- UNC spelling lesson: it's Dook. And every year when Dook and UNC play basketball we get #DookFans trending on Twitter and it's amazing. I'll be twatching. Don't let me down.
- Dey Hall is pronounced die and you will understand why once you struggle through mandatory foreign language classes.
- Do not, under any circumstances, wear your lanyard from orientation around campus in August. It's like getting "first-year" tattooed on your forehead. Speaking of which, at UNC you're a first-year not a freshman.
- The bricks are much more treacherous than they appear. Beware the bricks. Respect the bricks.
- Nextbus is awful. But you will need it. Finally deleting that app ALMOST made up for the countless lies it's told me over the years. Almost.
- Class registration really never goes well for anyone. You'll live.
- Don't be that person who arrives early for a class and proceeds to sit at the end of a row so that all subsequent classmates have to squeeze past you. Never be that person.
- Pizza in Rams Head Dining Hall is infinitely better than the pizza in Lenoir. Trust me, that's important to know.
- Your first FDOC (first day of class) you will be afraid that there was an assignment due in class that somehow everyone knew about but you. And in my experience, that feeling never went away. I walked into plenty of classes worried that I was going to fail out of college by missing one assignment. And I actually did, on a few ocassions, completely forget an assignment. And I survived relatively unscathed.
- You're going to procrastinate. Go ahead and make your peace with that now.
- Fun fact, you actually don't have to be best friends with your first year roommate. If you guys don't mesh, you will make other friends and live with them next year.
- Take as many cliche UNC pics as possible. At the Old Well, the Bell Tower, Kenan Stadium, Wendy's. It's all iconic, I promise.
- The arboretum = Coker Arboretum, the quad = Polk Place, the union = FPG student union. That's important for your Instagram locations.
- Take advantage of FallFest! You don't know what you have until it gets rained out.
- Taking a study break to watch Netflix in the library isn't wrong and if anyone tells you otherwise then you don't need that kind of negativity in your life. As long as your study sessions are slightly longer than your study breaks, you're doing great in my book.
- This might be the most important piece of advice in this entire post so I'm hiding it in the middle. Never, under any circumstances, hit reply all to an email. An entire listserv will hate you. Forever.
- You might roll in to Chapel Hill a pre-med chemistry major and roll out a communications major. Or a geology major. Or even a pre-med chemistry major. Crazier things have happened.
- Trying to get a table at Lenoir for lunch or Rams for dinner is a feat that will require at least 3 people and excellent knowledge of squatter's rights. Be prepared.
- Check your school email before you go to class. You don't want to be that person who walks to class to find out it's been cancelled and if you live off campus you definitely don't want to bus to campus if class has been cancelled.
- That being said, it is very unlikely that class will be cancelled at the University of No Cancellations. Not for snow. Not for hail. Not for a hurricane. Not for losing to Dook. Is it college or the U.S. Postal Service?
- The Undergrad Library actually isn't the worst place in the world to spend a weeknight. Davis on the other hand...Davis is where dreams go to die.
- Please don't let failing a science class ruin your life.
- Getting involved is a great way to force people to be friends with you. Fact: I had very few friends until my involvement with the Carolina For The Kids Foundation forced tons of cool people to be my best friends or at the very least tolerate me for a year.
- Your parents are paying a lot of money for you to be able to attend what is in my unbiased opinion the best university in the world. GO TO CLASS.
- Phillips Hall and Carroll Hall are alternate universes where logic and reason mean nothing. If you're a math or journalism major you may very well find yourself asking for directions your senior year. If you want to get to the 4th floor of Phillips you need actual super powers.
- Advice from one of my favorite professors, "It's only a lot of reading if you do it.". Smart man. I'm only kind of kidding. Don't study long, study smart. And form study groups! If you can get 2 other people to need your help just as much as you need theirs, you can reserve a room in any of the libraries. Reserving rooms is so important because reserved rooms make it slightly more socially acceptable for you to be overly loud and obnoxious in the library.
- Get a selfie with Carol. Any chance you get. That woman is my fashion icon.
- You might get kvetched about. Or Yik Yak-ed (no idea how to make that a verb) about. And that's awesome. Some think being kvetched about is shameful but I was proud of my kvetch. As in I cut it out and framed it. And someday, if you're lucky, you can too!
- Sometimes you will go to the wrong classroom on FDOC. And you will live. True story I did this in my final semester on my last class of the day. Let that sink in. My last time ever entering a UNC classroom for the first time, and I went to the wrong one. Luckily I realized it before raising my hand and insisting that I was enrolled in the class. So before I made a complete fool of myself I left and to everyone else it just looked like I was trying to get into the class and there wasn't room. But I knew. And more importantly, I didn't care.
That's the trick. It's just life and it's just college. You'll live.
I'm a conservative NC State fan. If I can love UNC, anyone can. Just know that while you're all attending orientation, moving in, sipping from the Old Well on FDOC and making Carolina your own, UNC 2015 is watching. And we're crying. 49% happiness for you and 51% jealousy :D
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