Freshman year brings about a lot of changes, and opens the door to many new experiences. New friends, new subjects, and other new opportunities to grow and prosper are presented in college, as well as a slew of challenges. When first presented, the distinction between opportunities and challenges seems clear. What freshman year teaches us, however, is that there really is no distinguishing the two in the real world, a fact that I have been finding out the hard way lately.

There is no question that friends are a good thing to have. Besides having fun, friends are there to offer a helping hand, give a shoulder to cry on, and generally stand by your side. A best friend is somebody who gives that extra something more, who goes beyond the normal definition of a friend. I have had the benefit of finding a few people who all seem to fit that special category to varying degrees… A blessing to be sure, considering that many people never even have one such friend.

In such a wonderful set of circumstances, it may seem difficult for somebody on the outside to come up with how this may present a challenge to any individual. The challenge, in this case, is being as good of a friend back. Now, I know that all of my friends will tell me that I am a good friend, and tell me to not worry about it. But, I also know, that I am often inadequate as a friend, and that I have caused them pain on many more occasions than I have any right to.

I know that on more than on many occasions, my own selfish tendencies have caused my friends pain. I have not always been there when they needed me. I have hurt them when they were trying to heal me. And I ignored them as they stood by my side. When I bring it up to them personally, they will deny it on all counts, but in the heat of the moment, when they are caught off guard, I can see that I have hurt them. And, although they will deny it later, they suffer for it.

The saddest part of it is that through all of the crap, they still stand by my side. To be honest, I do not know how or why, but they do. Their willingness to deal with me is quite possibly the strongest sign of their own caring, and is proof of what fantastic friends they all are.

That is also the single greatest reason why I so desperately want to be a better friend to them all, and to prove how much I care. I know it will take time, especially given my short, yet storied, history of selfishness, but I am determined. I have failed them many times before, but in this quest, failure is not an option. No matter what it takes, I will someday be able to show them just how much I care.

Tom Flusk

In high school, everybody lives at home, and therefore can be completely dependent on their parents for everything, including food. Getting lunch is as easy as asking for money, or else bringing food from home. As with everything else, everybody grows up with it, and everybody grows more than a little bit accustomed to it. Also, like everything else, college is completely different, and all of us freshman were taken off guard once we were faced with the truth.
Once I was faced with having to supply myself with food, I was found that I was in over my head immediately. First off, I eat a lot… And by a lot, I mean double everybody else’s daily allowance. For those of you who are counting at home, that is a very expensive proposition. I personally couldn’t afford it, and I found that I was often hungry… very hungry.
I have the commuter meal plan… Five meals a week, either breakfast or lunch. But those meals are not nearly enough on their own… and as a runner, I was accustomed to 3 meals a day, with plenty of snacking in between. For those of us who were not runners, many of them did not have a meal plan. So, five meals a week was still not enough. I tried going home as often as I could so that I could eat, but that severely cut into the amount of extracurricular activities that I could attend.
After struggling through most of my first semester, I found out that there is a far better way. NJIT makes a concerted effort to offer many extracurricular activities regularly. Of those activities, most of them make a very concentrated effort to attract students to them. The most successful method is… free food. Clubs offer food for sign-ups and at meetings, SAC and RHA host events with free meals. These tend to be all-you-can eat affairs, which means there is no reason to leave hungry.
Since there are so many of them, you can get many meals, mostly lunch and dinner, for free just by attending these events. There are ways to plan how to maximize your attendance at these events, and all of them are rather simple. First, go on Facebook, (which you are probably logged onto right now), and become a fan of SAC and Senate.
If you are a resident, be sure to become a fan of RHA, and if you are a commuter, become a fan of CARS. These will supply a list of events, and specifically tell you what they are serving most days. Also, look at the issue of the Vector that you are holding now… It has a calendar, and a Greek calendar, both of which have a list of events and their locations.
Since I started looking at these sources, and planning my meals in advance, I have not missed a meal since. The few meals that you cannot get for free can be easily supplemented with a minimal amount of money. So, instead of having to pinch and save for Top Ramen, you can save that money, and go out to eat in one of the lovely restaurants that the Newark Newb reviews. If you are smart, you may still be a lost freshman, but at least you will not be hungry.

Tom Flusk

Throughout our lives, we have all heard stories about spring break in college. In high school, we were constantly bombarded with images of beaches, dancing, and alcohol. Teachers showed anti-drinking films, parents gave warnings, and all of us were thrilled to say the least. At least, until we got older, realized we were going to go to a public university, and did not have the money to party in Cancun or Miami for the week.

Compared to the stories that I heard and the anticipation that had been mounting since I was eight, my first spring break seemed a bit lackluster at first. I not only did not have the money to go away for the week, or even a weekend, I actually had no money.

So, instead of heading to a beach, or even heading home for some much needed sleep, I took the opportunity to work full time hours for a week, and repair the damage that college had done to my savings account. My weekdays were to be spent working in an office at NJIT, my weekends were spent working as a laborer, for my father.

That is not to say that none of us went away, or did some other things that could be bragged about. There were people who did indeed go to Cancun or Miami. So, during all of my breaks from work, I was inundated with pictures on Facebook of sunny beaches and people getting tan lines. I saw surfboards, and for those who went north, I saw snowboards. It got to be a little depressing after a while.

Some people who didn’t go on vacation still did some cool things. Some of us decided to work all kinds of cool internships in fields that interested them. Others did alternative spring breaks, and performed service for the week. Both options, although they were working, seem like they were probably preferable to opening and sorting envelopes, or mixing cement.

After a little bit of moping in the days leading up to Spring Break itself, I realized something. Although the main things that I had to do during my break sucked at best, they had one distinct advantage, and that was my friends.

Since I only worked during the day, I could see my friends at night. Instead of having homework, the newspaper, or some other NJIT related misery to fill my nights after a day of work, I was free to get some quality time. And I took advantage of it.

So, after working hard for three quarters of our freshman year, I hope you all enjoyed your week off, we all needed it. A little rest and relaxation should’ve been had by all, even for those people who worked as well.

Finally, the greatest benefit to spring break: We are now in the final stretch of freshman year! Soon, we will not be freshman, and I will be calling you my fellow sophomores, and hopefully we will not be lost anymore.

Tom Flusk

There isn’t a person in the world that doesn’t get sick at some really inconvenient time in their lives. Even for people that never seem to get sick, they will inevitably fall victim to some illness, it’s just human nature. It is an infamous scene in everybody’s life: You wake up with your alarm in the morning, and find yourself plastered to the bed. Your head aches, and your nose is stuffy. You sit up, cough, and it feels like you are coughing up your left lung. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, you are sick.

If this was high school, chances are that you’d have your mom call the school, and just not go. Most of the time, a doctor’s note was completely unnecessary, and all the missed work could be made up. Deadlines were lax, and some work was just excused. A sick day consisted of sitting in the living room playing videogames, without any worry about work piling up, because there wasn’t any, or else very little.

After this experience, freshmen are in for a rude awakening the first time they get sick at college. College professors tend to not be like high school teachers in the vein that college professors don’t care what’s wrong with you, they want you in their class, or else you do not get credit. University rules allow you to get a doctor’s note, and then make up the work, but there is a lot of it, and you do not get much time to do it.

So, as you lay there in your bed, you find yourself faced with a fairly difficult decision to make: Do you face the misery, and then not have a load of work pile up? Or do you skip class and get some rest, which means avoiding the misery that day, but then facing the misery of work piling up? I have tried them both personally, and neither one of them are any fun at all.

Choosing to not go to class is a dangerous choice in several ways. Freshman can only have three unexcused absences in any class before they automatically lose credit. Unlike upperclassmen, where this falls to the instructor’s discretion, this is a university wide rule. When you have an unexcused absence, most professors will not allow you to make up the missed work.

If you go the doctor’s office and get a note, the absence will be excused, and you can make up the work. The problem is, you still have to actually do the work, on top of the other work that you would normally have to do. Since so many students are already stretched so thin, that can often carry them dangerously close to the point of insanity.

After that miserable experience, the next time I got sick, I attempted to attend all of my classes. This turned out to be at least as miserable as making up work was, and probably edged that out by a bit. I got credit for being present, but I was unable to focus on any of my work, and had to re-do most of it anyway. I didn’t have to drag myself to the doctor, but it ended up being pretty miserable overall.

Ultimately, the best bet when you do get sick is to not go to class, and go the doctor to get your note. You will have to make up the work, but you would probably have to make up work anyway if you went and spaced out. Also, this prevents the spread of disease, which means saving other people, and possibly even myself, from getting what you have, and having to deal with that misery as well. Finally, despite how you may feel about such things, you should go to the doctor… Even if you hate going to the doctor, then you at least get the all important excuse note, and can make up your work. The very best advice I can give, however, is to avoid getting sick in the first place, so that you don’t have to deal with the misery that is being sick at college.

Tom Flusk

You have all experienced it before: An important paper is due, or an exam is coming up. Sometimes things are even worse than that: An important paper is due on the same day as an exam that is coming up! You plan ahead, budgeting time into your schedule to prepare. Even those with the best intentions, however, fall victim to… Procrastination.

No matter what, there will always be distractions, no matter what you want to get done. There will always be something, whether it’s an awesome party, or a rerun of you 9th favorite show from 1987 that you haven’t seen since Thursday.

The key to academic success is being able to turn down these distractions, then putting your nose to the grindstone and getting your work done. Unfortunately, most of us developed an extreme case of Senioritis by the end of our senior years in high school, and were not cured in time for college.

I am currently battling AAHSS (Advanced After High School Senioritis), and I have been having a difficult time with it. I have put off papers to the last minute, and have procrastinated to a special extreme with my work for the newspaper. I am currently suffering through the aftermath of a procrastination attack, and am writing this column during production night… three days late as of an hour and half ago.

I have, however, made great strides in my fight against procrastination. I do not procrastinate for exams, and have even began to study for some exams up to three weeks in advance. This has not only improved my grades, but has also improved my social life, because instead of watching television all day, then doing work instead of going out, I skip the boob tube, do my work, and then go to the party I’ve been waiting for.

For those of you who are deep in the most advanced stages of procrastination related destruction, there is still hope. All you have to do is choose to get help, and it is available to you. You can go the CAPE, or many departments have tutors elsewhere as well. You can create a planner, and make plans to do your work for the whole week. The key to this is to not only schedule work, but schedule that party you want to go to, and show yourself how not doing your work will mean not going to that party.

As I try to enter the recovery phase myself, I hope that you all can join me. I not only want the freshman to fight procrastination, but also the upperclassmen who were unable to cure themselves. Together, we will fight this evil that we call procrastination. And together, we will triumph, and get all of our work done… tomorrow.

Valentine’s Day causes just about everybody from the age of 8 to 108 to think about love, or their lack thereof. Thoughts of getting flowers and chocolates even invade the thoughts of college freshmen, no matter how much of a disconnect they have achieved from their emotions due to overstressing and under-sleeping. But college changes things, and all of us freshmen, including myself, are learning how college can effect Valentine’s Day.

A special problem with Valentine’s Day that is unique to NJIT is a simple one: Guys have the females greatly outnumbered. NJIT has an 8:1 female to male ratio… I know that most NJIT students are very good at math, but for those of you at home, that is a very lopsided ratio. This means that the strapping young men of NJIT have no choice but to look elsewhere for love, or else 7 out of 8 will be without a date on Valentine’s Day.

Without NJIT’s built in disadvantage, college still tends to make relationships difficult. In high school, everybody was in class, or not, at the same time. This made planning dates relatively easy, because everybody’s schedules had the same free time built in.

In college, classes range from 8:30 in the morning until 9:00 at night. This means there are several days where a couple may have absolutely no time in common at all. There are common hours, but they only occur three times a week, and most students participate in clubs that meet during those times.

On top of classes, which include homework, and clubs, many students have to work to help pay for college, which you all know is quite expensive. Instead of our parents just giving us money to spend, our parents are spending all of their money and then some paying for school. For those of us whose parents didn’t have loads of money to give us, then they are definitively not giving us any money now.

So, even if we don’t have to work for school, we have to work to pay for a date. The problem with this is we don’t have time for a date because we are at work. And to those of you who say, “Well, don’t go to work then,” I answer that then you don’t have any money to go on a date with.

All college students face these problems, but freshmen are not exactly acclimated to the college scene, and tend to handle their schedules badly to begin with. Add in a love life, or an attempted love life, and things don’t exactly get much better.

Then, with all of these disadvantages, comes the fact that sometimes relationships are just complicated in their own right. Let’s face it, many of us at NJIT don’t exactly have any “moves”, and certainly don’t walk with much “swagger.” Many of us are of a nerdy type, and some of us are awkward to say the least. Then, once we get past the beginning and into an actual relationship, there is often another set of challenges.

So, to those of you freshmen who are able to balance a love life with their other responsibilities, I hope you all have a great Valentine’s Day. For those of you who do not, I can only offer solace in the fact that it’s not forever, and someday February 14 will be better then celebrating Single’s Awareness Day.

Freshmen tend to experience a wide range of emotions during their first semester. Happiness, sadness, excitement and depression all contribute to the rollercoaster ride that is freshman year.

Grades are even more varied. Some people did very well across the board. Others, unfortunately, did rather poorly. Many more fell into the foggy gray area that we call average. Despite it all, most of us have made it through in one piece, and are still around to experience the beginning of the second semester.

Most of us freshman have not had any classes since mid-December. All of that time allows a lot of rust to accumulate. It’s amazing how three months of class can escape your mind in half that time, but it seems to happen any.

So, after a nice break, we are confronted with classes and professors that expect us to know the material from the previous semester, but we do not. Many of us, expecting to have a handle of things going into our second semester, are even more lost than we were before.

Some of us had winter classes, which would be expected to provide a bit of an advantage going into the new semester. Let me be the first to tell you that it did not. New material is still new material, there is not getting around it.

Then there is the fact that we take more classes in the spring, while we only take one in the winter. For every other class, the rust is just the same, and perhaps even more so. For not only did we have the effect of not taking the class, we had the added problem of the super compacted class pushing all of the other information out.

Ultimately, even though it’s a new semester with a new schedule, we all have to look at it the same way. Classes are still difficult, there is still a lot of work to be done, and there is even a lot of fun still to be had.

So enjoy making new friends and doing new things, but be sure to memorize your new schedule soon. Because, if the first week is any sign, this semester will be very much like the last one, which means there is no time for messing around.

For most college students, freshmen included, the winter break is a much anticipated month off during the holidays. It gives everybody a nice break after their fall semester to relax and unwind, before diving into a new semester. This solstice is a valuable thing, and many students can’t imagine not having it. For some students however, it’s not beyond their imaginations, for they have experienced it in the form of the Winter Session.

There are many reasons for taking a winter class, the most common of which being failure during the fall. For whatever reason, whether it be a failed final or continued slacking, many people end up failing courses. In cases where a failed course severely damages one’s GPA, or is a required course that must be repeated, the 11 to 12 day winter session seems like a good option to some folks.

I personally fell victim to my fall math class. The Lost Freshman was indeed very lost when it came to the world of pre-calculus. I had struggled all semester to keep my grades up, but math was always a struggle. Despite my struggles, however, I still had a chance for success, right up until the very end. Unfortunately, it was a bitter end, and I got a D.

In the same email in which my professor told me my grade, he also told me about the winter session. In my panic over getting a grade so very low, and facing the prospect of an extra semester of Math 109, this didn’t only seem like a bad idea, it was an appealing offer.

The very next day, I bit the bullet, and signed up for the class. With a click of the mouse, I had sealed my fate: No winter recess for me, class started the Monday after Christmas.

It was a sad day when I received my schedule: 9-3, Monday through Friday. Dreams of snowmen and hot chocolate soon gave away to derivatives and integrals of sinusoid functions to the third power. For those of you keeping score at home, five hours is a lot of math class, which is what was left after an hour lunch break. Suffice to say, it was not a schedule designed for the faint of heart.

The one good thing about taking a winter class is that it’s all there is for you to do. There is nothing to do on campus, and there is no time left in the day to travel and see your friends that have all gone home for the holidays. With nothing left to do, all I had was studying. However, the benefit to my grade did not detract from the misery of studying math all day.

At the end of it, I ended up getting a B+, far better than the D that I started with. Most of the people in my class ended up passing, mostly due to the fact that none of us had anything better to do than focus on it. Looking on the bright side, I do not have to take a full semester of Math 109, in fact, I never have to take it again.

Still, I would like to make the winter session a distant memory of my freshman year, and never relive that experience again. And I recommend that everybody else, freshman or otherwise, do the same.