REAL TALK Episode 1: Navigating UConn as a freshman or transfer student

Whether you are an incom­ing Fresh­man or trans­fer­ring to a dif­fer­ent col­lege, a new school is nev­er some­thing easy to nav­i­gate, espe­cial­ly at a large state school like UConn. Join UConn seniors, Jack­son, Wyn­ter, and Rob­bie, in guid­ing you through adjust­ing to the university!

In this first episode of Real Talk we will go over the key things to bet­ter your col­lege expe­ri­ence. We go over clubs, social life, class, meet­ing new peo­ple, and more!

Infor­ma­tion on UConn learn­ing communities

Explore a UConn vir­tu­al tour

TRANSCRIPT:

Jack­son: 

What is going on, every­body? Wel­come to Real Talk. I am your host, Jack­son, and I’m with my co hosts.

Rob­bie:

I’m Rob­bie.

Wyn­ter:

And I’m Win­ter, and we are here to give you Real Talk.

Jack­son:

So yeah, pret­ty much the basic of Real Talk is us as seniors at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut look to offer advice for younger class­men or incom­ing trans­fers, just how to nav­i­gate the campus.

I know me per­son­al­ly as A stu­dent at UConn wish I had a lit­tle bit more advice and uh, Help kind of get­ting around cam­pus and with the social life. So we’re kind of here to give you guys that uh, insight so um First off, we can just get straight into it and just talk about our first expe­ri­ences on campus.

Um, Win­ter, when did you come to cam­pus and uh, what were your first experiences?

Wyn­ter:

So I actu­al­ly came to cam­pus about three months before I had to start the semes­ter. I was enrolled in a pro­gram called SSS. Um, and basi­cal­ly what that did for me, it real­ly helped me learn that I’m going to real­ly be on my own here, and I real­ly have to act as an adult.

There’s no more par­ents that’s going to be on my case to tell me, you know, you have to get X, Y, and Z done. And, um, My first impres­sion of the cam­pus as a whole was, wow, this place is huge, and I was very scared to find my classes.

Jack­son:

Yeah, I could def­i­nite­ly agree with you there. Um, one big prob­lem that I had was lit­er­al­ly hav­ing to Google map every­thing to every sin­gle one of my classes.

Uh, I came from a sub cam­pus of UConn called Avery Point, and there was lit­er­al­ly One, maybe two aca­d­e­m­ic build­ings through­out the entire cam­pus. So switch­ing over to a big cam­pus like UConn was def­i­nite­ly a big switch. Uh, what about you, Rob­bie? Any, any big, big expe­ri­ences when you first came to campus?

Rob­bie:

So I was a, um, I grad­u­at­ed high school in 2020. So I took a gap year cause of COVID and I didn’t get into UConn the first time. So I reap­plied dur­ing that gap year and got in and I was see­ing all my friends from home going to school and stuff. And it looked real­ly fun. So I was like kind of kind of jeal­ous of them when I was home, but when I got here it was kind of like a I don’t it was a kind of a sur­prise how tough it was to adjust Because of like it just the cam­pus was mas­sive in my eyes now look­ing back.

It’s real­ly not that big um But yeah, like you said the maps get­ting lost. It was hard to meet like close friends Maybe the first semes­ter, but once I got into like the spring semes­ter and beyond You It’s been a great time.

Jack­son:

Yeah, dude. And uh, I’m actu­al­ly hap­py you brought up the COVID aspect. Did you know any­body that went here dur­ing COVID?

Because I know my sis­ter went to, um, East­ern dur­ing COVID and they were like very, very strict with that. They end­ed up like mak­ing it to where you could only have like two oth­er peo­ple in your dorms at a time. Uh, there was no frat life, no social life. She absolute­ly hat­ed it and end­ed up trans­fer­ring out just because of how bad the expe­ri­ence was.

Rob­bie:

Yeah. A lot of kids in my fra­ter­ni­ty, um, some of my close friends who are now. Grad­u­at­ed because they were here dur­ing covid. They said it was total­ly dif­fer­ent and um, like there was noth­ing to do. Couldn’t go any­where. So I’m kind of hap­py I took the gap year.

Jack­son:

Yeah, for sure. For sure. I mean, Hon­est­ly, not a bad move with how the world was, uh, mov­ing right there.

Were there any oth­er expe­ri­ences that you guys had when you first came to cam­pus? Whether it was with like, din­ing hall, or just like, dorm­ing, or any­thing like that?

Wyn­ter:

Um, have you guys ever heard of Fresh­man 15?

Jack­son:

Uh, yeah.

Wyn­ter:

Or is it 25?

Jack­son:

I’ve heard of it, but do you want to elab­o­rate for the audience?

Wyn­ter:

For those of you who do not know what that is, it’s, uh, when fresh­men come to cam­pus, they gain weight.

I actu­al­ly lost weight. I didn’t like the food, uh, per­son­al­ly, me speak­ing, um, and a lot of my mon­ey went to Door­Dash. So that’s like an expe­ri­ence I will nev­er forget.

Jack­son:

And this was your fresh­man year?

Wyn­ter:

My, my first year. Yes,

first year. Um, I couldn’t do the food.

Jack­son:

Where were you living?

Wyn­ter:

My fresh­man year, I was for­tu­nate enough to live in Wat­son, alumni.

I joined the learn­ing com­mu­ni­ty to get there.

Jack­son:

Nice, nice. Um,

Wyn­ter:

how about you? Where were you living?

Jack­son:

Me? I’ve always lived off cam­pus, so I trans­ferred here when I was a sopho­more, or going into my junior year. And then I just got a house with three oth­er friends that we’re trans­fer­ring into, so I just kind of cook my own food for the most part.

Uh,

Wyn­ter:

do you like, miss out? Like, do you kind of Regret not mov­ing into a dorm and get­ting that experience

Jack­son:

you see that’s inter­est­ing because I feel like the dorm life You either love it or you absolute­ly hate it and for me I couldn’t ever imag­ine myself liv­ing in a sit­u­a­tion where I have to share a Bed­room with some­body because I’ve always had my own bed­room my entire life I’d have to share a bed­room with some­body at the age of 18 years old and then I’d have to share a bath­room with like 20 peo­ple which just when­ev­er I thought about the bath­room part.

I just got like dis­gust­ed and then like on top of that It’s like dorm like din­ing hall food. So I also did out the math like I could have Lived in a dorm my junior year, but I real­ized that if I like actu­al­ly just cooked my own meals I didn’t get take­out every day. I would save more mon­ey in the long run with rent and food and stuff like that rather than if I paid for the meal plan form from UConn and Actu­al­ly the dorm because I’m pret­ty sure that’s like What’s the meal plan again?

Do you guys know what it is off the top of your head? It’s like

Rob­bie:

I know you could get a com­muter one for like 300. Yeah,

Jack­son:

okay, but yeah I saw it at the time and I was like this is a lot. Yeah, I was like, this is just a ridicu­lous like A cou­ple hun­dred thou­sand or some­thing like that. I was like, oh, this is ridiculous.

So, um, that’s why I didn’t real­ly want to live on cam­pus. Um, if you’re like a sopho­more trans­fer­ring in, I def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend if you have a good group of peo­ple around you, try to live off cam­pus, uh, as long as it’s not too, too far away, because the one thing I will say with liv­ing off cam­pus is it was a lot hard­er for me to kind of, uh, net­work and con­nect with people.

So, um, and that also car­ries, uh, Right into our next top­ic with the social life. Um, me per­son­al­ly, I’m not real­ly too, too acquit­ted because I just talked about how I’ve always been liv­ing off cam­pus. I’m per­son­al­ly not real­ly in any clubs or any­thing like that. Um, how did you guys kind of like, get out there and make friends and, you know, meet peo­ple on campus?

Rob­bie:

Um, so first I would def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend for any­one com­ing into UConn to live on cam­pus, unless you have a group. I would def­i­nite­ly live on cam­pus your first year at least. I lived in Worth my first year, so I was a part of a learn­ing com­mu­ni­ty. That was like the first club I was in. And then, after that, I moved off campus.

I lived in an apart­ment, and now I’ve lived in a house for a cou­ple years. And they both have their pros and cons, but when you’re younger, to make, like, your ini­tial group, I would def­i­nite­ly live on cam­pus. Um, so I was in a learn­ing com­mu­ni­ty. Um, I made a few friends there. Noth­ing too spe­cial. I wasn’t very involved in it.

Um, I was in the pub­lic health learn­ing com­mu­ni­ty. Um, and then it was kind of hard to make friends that first semes­ter. But then in the spring I start­ed rush­ing fra­ter­ni­ties and I looked at a few and that’s when I joined my fra­ter­ni­ty and that was prob­a­bly the best deci­sion that I’ve made in col­lege so far because I still live with like four of my clos­est friends right now.

And just have a bunch of peo­ple I know that I see around cam­pus every day.

Jack­son:

For sure, for sure. And then, I’m not sure if one of you guys did kind of explain it, but I noticed that both of you guys were in learn­ing com­mu­ni­ties. I per­son­al­ly have no idea what a learn­ing com­mu­ni­ty is. Can you guys just kind of like, elab­o­rate if you know what it is?

Rob­bie:

I guess, so in Worth, like each floor is a learn­ing com­mu­ni­ty. And basi­cal­ly it’s, you get like match­ing shirts too I guess, which is cool, but It’s a group of peo­ple on a floor and you do get a one cred­it class for being in the learn­ing com­mu­ni­ty. You take like a class about it once a week. It’s not much work and basi­cal­ly it’s just a way that peo­ple are sup­posed to like meet each oth­er honestly.

Jack­son:

Nice. Nice. What about you, uh, winter?

Wyn­ter:

Um, so I was also in a learn­ing com­mu­ni­ty. Um, but unfor­tu­nate­ly I was not able to get into that one cred­it class course because my sched­ule didn’t align with it. Um, nonethe­less, they still try to involve me in like the activ­i­ties that they were doing and like any­thing that they were host­ing out­side of the class.

Um, it was a great way to net­work with peo­ple. I would def­i­nite­ly say. I also agree. Uh, with Robby’s state­ment that you should def­i­nite­ly live on cam­pus for your first year. Um, it’s eas­i­er for you to make friends. It’s eas­i­er for you to attend those school events that some­times, you know, are late night or some­times, you know, don’t take place dur­ing the day.

Um, and that’s how kind of I met some of my friends that I’m still cur­rent­ly friends with now is by attend­ing those lit­tle late night on cam­pus, um, events. Activities

Rob­bie:

also makes going to the sport­ing events a lot Eas­i­er too, and I would def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend every­one to go to like at least the bas­ket­ball games Oh for sure, my prob­a­bly my best mem­o­ry of fresh­man year was in the spring I think we were play­ing see­ing all maybe at Gampel.

It was a Sat­ur­day after­noon and like I was Join­ing my fra­ter­ni­ty at the time and all of us had like tents out out­side a gam­ble just tail­gat­ing the whole day It was great. I def­i­nite­ly go to sport­ing events, too

Wyn­ter:

And so that point I def­i­nite­ly say go to the sport­ing events, espe­cial­ly bas­ket­ball Um a good way to also meet peo­ple is by attend­ing um first night It’s a good way to meet people.

A lot of peo­ple are amped up. It’s a way to, you know, wel­come the play­ers to the new sea­son. And, you know, bas­ket­ball is very big here. So,

Jack­son:

you know, yeah, we def­i­nite­ly bleed blue in the bas­ket­ball depart­ment. And then you look at the foot­ball team too. They’re start­ing to get good as well. But, um, yeah, that.

We can just go straight into our next top­ic. Um, this one involves school a lit­tle bit. Um, how do you guys tend to stay on task and on tar­get? Cause me per­son­al­ly, I came from Avery Pointe, I com­mut­ed from home when I was at Avery Pointe. I came up here, lived by myself for the first time, and I’m like, oh my gosh, it kind of all hit at once.

Uh, I’ve got­ta like wor­ry about cook­ing, you know, fend­ing for myself, along with oth­er things. Keep­ing myself moti­vat­ed to do school because I’m sure both of you guys when you’re in high school some­thing like that You had that guardian who­ev­er was just down the back of your neck being like did you get that home­work assign­ment done?

Did you do this? Did you do that? Did you talk to them? Did you apply to col­lege but now you’re just you’re out in the real world and you’ve got to learn how to do it all your­self, so Solo

Wyn­ter:

dolo. Yeah Well, I learned the impor­tance of time man­age­ment That was one way that You know, in the begin­ning, I real­ly strug­gled with that, but as over, like, as time went on, I real­ly real­ized how impor­tant it was.

And for any­body who doesn’t know what time man­age­ment is, it’s just like pri­or­i­tiz­ing the things that you need to get done ver­sus the things that you like want to go out and do. Um, what? How impor­tant is time man­age­ment to you guys?

Jack­son:

Um, me per­son­al­ly, uh, I was nev­er, I was, you look at my, I’m the type of dude where you look at my lock­er in mid­dle school and high school and it’s just everything’s falling out when I open it up.

So, I def­i­nite­ly had to get orga­nized, uh, when I came up to uh, Stores just cuz it’s like I wouldn’t have any idea like I tried doing the first semes­ter with­out any sched­ule or any­thing like that I end­ed up miss­ing like a cou­ple of home­work assign­ments. I was like, oh, I’ve got to like get on top of it Or else I’m just gonna keep falling behind.

So the one tip that I’d give to Under­class­men any­body who’s just com­ing in fresh Fresh mind­ed, uh, def­i­nite­ly make a sched­ule, have a set plan that you fol­low. And in that set plan, you want to make sure that you make times to where you can relax. You don’t want it to all be work. You want a lit­tle bit of time and a lit­tle bit area for you to have, you know, me time and be able to decom­press a lit­tle bit.

I don’t know. I don’t know about you, Rob­bie, but.

Rob­bie:

Yeah. So like in high school, I would just be doing my home­work while the teacher’s going around col­lect­ing it. So my time man­age­ment was real­ly bad, but now. It was like kind of hard to adjust in col­lege because no one’s gonna like, you can’t real­ly BS your way through it.

Um, basi­cal­ly, but when I moved off cam­pus, I had to get a job as well. So I work at the facil­i­ties, uh, UConn Cen­tral Ware­house. Uh, I do that about 24 hours a week. So that’s anoth­er thing on top of class­es. So I real­ly have the past like two years real­ly had to focus on time man­age­ment. So Basi­cal­ly, I would just rec­om­mend get­ting any­where except like your room or your house or apart­ment, wher­ev­er you live, and just get on cam­pus, get in like a study room, library, Wilbur Cross, any­where, and just ded­i­cate, like, it, work doesn’t take as long as you like make it seem in your head, once you’re sit­ting there and doing it, so if you just find a place and just, you just got­ta lock in for a lit­tle, every day, every week, and also what I do, I like Like, if I have plans on the week­end, I’ll just be like, I can’t do these plans unless I get my work done.

For sure. So that moti­vates me to get my work done. For sure.

Javk­son:

I love the fact that you brought up the, uh, library, because I can­not stress, at least with my per­son­al learn­ing style and study­ing style, I can­not stress the impor­tance of sur­round­ing your­self in an area to where you can just sit down and lock in.

Uh, I used to be a kid that would do my home­work on my bed, and look­ing back at it, it’d be like, okay, five min­utes of work, Five min­utes of phone five min­utes of work five min­utes of phone when­ev­er I real­ly real­ly need to lock in I don’t even need a study room Just hav­ing that atmos­phere of the library and just turn­ing off your phone or putting it on the oth­er side of the table And being like, okay I work for 30 to 45 min­utes and then I get a five minute break on the phone then anoth­er like 45 min­utes Five minute break so def­i­nite­ly kind of a fig­ure out an area where you can shut every­thing out Lock in and it’ll def­i­nite­ly help you out in the long run win­ter any­thing else.

Wyn­ter:

Um, yeah, so Kind of touch­ing base on like you say­ing you’re study­ing style. I would def­i­nite­ly say it’s very impor­tant that you should know your study style. Um, and when I, what I mean by that is basi­cal­ly like what works best for you when study­ing, do you study well with, you know, music in your ears or watch­ing a show in the back­ground or being alone or you can be in a study group.

So I would def­i­nite­ly say know your study­ing styles. Um, and then. I know ear­li­er Rob­bie said some­thing about hav­ing a plan­ner or plan, um, being just a lit­tle bit more focused. Um, but let’s talk about a plan­ner because a plan­ner actu­al­ly works. I used to think that plan­ners were so trash, like they’re not good.

They nev­er helped me. But I have a plan­ner this semes­ter. And it’s my first time, and it’s been help­ing me stay on top of every sin­gle, um, uh, assign­ment that I have. So, I would def­i­nite­ly say use a planner.

Jack­son:

And yeah, just to add on that, uh, me per­son­al­ly, uh, when­ev­er I cre­ate, like, plan­ners or sched­ules for myself, I try to, uh, avoid cre­at­ing it on my laptop.

Some peo­ple love hav­ing it, like, in their phone, on their cal­en­dar, on their lap­top, or what­ev­er. But, for me, if I just have, like, I don’t know if you guys got giv­en like agen­da books in mid­dle school where you had to write down all of your home­work I didn’t think it was much at time. I bare­ly used it I used it more for doo­dling than I did actu­al­ly like plan­ning my sched­ule, but now like I use an agen­da book now or like I guess if you want to call it a plan­ner and Just hav­ing that book that you can look in instead of hav­ing like oh like open it up and have oth­er tabs open too Just that one sin­gle book ded­i­cat­ed to your sched­ule def­i­nite­ly helps a lot more than like for me per­son­al­ly then You know just throw­ing it on your com­put­er and on like a dock or some­thing like that But um yeah, um you talked a lit­tle bit about um like men­tal health in the way Rob­bie I just want to ask you guys um when you guys are stress­ing Let’s be hon­est, this cam­pus is kind of in the mid­dle of nowhere.

Um, there’s real­ly not much to do out­side of the stores area. And let alone if you’re not 21, there’s not much to do on the week­ends. So, um, what are some things? Cause me per­son­al­ly, I’m from Mis­sis­sip­pi, Con­necti­cut, right on the water. When­ev­er I’d get over­whelmed or stressed, I just. Go to the beach and I just kind of decom­press relax for a lit­tle bit and then get back to the main task.

Um, what do you guys kind of do to, um, kind of like relieve stress? What are those things that you guys use to, um, Kind of get away from school because at the end of the day, you’re here for one thing only and it’s school. Some peo­ple may be here for oth­er pur­pos­es, but ulti­mate­ly most kids when they go to col­lege, they’re here for school.

Um, I just want to hear your guys thoughts on what you guys kind of do. For me per­son­al­ly, uh, I go to the stu­dent rec cen­ter and I love to play bas­ket­ball. So that’s one thing I do. I also love work­ing out. That’s a way I relieve stress. So just work­ing out bas­ket­ball. Um,

Wyn­ter:

so for me per­son­al­ly, I like to talk to my advisor.

Um, she’s a great per­son that I know that I can con­fide in for like any­thing that I’m strug­gling with or need help with. She’s always there as a lis­ten­ing ear. So I love to talk to her. Some­times I’ll con­fide in my friends because it like they helped me real­ize that I’m not the only one, which makes me feel okay.

I’m not the only one. So my stress lev­el doesn’t go extreme­ly up. Awe­some. I’m just a girl, so I cry. Some­times I cry. I just need to cry first and then, you know, I’ll fig­ure it out after. But, um, those are like the main things that I like to do. I guess com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I just like to speak on how I feel.

Rob­bie:

Yeah, so, for me, I prob­a­bly would agree with you.

Espe­cial­ly when I lived on cam­pus, it would be the rec cen­ter. Because there’s real­ly not much, not much to do when you live on cam­pus. Um, at least when you’re off cam­pus, you can go oth­er places and stuff. But Yeah, you can play bas­ket­ball Lift run any­thing. It’s just like get it off your mind for a lit­tle And then now it’s the same thing.

I’ll go to the rec. I’ll go to a gym off cam­pus. Um, Just hang­ing out with your friends. Hon­est­ly, once you have that close friend group That just kind of gets your mind off school for a lit­tle too

Jack­son:

And then yeah, we could just go straight into the final. Um, Kind of top­ic because you killed that rob­bie winter.

You guys are great. But um, I just want to know um, You Like I said ear­li­er, you real­ly have to keep track of your­selves. The one area where I see the down­fall of a lot of kids in col­lege is in the school and like notes aspect, espe­cial­ly when it comes to lec­ture halls with like a hun­dred peo­ple, it makes it so easy for kids to be like, Oh, they post the slides on site online.

I could just skip this class. And then one class ends up being two class­es, two class­es ends up being like a week straight. And then next thing you know it, you’re fail­ing two to three class­es. I’m either flunk­ing out of col­lege, or I’m, I’ve got to get cred­its to come back to this col­lege, so, um, What are you guys, uh, kind of thoughts on that?

I, I would per­son­al­ly like to hear what you guys thought on it, but

Wyn­ter:

I total­ly agree. Um, just speak­ing off of expe­ri­ence, because one year I def­i­nite­ly missed class once and it just turned into me miss­ing class all the time. And then, you know, at the end of the semes­ter, now I’m like scram­bling to fig­ure out how to make up the work and how to catch up on the things that I’ve lost in class.

Um, I def­i­nite­ly say attend class. I know you guys feel like you don’t have to, but I def­i­nite­ly say attend class. Once you miss. You’re not gonna go again. It’s gonna be real­ly hard for you to get back into that rou­tine of going So I do agree with that point

Rob­bie:

Yeah, I would def­i­nite­ly say go to class.

Um, Like if you miss a class Because of some­thing you should def­i­nite­ly email your pro­fes­sor too on top of that if it’s like a small­er class Just so they know that you’re not just skip­ping and you could just know what you missed But yeah, you have to go to class pret­ty much as much as you pos­si­bly can

and then um, just to touch on the notes Um Me per­son­al­ly, if your pro­fes­sor posts the notes or the slides the night before you guys have class, the night before you have class, take the notes.

Wyn­ter:

Take the notes then ver­sus wait­ing to go to class. Because if you could take the notes before, that’s way bet­ter because then when you’re in class, you don’t have to try to scram­ble to hur­ry up and get all the notes on the slide. But then also you can take note of what they’re say­ing, which is the main thing.

Key point real­ly when it comes down to it’s not what’s on the board It’s real­ly what they’re say­ing and how they’re elab­o­rat­ing on those points

Jack­son:

I’m, so hap­py you brought that up because my first time in col­lege. It was even at my old school I went in there got ready to take notes pro­fes­sors flip­ping through the slide every like two min­utes and i’m like Scram­bling to get the notes.

So def­i­nite­ly either Take some of the notes before­hand or take all the notes before­hand if they’re post­ed on On um husky ct the night before it goes a long way, espe­cial­ly in just like pay­ing atten­tion in class That means you can just jot down what the professor’s say­ing instead of just read­ing off the board But um, that is all we are gonna have time for today folks Um, I would love to thank you guys for tun­ing in to real talk.

Yeah, uh, did you guys have any oth­er final words?

Rob­bie:

No, just good luck.

Jack­son:

Yeah facts good luck because col­lege is def­i­nite­ly a big­ger test in life. I will say that