How to survive your first welcome week at Michigan

What’s your major?

Welcome week is the greatest. New friends, catching up with old ones, partying, game days, and no responsibilities just yet. To make the most of it and in order to flawlessly glide through your welcome week, remember these things:

Avoid awkward intros

What’s your major? What year are you? Where are you from? What classes are you taking? Welcome week makes everyone approachable, because no one knows who you are, so you might as well ask or introduce yourself. Those questions have no actual purpose other than to hold a conversation with you. No one actually cares about what you’re doing, they’re just trying to make friends asap.

Wear clothes that are versatile for day and  night, just in case you have a substantial amount of fun, and don’t make it back to your place at the end of the night and have to walk home in the morning. If you wear clothes that work for both, you can play your off your walk of shame as a walk to brunch.

Coffee is your friend now

Start drinking it now, because you’ll grow to love it and need it. 2am paper writing? Early game day? Case of the Mondays? Coffee.

Forget the people back home

Nothing is more annoying than seeing someone on their phone at a party, texting their friends from home to see what’s up. Just don’t. Stop worrying about what everyone else is doing, and have fun!

Try all of the food in town

You are now a resident in Ann Arbor, so start learning to love the food on campus. Find your new favorite places, like which pizza place you’ll order from on a Tuesday night studying for your exam, or maybe which smoothie place you’ll take your mom to when she visits.

Download Uber

In case you get lost, or just get a little too trashed, do yourself a favor and download Uber before you go out. Not to mention, the first ride is free!

Get familiar with campus

Get outside and walk around campus and the surrounding neighborhoods, and just explore. The best way to learn how to get around, is to get lost first.

Rise and shine for class and game day

Don’t be late on your first week. Get up and get going to class, and attack that lecture with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind (or maybe just pay attention at least). The same goes for game day. If it’s a 12pm game, get your ass out of bed and get your darty on, the earlier the better… and the more fun.

Grab all of the free things

“Free” is a college student’s favorite word. Snag all of those free tshirts, stickers, water bottles, coupons and more, for no better reason than that they cost you $0. Cut those shirts into cute tanks, use the stickers as tape. I don’t know, do whatever you want with it, it’s free.

Don’t dish out your dining dollars too soon

If you’re like me, and have the basic meal plan that allots you $25 of spending money for Victors, late night Panda, and coffee from the League, you’ll think you’re all set. But wait, don’t spend all of your dollars at once because you were “really hungry” and ordered enough food to feed a small family. Pace yourself; you have an entire semester to spend it.

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