After surviving her own first year of higher education, college blogger Hannah Holmes offers tips for the high school graduating class of 2010:

Well, it’s finally over. I officially completed my first year of college at 11:30 one Thursday night in May when I turned in my last paper. I did very little but sleep in the days following.

If any of you graduating high school students who are preparing for college in the fall are anything like I was last year at this time, my first piece of advice for you is to relax. Whatever horrors you’re imagining, college is not that bad. My friends and I were actually just discussing the other night how much easier college is than adults will tell you. The infamous “transition” is really not that hard. Chances are, by the time you go to college, you’ll be ready. I also found that my fears of not making any friends were unfounded. I think it’s really probably harder to avoid making friends then to develop meaningful relationships. I mean, whether you go to a small or large school, there are a lot of you trapped on that campus in the exact same situation.

However, it does of course take some effort to make that first year of college a successful spring board for the rest of your time as an undergraduate. I think getting involved quickly was one of the most important and valuable decisions I made. The best way to meet people and have a good, productive time is by joining an on-campus organization about something you’re passionate about. For me, and pretty much everyone I knew, involvement was a major factor in making the first year of college an enjoyable one.

It’s also important to prioritize and schedule while getting involved and working hard in school. I have found using a planner to be another key to success. Planning ahead will help you avoid those awful nights of studying until 3 a.m. for a test in your 8 a.m. class -- at least sometimes. It also may help you in finding the all-important but ever elusive downtime. It does exist. I found it important to take at least a few minutes every day to hang out with friends, take a walk, watch TV or take a 20-minute power nap (something I highly recommend).

Finally, keeping a good perspective is one of the most important things you can do throughout your first year of college, and probably through all four years of being an undergrad. It’s amazing how big an impact the way you view the world around you can have on your day.

Like in anything in life, it’s crucial to focus on the good things that happen, rather than bad. If you keep thinking about how insanely busy you are, how it’s been weeks since you’ve been able to sleep in, how that homework is actually due a week earlier than you thought and how you have to make a poster for an event this weekend, in all likelihood you’re going to lose your mind quickly. I know from personal experience. However, if you dwell on the beautiful weather as you walk to class, how early your lab ended, how good your bed will feel when you finally make it there and how nice it was to catch up with a friend while you made that poster, things won’t look nearly as dismal.

Trust me: Nothing you could possibly do in the first year of college will cause the world to end, no matter how much you think turning an English paper in late might mean the beginning of the apocalypse.

At my orientation, a speaker told a story of a girl who wrote to her parents, telling them how a fire in her dorm caused her to jump from a fifth story window and obtain a concussion, so then she moved in with an older man who so he could care for her, and she was now pregnant with this man’s child and they were going to be married soon. At the end of the letter, the girl wrote, “None of this really happened, but I wanted to make sure you had a proper perspective when I told you about the two C’s and one D I’m getting this semester.”

So work hard in your first year of college, but take time to smell the roses, listen to your iPod and smile. Good luck!   

College freshman Hannah Holmes discusses the new stresses of college life and offers advice on how to handle pressure:

Anybody who’s in school now will have to agree with me; pressures abounds.

There’s pressure from professors. Do these fifty questions, read this thirty page chapter, and pass this exam, all this week, all in one class. There’s pressure from friends; as a freshman, my first important task was to make friends. Once I had accomplished that, the next task was to keep the friends. Help them out when they need it, because I might need the same, spend time with them, be the kind of person they want to hang out with. There’s pressure from the family; whether they’re tough on you or (like my extremely wonderful parents) supportive, they still want you to succeed at this university that they’re, in all likelihood, at least helping to pay for. And a phone call every night wouldn’t hurt either. There’s the pressure to get involved on campus, to be doing something, separating yourself from the pack; in all your “spare time.” For me and some others, there’s also the pressures of a job; my employers ask occasionally how classes are going, but I’m not sure how fully they recognize that the job is, by far, not the only thing I do… and that I don’t get a day off.

Whether you have more or less than I do going on in your college life, chances are pretty good you’ve felt stressed at one time or another. You’ve probably had a day where you needed to be five different places at once. Or spent three hours on chemistry homework and still didn’t understand a word of it. The question is, how does one stay sane? Here are some things I’ve been doing. They may help you, they may not, but they’ve helped me.

Even though I don’t get a day off, I always make an effort to schedule down time into my day. Even on my craziest days, I have to have some time that’s sacred for relaxation. For example, I don’t think I’ve yet studied through a meal. It may only be fifteen minutes of wolfing down a sandwich, but I always read for fun or hang out with friends while I eat, even when I don’t really have time to. I’m not going to be able to get very far without eating, and the same goes for relaxing. I have to have pressure free times, when I forget about the things I have to do, and all the people I have to please, even myself. For me, taking a walk makes a great study break. The exercise, of course, is good for you, and it’s a time to kind of escape, to spend some alone time (or catch up with a friend) and catch up with you (or someone else). Part of successful studying is knowing when to stop, to walk, watch a T.V. show, or SLEEP! That’s another thing I’ve refused to sacrifice. I know some people who don’t seem to need sleep, but I find I’m at optimal functioning capability if I get a square eight hours. And when I’m awake, I almost always have my iPod in my ears. It helps keep me sane; when life is getting to be a little too much, I jam my headphones into my ears, put on a happy song and blast the volume. Suddenly, it’s a lot easier to have a positive perspective. And a positive perspective makes everyday, no matter how crazy, livable. When you find yourself in a place where you feel like you need to laugh or cry, always choose to laugh. It’s definitely the best alternative.

Well, I’m off to chemistry and biology, where new pressures await me… but then I’m coming back to my room to watch my favorite show for a blissful pressure free hour!

For more stories from students themselves, check out the archives for previous columns in The Freshman Experience.

College freshman Hannah Holmes shares her first impressions of college and gives readers advice on how to avoid getting overwhelmed:

Walking onto my college campus for the first time felt surreal. Since my junior year, I’d been wondering, worrying, and waiting for college. But for all the hours of thought I’d put into it, I really had no idea what to expect. I think that was what had me the most freaked out over the last few weeks before college.

Somehow, it wasn’t nearly as hard as I expected. There was no explosion, no earthquake; my life did not drastically alter in an instant. Well, I guess in a way it did, but there was no pain associated with it. By the time my parents left, I was ready for them to, even though I’d been anxious about that moment for a long time. I was through with all of the lasts I’d been going through at home; last time spending a Monday afternoon with this friend, last time taking my dog on a walk with my dad, last time…. fill in the blank. But once I got on campus, the firsts began. First meal in the cafeteria, first night in my dorm, first time meeting this person, first time walking to class… It was exciting, an adventure. I guess I was pleasantly surprised, but maybe it’s hard to be surprised at all when you don’t know what to expect.

I was worried about making friends. I realized after my first few minutes on campus that that was silly. I was in a place surrounded by thousands of people around my age, with a million different interests. We’re all pretty much trapped here together, more or less, with no one but each other for company. There’s always someone to talk to, and who knows if it will be a friendship that lasts through the hour until my next class or through graduation?

I was worried about being homesick. Of course, I am sometimes. I miss my mom’s cooking, I miss being with my family, I miss little bits and pieces of the life I led for eighteen years. However, at the same time, I’m very much enjoying this new stage of my life. I talk to my parents everyday- most of the other freshman I talk to do, too. Everyone’s a little homesick.  Although, my college kept us too busy during orientation to think about it much. It was a whirlwind of meetings, classes, icebreakers, projects, and introductions to the college lifestyle. It got a little old after the first couple of days, but I would definitely encourage anyone to try and get us much out of their Orientation as they can, whatever it’s like. It’s sure to be a fantastic opportunity to meet people (who may be as sick of orientation stuff as you) and figure out how to get involved on campus, which can be a little overwhelming at first. Remember, everyone either is in the same boat as you or has been in the not too distant past (other than your professors, of course).

For me, getting used to college has been mostly about perspective, the good old glass-half-full vs. glass-half-empty mentality. If you focus on all the difficult things that happen, like how you got lost going to your first class, and you can’t work the code on your mailbox, and you have way more reading to do than is physically possible, you’ll probably lose your mind and everything will very quickly start to seem very overwhelming. But if you focus on the good things, like how you got out of that lab early, or chilled with your suitemates for an hour in their room, or how pleasant the long walk to that class is, you start to see that college life is kind of fun, and you can balance work and having a good time and enjoy this unique new time in your life.