring and I just walked in out of desperation and I said, hi, I was just curious, like, what is this?
And he explained to me that these were student workshops.
They were available to anyone in the college community.
You could just walk in there and sit down and learn how to make jewelry.
And so I sat down and I started working next to this guy on some dumb little like wire project and I went there every day for the next couple of weeks.
And it turns out I love making jewelry.
In fact, it became a place that I worked my sophomore year.
And I'm telling you this story because there are nooks and crannies all over your college campus just waiting to be discovered.
But you will not discover them if you're sitting in your dorm room bored and alone and not knowing what to do.
So if you're bored, there's nothing wrong.
In fact, it means you're doing college right.
Get out of your dorm room and go explore.
Now the second thing that I wish somebody would have told me when I went to college that I just told my son is that the biggest thing that college changes is how it feels to be in your body.
Everybody talks about how college is going to be this big change and it's going to be the best four years of your life and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but nobody explains why it feels so weird in the beginning.
And I want to talk to you so you understand the reality of just how much is going on inside your body and why that first month feels weird and why you need to give yourself grace to process what is happening.
And I'm going to give you a specific piece of advice that I want you to do first thing in the morning that is going to help you move through this change and this kind of weird acclimation period faster.
Intellectually you know, I just started a whole new chapter.
I'm going to college. You may even be like excited about all the change.
You may be having fun, but underneath all that, just consider what's happening to your body and your brain and your nervous system.
It's sensory overload for all five of your senses.
I mean, it is as abrupt as let's just say you jump into the deep end of a swimming pool in ice cold water.
Of course it's going to feel like a shock to your system.
And the same thing is true that first month that you start college.
I mean, it's going to take time for your body to regulate itself into a rhythm where everything doesn't feel new again.
And I nobody told me this.
And it's a hard thing to wrap your mind about.
But just think about this.
The smells are new. The lighting is different.
The bed that you're sleeping in is completely different than the bed that you've been sleeping in for years.
You may be in a room with somebody that you've never met before.
And now you're sleeping next to them.
You have to go to a communal bathroom.
The food tastes different.
The campus is different.
The weather might be different.
You might be in a totally different part of the world from where you grew up.
Everything is different.
Your body clock is off. Your sleeping schedule is off.
Things smell weird. The carpet texture is weird.
Yeah, you got these cozy little sheets and maybe you brought a stuffed animal from home and you got photos of everybody.
But everybody, everything else is totally different.
It's a shock to your whole system.
And here's the thing. Everyone deals with it differently.
But the one thing that everybody does the same is that everybody tries to make it look like they have it all together.
They don't. Because it's impossible for your body to absorb the sights, the sounds, the smells, the schedule, all of it, and actually be chill.
And this is why you need to give yourself time to process this and to understand this is way bigger than just kind of processing change in your mind.
You're doing it in your body and your smell and your sight.
And one way that this can show up and you don't realize it is that you find yourself convincing yourself that you're in the wrong place or at the wrong school because things feel weird.
You're not in the wrong place.
Things feel weird because you're just not used to what it feels like to be there yet.
And within a month, you will know your surroundings.
You will have a handle on your schedule.
You will be used to the smell.
You will have slept in the bed.
You will know more about your roommate.
It will be a month before you find out what you like to eat from the dining hall and which dining hall you like to go to.
It will be a month before you get used to using a community bathroom.
It will be a month before you have a handle on how do I navigate my weekends and classes starting.
It is a great equalizer because the second that that structure kicks in and your classes start and you get into that rhythm or you join a club or you're on a sports team or an intramural team and you get into that kind of flow of your days or your work study job starts.
When all that happens, it starts to fill in the gaps.
But I want to be honest with you about the biological, physiological and neurological change that your body is trying to adjust to.
And I want you to give yourself a break.
Give yourself some grace here.
And I also want to tell you there is a hack that you can use to help your body process this change faster.
And here's the hack. Create a routine for how you start your day.
See most college students do not have a morning routine.
That's an enormous mistake.
You had a routine at home and you need a routine here.
And if you don't create a routine right now, here's what's going to happen.
Your routine is going to become to wake up, to feel weird in your body, to grab your phone, to scroll on your phone, to lie in bed, to start rotting in your bed, to wait for your roommate to wake up so that you think, what do you want to do?
I don't know. What do you want to do?
Do not do that. Do not allow your day to start by chance.
Because if you don't have something specific that you're going to do, like a place to go exercise or some walk that you want to take or a place that you're going to have breakfast, you are allowing your day to start by chance.
And you are allowing the mood that you are feeling when you wake up to determine the way your day goes.
You can hack all of this change by creating consistency in your own schedule first thing in the morning.
Here's what I want you to do.
I want you to create one thing that you're going to do in the morning to move your body.
That's it. Move your body, get out your door.
There's your new college routine.
The second that you get up and you get yourself together, get out of your dorm building.
Go do something. Do not sit in your bed and scroll on your phone.
It will lead to a disaster.
Get up, get out the door.
Go. Move. You're not just going for a walk or going to the gym or signing up for a workout class or popping your headphones and listen to a meditation as you're walking to go get breakfast somewhere.
Move your body, get outside.
It is the fastest way for your body to come into alignment with your new environment.
That's the way you can hack it because the biggest thing that college changes is how it feels to be in your body.
And now that you know that that weird feeling is not a sign that you're in the wrong place, it's a sign that you're going through major change, you know the simple thing you can do when you wake up, get out the door and move your body.
And that will bring you into alignment with your new environment.
So now that you know this context, that absolutely everyone is going through this massive change internally, that they're trying to process on the inside, that's going to bring me to the third piece of advice that I wish somebody gave me.
Because you also need to know that every single person that you're going to meet is dealing with this period of massive change differently.
Don't you dare go anywhere.
We're going to take a short break to hear a word from our sponsors.
I'm going to be waiting for you to give you the third thing that I wish somebody had told me before I went to college.
It involves alcohol and hooking up.
And boy, do you want to hear this.
Stay with me. Welcome back.
It's your friend, Mel Robbins.
I am so glad you're here with me today.
We're talking about the eight things that I wish I had known before I went to college.
We've already covered two of them.
The first one is if you feel bored, it doesn't mean anything wrong.
In fact, it means you're doing college right.
The second thing that I wish somebody had told me is that absolutely everyone is experiencing this massive change and they're trying to process it on the inside, right?
As they get used to all this new stuff.
But here's what you need to know.
As everyone's processing all this change, you know, kind of internally, the senses, the sounds, like all this stuff, everybody deals with this period of change very differently.
And the behavior that you're going to see on the outside oftentimes is craziness because everyone is trying to deal with this change.
I don't care how much you're trying to pull it together.
They're dealing with change.
And you're going to be surrounded by a lot of people who have had very tight reins on them, who have never been away from their families.
And now all of a sudden they have all of this freedom and they have no idea how to handle it.
The third thing that I wish somebody would have told me when I went to college is this.
The change is so fast, you have got to go slow.
And by slow, I mean slow down the drinking.
So many of you are going to get to college and drink way too much that first month.
Why? I'll tell you why. You can't handle the change.
And so you literally just want to party.
You want to do keg stands.
You want to slam the handle.
You want to sit there and just drink solo cup after solo cup and play the dice and go to the frat parties and all this stuff.
And you do too much too fast and you will regret it.
And you want to know what else is going to happen?
You're going to see ambulances because there are a lot of people that get to college that cannot handle their alcohol because they go so fast and they can't handle the change.
And this is a massive shock, but it happens everywhere.
In fact, last night after we dropped off Oakley, he texted his two sisters that there were ambulances showing up all night as his dorm, picking up kids who were drinking too much.
And he was shocked. I'm not shocked.
His sisters weren't shocked.
Happened at their colleges too.
And you're going to have plenty of time to party.
Those first couple of weeks, massive amounts of change.
Go slow. You're going to have freedom for four years.
Go slow. The second thing that you're going to see people doing when they get to college is hooking up with everyone the first few weeks.
It is like a feeding frenzy because everybody's emotions are on high, hormones are out of control.
Here you show up at this random place where everyone's on edge and suddenly everyone your age is sleeping in the room next to you.
There's alcohol, there's hormones, there's freedom.
This is a recipe for disaster that turns into freshman week becoming a breeding ground where everybody's hooking up.
And look, I don't care how much the upperclassmen on your hall or in your class or at the frat tries to convince you that they like you, don't buy it.
Not in the first couple of weeks.
They're just looking for someone new and a fast hookup.
And I am happy to be the one to give you that reality check.
You have plenty of time to hook up with people.
You have plenty of time to meet and date upperclassmen.
I promise you, if you go fast and easy this month or the next month, you're going to regret it and so will your reputation.
And look, I know this is coming from a 55-year-old woman, but this was a point that my daughter said over and over and over again.
Do not hook up with everybody the second you get to college.
And this goes for all genders, by the way.
Everybody that you meet in that first month is trying to hold it together.
They're not acting like themselves.
They're processing change.
So when you're hooking up with them in that first week, you're not hooking up with the person that they actually are.
And you are soon going to be thinking, if you do this, what the heck was I thinking, hooking up with this person and sleeping around and being so easy.
And now I have to sit next to this person in my Spanish class or now they're like dating the person across the hall and I have to see them all the time.
What was I thinking? I'll tell you what, you weren't thinking.
So when it comes to hooking up, I promise you, go slow.
You have plenty of time to fool around in college.
And if you do it too much in the first two weeks, I promise you, you're going to regret it.
So that third thing that I wish somebody had told me when I went to college is the change is going to come fast, so you need to slow your roll.
And while we're on the topic of slow and fast, another thing that happens fast when you get to college is everyone seems to have clicked up and found their friend group but you.
And that brings me to the fourth thing I wish somebody would have told me, that when I went to college, you have to have a very flexible approach to friendship because the process of finding your people, it's slow.
And when you get there, it is so easy to tell yourself, oh my God, everybody's already taken, everybody's already in a friend group.
I don't have a friend group.
Oh my gosh, what am I going to do?
Everybody seems to know each other from middle school and prep school and camps that they went to.
Who knew everybody went to camp?
What is this camp thing?
The reason why this happens is because one of the ways that people deal with all of this massive change that they're going through is they try to cling on to other people.
It makes you feel safe when you got somebody that you can cling on to, right?
And people do this in two ways.
They either cling to their roommate or the first few people that they meet in orientation, oh my God, these are my people, these are my people.
Or they cling to people who have similar pasts and shared experiences.
And I really want to unpack this because the single thing that I heard from both of our daughters and that I know is true for all of my friends' kids is this complaint that I can't find my friends, I can't find my people.
Everybody has a group. I don't have a group.
This is a universal phenomenon.
And it's a phenomenon that happens because everybody's trying to manage the change.
And so they cling to people near them or they cling to people who are from the same area or are similar to them.
And I remember even when I got to Dartmouth 38 years ago, I was from the Midwest.
I went to a tiny little public high school.
There wasn't a single person in the history of my high school that had ever gone to Dartmouth College.
So I arrived there, I feel like I am a gnome that has landed in the island of giants.
And I felt like such an outsider.
I was like, how do all these people know each other?
What the hell is the cape and then tuck it?
Everybody goes to a sleepaway camp?
Did everybody go to a prep school?
What is this sport called crew?
Why are people rowing a boat when you could actually have a motor on the back?
I felt so over the tips of my skis like such an outsider.
Even my roommate who was from New York City, she knew so many people.
She had so many shared experiences.
It's like she landed in our dorm room and suddenly had a hundred friends.
And I clung to her like a freaking life jacket as I was drowning in the ocean.
And this was the same experience when our daughter went to Los Angeles.
She gets out there and she's like, is everybody at the school from California?
Does everybody have family like a mile from here?
Am I the only person that came from a little suburban town in Massachusetts?
Like you feel like a teeny, teeny, teeny little thing in this vast ocean.
This is normal. It's normal.
And you can feel on the outside for so many reasons.
You can feel on the outside because you didn't grow up there.
You may be going to a state school and you're from out of state, but so many kids are from the same state and they have this lingo and they all know the high schools and there's all this insider stuff.
They know the neighborhoods.
They like it's crazy. You might find that you're living in a dorm and there's a lot of sports teams that are housed in that dorm and everybody's got their group, but you don't have a group.
And since they're on a team, it seems impenetrable for you to somehow be on the inside of that when you feel like you're on the outside.
You may feel that because of socioeconomic things that my God, all these kids have all this stuff and I'm like super poor and this is kind of weird.
And here's what I want you to know.
The friendships that happen fast based on who you're near or because you have a similar past, these friends groups don't last.
And I'm going to explain what that means.
It's time to cut the ties with high school altogether.
I'm going to tell you how to do it after a short word from our sponsors.
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Hey, it's your buddy, Mel.
This is my own ad and I took it out because I got something to say to you.
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Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins.
We're talking about the eight things that I wish I had known before I'd gone to college.
These are things my daughter wish they had known, things I told my son.
First of all, you should waddle up to those people and you should ask them if you can walk to the cafeteria with you because nine times out of 10, people are actually pretty cool if you're honest.
Hey, I don't have anybody to lunch with.
Do you guys mind if I tag along?
Even if they're like, who cares?
You're at least putting yourself out there and that's the most important thing.
You got to be flexible with yourself and you got to be flexible with friendship because the friendships that happen based on who you're near, so like clinging to your roommate or clinging to people that are from your high school or from your state or from a similar past, those friend groups don't last because they're so forced in the beginning and the clicks are going
to change. And I know it's hard to hear in your first year, but the truth is your friend group is going to look really different by the time you graduate.
In fact, I found that your friends are different sophomore year and they're different junior year and then they're different senior year and it might take you two or three years.
Trust the process and trust yourself.
It may feel weird right now.
It's not going to feel like this forever.
The more that you're flexible.
So what do I mean by being flexible?
Let people come and go. Don't cling to everybody like you own them.
You don't need a life draft.
A few friends is all you need and you're going to find them.
The more flexible you are and stop telling yourself that you can't break into a friend group or that you can't break out of yours.
And when I was talking to my daughters about what they wish they knew before they went to college, they both shared experiences, both personally and that a number of their male and female friends had that clinging to and gripping to and being super rigid about your freshman year friends and that you got to always be together.
You got to room together for the next four years.
It turned out to be super toxic and weird so much so that when you went back sophomore year, they were nervous.
Like I don't want the same dynamic.
I don't want to be part of this.
I want to break out. And so trust the advice that clinging and gripping and expecting it's going to backfire on you.
Your friends are just around the corner from you.
You just have to be flexible.
Let people come and go. Don't grip.
Don't act like high school.
And I found this out way too late in life.
Like I wish I knew this in college.
This is the killer way to go through friendship.
The more you include people, invite people to come along.
You're really introverted roommate.
Yeah, we're going to lunch.
You want to come? People don't do that.
You want to know why? Because I'm afraid that if somebody that's kind of quiet or weird around you, it's going to somehow impact your ability to meet other people.
Are you kidding me? Don't be insecure like that.
Be flexible. Be open. Be like expansive and gracious with the invitation.
Because the more flexible you are, the more you like let people come and go.
The more you're like, yeah, come along with us.
The more friends you're going to have.
See what you don't realize is that exclusion creates toxicity.
Subtraction limits the amount of invitations that you get.
And the more inclusive and the more flexible you are, the more friendships you create.
How cool is that? So the fourth thing I wish somebody had told me when I went to college is that have a flexible approach because the process of finding your people is slow, but you will find them.
And while we're on the topic of clinging, the fifth thing that I wish somebody had told me before I went to college is that your best college experience is at your college, not at someone else's.
You have got to get off your phone.
It is an epidemic among college students today to waste all kinds of time and to tank your mental health by watching other people's party highlights on social media while you're sitting in your dorm bed at your college concluding that your college sucks.
Stop. Stop clinging to your high school friends.
Stop clinging to your high school boyfriend or girlfriend.
Stop clinging to your phone.
Stop watching your friends party and go to tailgates and be at fraternities and be at sororities and have all this fun in their new dorms.
Because if you continue to do that, you will never create your own college experience.
If you continue to watch what all your high school friends are doing on their social media, you will not create friends of your own.
Remember every hour that you pour into feeling bad because someone sews at a frat party or their tailgates look better or look at how big it is at University of Michigan.
And I wish I went in the hay, in the hay, in the hay.
Every hour you do that, you are destroying 10 hours of fun you could be having at your own college.
Get off the damn phone, get out of your dorm room and go create your own fun because you're not going to find it by clinging to your high school friends.
And that brings me to the piece of advice that I wish somebody knew, number six, do things alone.
You do not need a friend.
Go check out that club alone.
You do not need to have somebody to eat with.
Go have lunch alone. You do not need to have a friend.
Sign up for that engineering class.
You do not need to have a friend in order to try out for that intramural soccer team.
In fact, it's better if you don't.
It's better if you show up alone.
Why? Number of reasons.
Let's go back to what my dad said.
Let's study and get in the way of your education.
Part of the education that you need to learn is how to show up alone and trust that you can handle it because the faster that you learn to do things alone, you will learn what my dad was talking about.
That it's not just about what you learn in the books.
It's about what you force yourself to experience in life.
Don't let loneliness or clinging to your friends or insecurity get in the way of you doing things.
Not only can you do things alone, you need to do it alone.
So go eat your lunch in the cafeteria alone.
Go to the information session for something alone.
Walk into a room alone and introduce yourself without your friends or your roommate standing there like a little blankie for you.
You don't need them. And that's something that I wish I knew in college.
Do things alone and the more you do it, the faster and stronger and more confident you're going to be and it is a skill that you're going to bring into your life.
It's going to help you make money.
You're welcome. Let's go on to number seven, what I wish I knew.
You're not stuck. Remember what my dad said to me?
Don't let studying get in the way of your education.
You're not just there to learn what you read in the books.
And one of the single biggest things that college teaches you is that you have to take control of your own life.
Nobody is going to create your college experience for you.
No one is going to show up and do this for you.
You have to rescue yourself from yourself.
You have to learn how to ask for what you need to advocate for what you want.
This isn't high school.
Your parents aren't around.
No one is there to tell you what to do or to get out of bed or to tell you what time to, you need to do it or to tell you to go to the gym.
I wish someone had told me, Mel, you are responsible for your own experience and you are not stuck with anything.
If there is something about your college experience that is not working, it is on you to ask for help.
Stop complaining about the things that aren't working and actually get your butt out of your college dorm room and go ask for help.
Whether that is, I don't want to live with this person that was randomly assigned to me or now, the person that I chose that I thought was going to be my twin has turned out to be my evil step sister and I don't want to room with anymore because they are toxic and they are dirty and they are nasty and they are passive aggressive or they don't get out of bed or they are constantly
sleeping with their significant other in the room.
Oh, and then letting me know that I can't come in my room.
You are not trapped. You are not stuck.
Advocate for yourself.
What I see too often is that people get to school and they don't like where they are at or they don't like their roommate and so suddenly I got a transfer.
I got a, I gave up. No you don't.
Give it a year and before you jump ship, make sure you actually take the helm and you try to steer this sucker in a good direction.
Change your roommate. That's something that I wish somebody would have told me.
You can change your roommate.
Go talk to the RA. Go talk to the dean.
Don't transfer because you don't like your roommate.
What a cop out. You can change your classes.
You don't like your classes?
Change your classes. You can change your major.
You don't like your major?
Change your major. And here's the cool thing.
Nobody's going to do it for you, but you don't have to do it alone.
Go to your RA, go to your advisor, go to the dean.
Go to one of your professors.
Tell people what's not working.
Tell them what you want to change and ask for help changing it.
That's why they're being paid by the college to be in those positions.
So use them. Stop complaining.
Take control of your experience.
You're not stuck. I wish somebody had told me, now I've told you and you know it.
And that brings me to the last thing that I wish somebody had told me, number eight.
I wish somebody would have told me every single year of college is different.
You're going to go through this same series of things every single time you go back.
You're going to go through the same stressors.
You're going to go through the same change.
You're going to have a little bit of a handle on it because you've been through the class schedule before.
You know the campus, but when you live off campus, different smells, different sites, different changes, different routines.
When you go and you're a sophomore, there's a different mix of people.
There's a whole new crowd of freshmen.
Your friends are going to come in and out of your life.
You're going to be in different patterns.
You're going to be taking different classes.
You're in a totally different routine.
In fact, as friends start to go on foreign study or take internships, things are going to be mixed up entirely.
And there's something that people don't talk about a lot, which is the fact that you can get to your sophomore year or your junior year or your senior year, and you feel this same sense of overwhelm and weirdness and boredom because it doesn't feel like it did last year.
And that is ultimately what college is teaching you, that life is always changing, that people are going to come and go in your life, and that that's normal, that you can ride the up and downs of change, and that with time, you can learn more about yourself.
You can find your people.
You can unlock all of the possibility that is right there waiting for you to reach out and go find it, those nooks and those crannies.
And where you're not going to find it is laying in your bed feeling sorry for yourself, scrolling on your phone looking at your old friends.
You're going to find it by pushing yourself out your door, making yourself move, doing things alone, exploring everything that's around you, and being flexible with yourself as you go through and create this next chapter of your life.
In fact, I want to read to you the rest of the texts that I sent to our son Oakley this morning.
He said, just give yourself grace, everything is new, and it's a lot to absorb at all and find your flow.
But you will. Give it a few weeks and you'll feel yourself hit your stride, just like you did when you started as a freshman in high school.
And don't forget, you're in the right place.
Just keep telling yourself, even when it feels weird, you're in the right place.
Remember, home is just a text away.
You've got a good roommate and by next week, you'll know your weekly schedule.
You'll know the right spots for the best food at the cafeteria.
You'll have a few friends you click with.
You'll be trying out for the ultimate team and joining clubs.
And one day soon, you'll wake up in your dorm room and you'll realize I did it again.
I started, oh my, why am I getting so emotional?
Oh my God. Okay, let me pull this together.
And one day soon, you'll wake up in your dorm room and realize I did it again.
I started a new chapter and I really like this.
Yes, there will be ups and downs, good days and bad days and you'll miss home and will definitely miss you.
But with time, you're going to fall in love with this chapter of your life too.
Just allow yourself to and know if you need me or absolutely anything at all, I can be there in two hours flat.
I love you. Wow. Okay. Okay, I'm just taking a moment because I'm so excited for you.
It's really scary to start a new chapter of your life and it's really exciting too.
There are going to be ups and downs and you are going to learn a lot and with time, it is going to get better.
In fact, if you follow the things that I wish that somebody would have told me and you really, truly put this advice to work, I guarantee you it's not only going to be great, it's going to be some of the best years of your life.
And in case no one else tells you, I want to be sure to tell you that I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life.
Now, if you're laying there in your dorm room listening to this, get your butt out of bed and get out the door and go put this advice to work.
Alrighty, I'll talk to you in a few days.
Go sit in a hot tub, in a hot tub?
Okay, okay, sorry. Is there a hot tub in college?
I feel like I am a gnome that has landed in the island of giants.
All right, oh, gotcha, okay.
I don't know how to end this, but what do I say?
Good job, everybody. Oh, and one more thing.
And no, this is not a blooper.
This is the legal language.
You know what the lawyer's right and what I need to read to you.
This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes.
I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional.
Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.
Thank you.
