I moved in to Wingate University on Thursday August 16th 2018, it was a day of both excitement and sadness. I was excited to meet new people, make new friends, and start my classes to come closer to my career. It pained me to see my dad leave me here, and I could tell it pained him even more. And this morning, before my classes, I decided to write this to provide some advice for seniors in high school who are going to enter college and I'll even give some help for those who need the help in high school since I have good friends who are underclassmen.

So to start this off, I'll deal with the homesickness. I got the idea for this after reading a poster on the bathroom stall door in my dorm. I mean, it's a smart place to put it, a guy will read something while he's taking a dump. In a sense, home sickness is a common occurrence, it can happen once, or it can happen multiple times. The 'symptoms' of homesickness is really confusing. The paper sad that you will feel sad, and even start crying for no reason at all. I know that on my first night at Wingate, I actually cried myself to sleep, even though I slept in two hour bursts. I knew that it was because I missed the people I loved.

The advice I can give, and the same that was on the paper, is to talk to your family every once in a while. That doesn't mean you have to call talk to them every night, but that also doesn't mean to ignore them. Another thing you can and should do is visit your family and friends, even if it's for just a few hours, if it's a Friday night and your college has an away game and your high school has a home game, check it out, that's what I did, you can also brighten the day(s) of those friends and/or family if you don't tell them you're coming down to visit. (Although my grandma got upset when I didn't tell them because I planned to surprise them at the football game that night).

But even with that, the best way to deal with homesickness if to make new friends. The easiest way, or hardest, depending on your persona, is to become good friends with your roommate(s). I know it seem's obvious but he/she/they are going to be with you for a while, however long it takes you to graduate, either it be two or four years. Another thing is to join a club or multiple, if you can find any that are similar or the same at your high school. if you enjoy video games, join the gamers club (or guild), join a club focused around your degree. Honestly if you stay in your shell, you may be able to break it (as ironic as it sounds). An easy group of people to find friends with, especially when you're a freshman, is to make friends with people in your Gateway 101 class (or orientation, it's called Gateway 101 here at Wingate) and people with the same or similar majors. In the class, you may be placed in groups with similar majors, remember their names and majors, and you can easily make friends with them.

Now I'll move on to general advice. I know that some people will need this more than others. The biggest thing is to not judge anyone, ya don't know where they came from nor what they have. I know that during Orientation, a question was asked when either the entire freshman or half of the freshman class (I don't remember entirely) and that question was that if anyone was gay, lesbian, or transgender, and the guy next to me stood up, and shouted that he was gay, when he told me, I responded that I didn't care, I would still treat him as a human.

There are other minor things that people should generally know, an important one is for you to try to not annoy the other people in your dorm with noise, the walls in dorm rooms are (not surprisingly) very thin, and the sound, if loud enough can either wake up or awaken people on the floor. Now, there are things that cannot be helped. I live on the top floor in the top bunk with my two roommates, and when I get up at 0700 in the morning, I jump out of bed to turn off my alarm. So I likely wake up the people below, I met the guy who lived below me, and I mentioned that I was sorry if I woke him and his roommate(s) up in the morning. Overall, we just laughed it off.

Now here's the good information that I learned and helped inspire me to write this. One big thing is to wake up early, even if your classes don't start to the afternoon. This way you can work on homework, get a good breakfast with little wait, and there will be time to do things that you want to do. Also, at about 0800, 0900, everyone in the dorm hall is either asleep, or in class, meaning it is the best time to take a shower (The water is actually warm, but not hot) and do your laundry.

Either way, God bless y'all, and good luck with college, school and life. Hopefully this advice will be of use to you.