Advice to Our First Year Selves

When I was a first year just a year ago, I remember being really excited to be at Yale, but also really concerned that I didn’t know what expect. College is a whole different ballgame than high school, and coming from a rural, public high school made me especially unsure of my footing. I really appreciated that there were so many avenues of support and advice for first years, but some of the best advice comes from people who have just gone through their first year themselves. In light of this, I decided to ask a few of my friends — all fellow sophomores — what advice they would give to their first year selves.

Name: Dani

Major: Anthropology and Art History

What advice would you give to your freshman year self?: My advice to my past self would be to not get so bogged down by academics to the point where you’re not exploring what Yale has to offer outside of that with clubs and other opportunities. Definitely be more exploratory and know that there is time to get everything done.

Name: Mary

Major: Biomedical Engineering

What advice would you give to your freshman year self?: Take things less seriously. Not that I took myself too seriously last year, I guess I would just say make the most of the things around you and appreciate the little things.

Name: Cal

Major: English

What advice would you give to your freshman year self?: I think there’s a piece of true but cliched advice about exploring different possibilities your first year of college. Yes, explore different opportunities but within that don’t be upset if some of them don’t work out. Part of the exploration is that you’ll find successes just as often as you’ll find failures and the purpose of that exploration is to weed out things you don’t foresee yourself doing.

Name: Annie

Major: Music 

What advice would you give to your freshman year self?: I think at Yale people come here and they continue to do the things they’re really good at, but it’s okay to do things you’re not good at. Through that you’ll find a new community that you never would have been a part of before because it’s completely new.

Name: Rhayna 

Major: Psychology/Neuroscience 

What advice would you give to your freshman year self?: Don’t be afraid to jump right into everything. I think my first year I was nervous to start new extracurriculars or go to events or try different types of classes but looking back my advice would be to just go ahead and do it because you’ll be so happy you did.

No one has everything figured out their first year, or even their second year, but hopefully these little nuggets of wisdom help some of the first years get their bearings. Most of us said that the most important thing is to do things you enjoy and to not stress about the little things because we know from experience that in a year those little things won’t matter. Being a first year can be nerve-wracking but hopefully this advice indicates that it will all be okay.