Joining college can be a scary experience. Attending college away from home without the advice of those who previously attended the same college can be challenging. With the proper guidance, students can easily overcome the challenges of adjusting to the new environment. The transition process in school entails undergoing significant changes; you may be required to live with strangers or navigate through buildings to reach school. There are other frustrating processes like parking arrangements and cost associated with utilizing other services within a college. Also, classes are filled with hundreds of strangers, picking where to sit can be overwhelming.
College life requires confidence; thus, one needs to develop strategies that will make them comfortable getting around a campus. Mastering a few strategies can give students the foundation to cope with college life and especially with navigating a new campus.
Find the right base
To be familiar with places, start small by understanding important places where you will spend most of the time while in college; these include where you will be accommodated, classes, and the administration block. Do a proper research in advance to find basic directions to important places. Make sure you have access to a map that will help you navigate through the buildings.
Familiarize yourself with the area
Students need to gather important information about how to get emergency services like medical help. Moreover, they need to know how to get in touch with a college security officer and the nearest fire department or local hospital.
After knowing the basic places and routes, walk through these places and explore them during your free time. You can do it by walking around along the main roads of the campus as well as around small paths. Make discoveries to know places like the library or some cheap restaurants. You can request your new friends who are familiar with the place to show you their favorite bookshop or coffee shop.
Make friends to cope better
Students come to college to fulfill similar goals; thus, it is useful to make new friends who have good knowledge. You can do it by joining groups and clubs. Talk to students who are one year ahead or those who living in the city; they are the best people to show you everything you need to know.
Understanding the transport system
Living in a new city can be tricky, especially if you are not familiar with public transport systems. It is important to know what type of transportation services are available. In this way, you need to find out if campus transportation is available or if there is any cycling program. Get to know the number of buses that ply the map route and be familiar with taxi companies in case of an emergency.
Have backups by taking pictures
The most important thing to do is to keep all the important information in one place; take pictures of the building, keep the bus numbers and contacts of services you will require frequent. Take pictures of places and keep it in your phone. All these resources will be useful because you can easily refer to them in case you get lost.
Take advantage of modern technology
Google maps are commonly used to find places. Google maps is software available on Android phones. Google maps can work best on the campus as GPS trackers might not recognize some buildings. Smartphones have become lifesavers because they can easily recognize the exact location of a place and enable users to share the location via text message. Students can get the direction of a location through friends.
Utilize phone apps
Some new pieces of software are available to suit students’ needs; Trip Tracker in an example of such apps built by Microsoft. This app records and help students navigate through new places. Students can use it to find shortcuts within a location.
In some colleges, students have invented free native apps to help other students navigate through the campus. For instance, the app Fasttrack invented at Yale helps students find out if the dining hall is crowded. The app tracks the number of dining card swipes against available seats.
Online services
Apart from adjusting, students face challenges of submitting different college assignments such as essays or research papers. Online services like writemyessay.ca can be a good solution if you cannot handle dozens of essays to meet a deadline. Such services are not a good idea for being regularly used; however, they relieve students of college stress, helping them have a positive outlook on college life.
Wrapping it up
Students face several challenges in the process of adjusting to their new life while in college. College life becomes interesting if students can adapt the strategies mentioned above. In this way, they can overcome the challenges of becoming familiar with the college environment.
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