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" Everyone from your older friends and siblings to your campus tour guides and high school teachers will offer up tons of insight and advice about college. From how it&amp;#039;ll be the best time of your life to why living in dorms suck. But there are some things you won&amp;#039;t hear from any upperclassmen, advisors, or recent grads. From textbook hacks to roommate realities, here are the top things no one tells you about your first year of college! You won&amp;#039;t be sleeping until noon. Number one thing college tour guides won&amp;#039;t let you forget: You get to pick your own schedule! And they never forget to mention how they picked their classes so they have no class on Wednesday and Friday. But what they often do forget to mention is that upperclassmen get first dibs on class times, and freshman are often left with the 8am death slot. You might not click with your roommates. You might feel pressured to be besties with your roommates\u2014after all, you will be living with them for a year and they may be the only people you know for a while. The truth is, sometimes you and your roommates won&amp;#039;t click, but that&amp;#039;s okay. You can be a good roommate without being best friends. And it might work out better in the long run: You&amp;#039;ll be able to avoid the inevitable fights that comes along with sharing a tight space, because it&amp;#039;s easier to set boundaries when your roommate isn&amp;#039;t your BFF. Plus, there will be plenty of opportunties to find your college crew through other outlets, like the countless clubs and events on campus. Beware of the ride-moochers. If you&amp;#039;re a freshman and are lucky enough to have a car, you&amp;#039;ll be amazed at how many people will want to be your friend. You&amp;#039;ll also be amazed by how many of those friends only text you when they need a ride. Skipping classes is not all it&amp;#039;s cracked up to be. Yeah, most professors don&amp;#039;t take attendance, and you won&amp;#039;t get in &amp;quot;trouble&amp;quot; if you don&amp;#039;t show up to the most boring lecture ever. But the reality is missing lectures means missing material that will inevitably be on the exam, and you&amp;#039;ll run the risk of failing if you skip too many classes. True, you can sometimes drop a class for certain reasons, but it can cost you: you&amp;#039;ll have to buy a new book (new semester = new edition), pay for the class all over again, and lose a precious slot on your schedule next year that could have been used for a class you&amp;#039;d actually enjoy. Moral of the story: Go to class.  The food can get old fast. You&amp;#039;ll start out super excited about your unlimited food plan, but you&amp;#039;ll realize midway through the semester that the dining commons serve the same meals over and over, and you&amp;#039;ll get totally sick of them. You&amp;#039;ll be missing your fam&amp;#039;s homemade meals in no time. Luckily, there are some genius tricks for making the cafeteria food feel fresh. MORE: 15 Genius College Cafeteria Hacks! The dress code is a bit different from high school. Make sure you figure out what kind of party you&amp;#039;re hitting up before you splurge on a new outfit. Many college house parties are pretty casual, so if you show up dressed to the nines, you could look like a rookie. But the boys aren&amp;#039;t that different from high school. Everyone tells you that all the cute upperclassmen are on the lookout for freshmen to flirt with, so you end up spending all night standing against the wall waiting for that cutie across the room to come over and live up to the hype. Well don&amp;#039;t get discouraged if he doesn&amp;#039;t talk to you. The truth is, most college boys (even the older ones!) are just as clueless and shy as they were in high school. Don&amp;#039;t be afraid to take charge and make the first move. Unlike high school, if one doesn&amp;#039;t work out, there are tons more cuties to meet! If you have an advisor, don&amp;#039;t rely on him or her for everything. The reality is, college advisors have a million responsibilities on top of advising tons of students, so they&amp;#039;re overworked and don&amp;#039;t have tons of time to devote to each student. With this in mind, don&amp;#039;t wait for your advisor to call you\u2014they won&amp;#039;t. Make an appointment as soon as you can and beat the rush of students that will be knocking on his or her door at the end of the semester. And remember: your advisor can be a great source of advice, but you&amp;#039;re the one who is ultimately responsible for your own academic success. Don&amp;#039;t rely on your advisor to tell you what courses you need or don&amp;#039;t need to graduate, or how many credits you need to finish your major. Double check on your department&amp;#039;s official website, because your dean won&amp;#039;t accept the &amp;quot;But my advisor said\u2026&amp;quot; excuse come graduation time. Freshman year is when you&amp;#039;ll learn how to take control of your academic success. It&amp;#039;ll be intimidating at first, but you&amp;#039;ll get the hang of it. Your professors don&amp;#039;t want you to fail. Don&amp;#039;t listen to anyone who tells you that the professors don&amp;#039;t care about you in college. Sure, professors are challenging, expect more from you, and won&amp;#039;t babysit you, but that doesn&amp;#039;t mean they want you to fail. If you&amp;#039;re having trouble in a class, they&amp;#039;ll expect you to ask for help. With hundreds, sometimes thousands of students, they may not remember every students name, so they&amp;#039;re not going to keep track of your grade on every paper or exam, or reach out to you if you&amp;#039;re in danger of failing. You&amp;#039;ll make TONS of friends\u2026 but they may not last all four years. You&amp;#039;ll make so many friends your freshman year\u2014the girls in that club you join, the kid you sit next to in chem, and the cute boys down the hall\u2014but don&amp;#039;t be bummed if some of them disappear come sophomore year. Truth is, some friends come and go in college, and it might take you a while to find your core group of besties\u2014and that&amp;#039;s okay. Your first year friends are sometimes determined more by where you live than anything else, and it might take you a while to find your place on campus and the people who are your true BFFs. But don&amp;#039;t worry\u2014you&amp;#039;ll find them and they&amp;#039;ll be some of your best friends for life.  Wait to buy your books. You&amp;#039;ll get emails telling you to buy your books from the school bookstore before classes begin, but you could save big by waiting. Many professors only assign one or two readings from the &amp;quot;required&amp;quot; textbook, or they may not really use it at all. So you may want to attend a couple of classes before making any big textbook purchases, so you get a feel for how often you&amp;#039;ll need it. In the meantime, you can always use your library&amp;#039;s copy. When you do buy your books, shop around. School bookstores can be pricey. You might find yourself paying $200 for a book that you&amp;#039;ll only have for a couple months. Online retailers, like Amazon and Half, sell used textbooks at a fraction of the cost! Order your books online and use your library&amp;#039;s copy while you wait for them to arrive. And if you can&amp;#039;t find the book you need online and absolutely have to buy it from the school store, see if you can go halfsies with a classmate or roommate.  Dorm rooms are not luxurious. Dorm rooms on television and in movies are always so spacious and cute! Don&amp;#039;t expect any of that on move-in day. Consider yourself lucky if you and your roommate&amp;#039;s beds are more than two feet apart. Make sure check out some of our easy ways to deck out your room in stylish, fun (and cheap) ways for when it&amp;#039;s time to make the most of your limited space. You&amp;#039;re not going to be able to fit half the stuff you plan on packing. Take everything you planned on packing. Okay, now cut it in half and that still will probably be too much! We know it seems essential to bring both the pink and the blue bean bag chairs to school, but chances are you&amp;#039;re not going to have space for one let alone both\u2014and same goes for everything else. If it&amp;#039;s not essential, leave it at home. There are plenty of ways to decorate your room that don&amp;#039;t take up precious space, and you can always bring back more if you go home for Thanksgiving. You might have boys on your floor. Depending on your school, you may be living on a coed floor. If this is the case, there are some things you&amp;#039;ll need to be very aware of when it&amp;#039;s time to use the bathroom. Invest in a robe to avoid running into the cutie across the hall in a flimsy towel. If you have the misfortune of not having a girls&amp;#039; bathroom on your floor, you will be tempted to use the boys&amp;#039; bathroom when you need to go late at night. DON&amp;#039;T DO IT! Not only are boys&amp;#039; bathrooms the legit jungle, but you might end up getting written up for being somewhere you&amp;#039;re not supposed to be, or find yourself in an awkward situation with the dude down the hall. Make the trek upstairs and use the girls&amp;#039; bathroom. You won&amp;#039;t regret it. Are there any first-year surprises you&amp;#039;d add to the list? Share them in the comments! MORE: 11 Biggest College Regrets! 10 Sorority Life Lessons Your Ultimate College Packing List Photo Credit: Nick Onken, Sarra Fleur, Giphy.com "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.seventeen.com/life/school/advice/a24115/what-no-one-tells-you-about-first-year-of-college/>