I'm procrastinating and not studying for my MCT final so I thought I would give you guys some pointers about first year:
1.) Buy Scribes. (
www.scribes2011.com) You will receive information over the summer about how to get them, but they are life-savers. Most lectures don't change year to year and having notes already done for you is great. There is also a sample scribe on the website.
2.) Sign up for tutoring (especially for GAR). The Office of Student Affairs has free tutoring set up for you. A couple of second years get together and go over the really critical stuff for you and answer all your questions. It is not tutoring because you are an idiot -- in fact, most of the people who Honor courses are in tutoring. Its just a great way to get instant study-buddies.
3.) Go to the Prematriculation program if you get invited. It is a 5 week summer thing where you get to go through the rigors of gross anatomy before it really counts. They typically invite URM, people out of school for a while, nontraditional majors, etc. but if you really really want to go -- call the office and see if they have any openings in April/May. I wasn't invited but went anyways and am very glad that I did. Because there are only ~40 people who go you get to know the professors before the other 200 show up. It is taught by the same professors doing your first year courses.
4.) The Starbucks on campus does not take gift cards
and it closes at like 7 or 8pm everynight.
5.) The library does not have all-night hours but the Graves building does. Graves is the best place ever to study in the middle of the night.
6.) There is a Whataburger right next to campus for late night food runs. Taco Bell is about 60 blocks away and its the only other late night place.
7.) As tempting as it is -- don't go to all the meetings at the beginning of the year that serve free food. The free food will be pizza. If you eat all of that pizza, you will explode and it won't be pretty.
8.) Make sure you have an amazing printer if you are inclined to print all the notes. Going to the library to do it is pretty inconvenient.
9.) Mac laptops work fine on campus. It is not "required" to have a laptop but it is definitely strongly recommended. I bring mine to every PBL session so that I can look up information as it is presented. It is a disadvantage if you cannot do this -- but I do know quite a few people who don't bring one so you can survive without it. Vista also works fine on campus and they are trying to finish the upgrades so that every program is compatible.
10.) I know this is probably common sense but get high speed internet wherever you decide to live.
11.) Don't think that you need to put all of the required texts on your Christmas list this year. You don't need them.
If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. I would much rather answer questions than study
). As far as housing, not sure yet, gonna talk to some current MSs about that.
