Category — Campus Life

Our college students have their cell phones with them wherever they go.  We see them everywhere – walking across campus, at dinner, at sporting events, when visiting with friends, while studying, even (unfortunately) in class.  Many students use their cell phone, not only for communication (by voice or text), but also as their clock or watch, their calendar, their memo keeper, their entertainment,  their alarm or reminder.  Their lives are almost as portable as their phone.

One of the advantages to having a cell phone with you everywhere you go is easy access to important phone numbers.  Your student’s cell phone is probably crammed with numbers for family and friends and other personal contacts.  Here are eight numbers your new college student should have in his phone – just in case.  It may certainly make life easier in an emergency.

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College is expensive.  There is no way around it, and no argument about it.  Tuition and fees are high, the cost of textbooks has skyrocketed, and there are more unexpected expenses than you anticipated.  Sometimes parents pay all costs, sometimes students pay costs, and often parents and students together share the burden.  Some costs are fixed and some are flexible.  Although most parents and students have no control over the price of tuition and fees, there are some living expenses over which your student may have some control.

Hopefully, you’ve discussed costs and expenses with your college student and helped him to create a budget.  Whether you will be sending him spending money or he will be responsible for his own finances, there are some things that your student can do to keep expenses in check.  Depending on his situation, he may want to include a few of these suggestions or as many as possible.  Whenever you have your financial chat with your student, you may want to help him think through some ways in which he can shave a few of his expenses.  Ask him to consider implementing a few of the following suggestions.

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College life, for resident students, is communal life.  Students live together in apartments or dorms and share their music, their ideas, their belongings, their clothes, and their germs.  It is a truth of college life that many students begin to get sick just a few weeks into the semester.  They are tired, may not be eating right, and they have been living together and exposing each other to their germs.

You will not be able to prevent your student from getting sick, just as you couldn’t prevent it when he started pre-school or kindergarten.  You can, however, send him to school with a first aid kit, a comfort pack for when illness does strike, and some reminders of ways to try to fend off some illness or shorten the duration of the inevitable.

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Most college students head off to college with lots of “stuff”.  Students need to furnish their rooms, take the items that they need for daily living, take study aids, clothing, recreational items, and sentimental items that may remind them of home, family and friends.  Increasingly, many of the items that students need to take to college are expensive.  Students come to college armed with cell phones, laptops, MP3 players, blackberries, bikes and cars.  All of these items are enticing: potentially easily stolen, and easily sold.

When it comes to theft on campus, many incidents are crimes of opportunity or convenience.  Some awareness, forethought, and careful actions on the part of your college student can help him decrease his chances of becoming a victim of theft.

Take some time to talk to your student before she heads off to school about campus safety.  She’ll want to be aware of how to take care of her personal safety, but she’ll also need to think about how to protect her belongings from theft.  There are some relatively simple things that your student can do to help her keep track of her belongings.

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It is, of course, inevitable that your college student will get sick while she is at school.  It may happen early in her college career, or it may not happen for a while.  She may be very ill, or more likely, just miserable with a cold or virus circulating through the residence hall.  For many students, that first illness often occurs a few weeks into the first semester – the seasons may begin to change, students may not be getting as much sleep as usual, may not be eating as well as usual, and they have all been in closer living contact sharing their germs.

Even if it is simply the common cold, that first illness away from home is often a difficult time for students.  This may be the first time that they will need to care for themselves.  This may be a difficult time for you, as parent, as well.  You’d like to be there to provide the medication, the chicken soup, or maybe just the TLC.  However, there’s not much that you can do if your student is miles away at school, and this is an important life-learning experience anyway.  You may feel helpless and frustrated that you can’t be there.

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One of the things that college parents and their students both worry about is getting along with a college roommate.  Most students have never shared a room before, and small college residence hall rooms put students in close contact.  Parents and students alike realize that a good roommate relationship can be a wonderful experience, but a difficult situation can make everyone miserable.  Everyone hopes for the perfect match, a new best friend, and a happily-ever-after living arrangement.

Most colleges work hard at making good roommate matches.  They ask students for information about themselves and then assign roommates that have a good chance of being compatible based on lifestyle and interests.  However, no matching system is perfect, and even if students are perfectly matched, conflicts are inevitable. Even if students are well prepared for the experience of living with a roommate, conflicts are inevitable.   There are things that your student can do to try to minimize conflict and to deal with conflict when it arises.  One thing that you and your student may not have considered, however, is that there may actually be some benefits to those inevitable situations when your student is confronted with roommate issues.  We’d like to suggest four benefits or skills which your student may gain from dealing with roommate conflicts.

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Roommate conflict is unavoidable.  Although, as parents, we hope that our college student will get along perfectly with his college roommate, it is an unrealistic hope.  Whenever individuals live closely together, some amount of conflict is inevitable.  Actually, a little bit of conflict is not necessarily a bad thing.  Students learn important skills as they learn to handle issues with their roommates.

However, even when we realize that some degree of conflict may be inevitable, and may possibly have beneficial effects, we hope that any conflict will be minimal.  There are some things, short of giving in on everything and putting up with anything, that students can do to minimize the issues that may arise between roommates.  If this is your student’s first time sharing a room and/or living with a larger group of people in close quarters, you may increase your student’s chances of having a good experience by helping her to think through some of the issues that might come up and how she will handle them. In an earlier post, we considered some things that your student might do to prepare for life with a roommate.  In this post, we’ll look at what your student might do to reduce conflict and how to handle inevitable conflict when it occurs.  In an upcoming post, we’ll examine some actual positive benefits of dealing with some conflict.

Here are a few things that your college student might consider to reduce potential conflict.

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One of the exciting, and sometimes terrifying, aspects of the college experience is living with a roommate for the first time.  Most soon-to-be college students are anxious about beginning their residence hall experience.  Some students have thought carefully about what the experience may be like, and others may have an extremely idealized vision of living with a new roommate.  As a college parent, there are a few things that you might do to help your student prepare for this new experience.  This may provide a wonderful opportunity for some conversation with your student as you give her some things to think about and possibly help her explore her thoughts and expectations.

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It is inevitable that sometime during the four years that your student is at college he will get hurt or sick.  Colleges have health centers to care for students who are injured or sick, and the local emergency room is available for more serious crises.  However, there will be many times through the college years when your student may just need a bit of help for minor injuries or ailments.  A good first aid kit never substitutes for a sympathetic parent, but when your student is on his own, he will be grateful if he has the necessary tools to help himself.

Put together a first aid kit to send to college with your student.  Of course, you hope she’ll never need it, but she will, and when she does, she’ll appreciate that you planned ahead.  Here are a few things to include in your student’s kit.

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There is a lot of focus on the new college student and both the student’s and parents’ transition to the world of college.  Entering college is a major life experience for both the first-year student and for his parents.  Underestimating the enormity of that shift may cause difficulties, so colleges run orientation sessions for both students and parents, authors write books for both students and parents, and colleges run special programming for first year students.

However, once students get past that first year of college they are often on their own.  Students are expected to have settled in and “know how to play the game”, and parents are often more comfortable with the idea of their student being away and navigating the world of college.  Unfortunately, some students do experience a sophomore slump in spite of a good first year experience and in spite of parental and college efforts to prepare them for the differences and changing expectations.

We’d like to offer a list of seven things that your returning student (sophomore, junior or senior) might want to consider to give a new focus for his year and to raise the level of his college experience.

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