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There’s value in conceptualizing college not just as four years (or five!) all bundled together but as discrete blocks of time that each have their own purpose and characteristics. Each year marks a new transition and requires a different kind of courage and stamina. Try to begin each year with a few central, doable, and reachable goals, and review this each semester. As a professor for over 30 years and as someone who does speaking engagements on the college experience based on my book The Complete U: Over 100 Lessons for Success In and Out of the College Classroom, I try to describe to both students and parents how it's beneficial to think about the college timeline in this way.

Freshman Year: Arrange Your New Life and Make Yourself at Home

A beginner’s mind is often the best mindset. What is a beginner’s mind? It’s the ability to look with fresh eyes, to see what’s common and familiar in a whole new way. It requires openness and curiosity, two qualities that benefit all of us in higher education. Those who are beginners in anything bring with them more of a sense of a blank slate, a fresh canvas, and a way of seeing that is just insider and outsider enough simultaneously. Cultivating a beginner’s mind means letting the preconceived notions and judgments fall away, and it’s an openness to what is. Ripe with possibility, this mindset presents us with the opportunity to recreate ourselves every day.

Look into student organizations, clubs, and intramurals on campus, and explore activities in the surrounding community where you might meet new........

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