Starting College With the Jitters

I’m getting up before dawn tomorrow. My son Ben and I are catching a 6:45 a.m. flight to Chicago.

Ben will be starting college on Saturday and he’s nervous. But hey, aren’t all college freshmen nervous?

Coincidentally, I found a great blog post today, written by two college professors, who shared ways that college freshmen can increase their confidence. Here is the post:

15 Ways to Boost Your Confidence at College

I printed the article out for Ben. I wanted to let him know that he’s not the only freshman who is anxious about the coming school year.

Freshmen anxiety is certainly a subject that my brothers and sisters have discussed lately.  Among the five siblings in my family, four of us had children born in 1992.

One thing Ben  doesn’t seem worried about is his roommate, whom he met on a previous college trip. I’ve heard a lot of Ben’s friends, however, speculate about their future roommates in mostly harsh terms. They’ve been stalking them  on Facebook.

Here’s a column that Maureen Dowd wrote today about why dorm roommates should not be clones of each other. Usually I think Dowd is too snarky, but I like what she had to say about sharing a college dorm. Here is her post:

Don’t Send in the Clones

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution, an Amazon bestseller, and she also write college blogs for CBSMoneyWatch and US News. Follow her on Twitter.


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