The Guy Line: The Top Three Freshman Girl Mistakes

The First Week Blackout
This is most certainly the most common freshmen mistake and it applies to both guys and girls.  As this article is directed primarily to freshman girls, I’ll tailor it toward them. 
 
One thing you don’t want to be is the sloppy girl at a party who can barely stay on her own two feet and ends up
passing out in a pile of beer cans and solo cups.  A piece of advice I would offer is to take it slow for the first few weeks until you get your bearings a bit.  Look, its college, you are going to have your fair share of unwieldy nights and confused morning wake ups.  Most of the time these incidents will be forgiven and forgotten as the public college memory is usually as short and hazy as yours. 
 
However, it is the girls who pull the first week blackout and fall down the stairs at a frat party that are remembered as the drunkest girl at the party (DGAP) and develop a reputation.  You don’t want to be talking to some guy who you believe your meeting for the first time and have him say something along the lines of “Oh yeah, you’re that girl who I found puking into our laundry machine a few weeks ago b
efore you stumbled onto the porch and yelled at a cabbie for refusing to take you somewhere for free.” No one wants that.
 
On a more practical note, getting sloppy drunk is obviously slightly more dangerous for girls than it is for guys, and even more so during the first week when you may not have found friends loyal enough to take care of you yet.  By the time second semester comes along you will hopefully have a group of friends dedicated enough to hold your hair back while you puke into the laundry machine and defuse your screaming match with the cab driver by reminding you that your dorm is only about a 30 second walk away from frat row. 
 
But for now, take it slow, have a few casual drinks, meet some new people and avoid making the type of decisions that could shape your reputation on campus for the worse.
 
The First Week Slutfest
Another relatively common blunder of the female freshman and another reputation killer that should be avoided.  On a quick side note you may notice that I place a certain degree of emphasis on “reputation” and there may be a certain demographic of particularly pretentious women who are thinking “I don’t care what people think of me, all that matters is what I think of myself.”  To these women I would like to say two things. 
 
One, your full of $h*t, because every girl and every guy cares in some way shape or form how they are perceived by others, despite the facts that m
any would like to claim that other people’s opinions have no affect on them.  The degree to which people care about their reputation may vary, but everyone shares at least a modicum of concern, especially among college age kids. 
 
The second thing I’d like to say to these pompous bull$h**ters is that having a high self esteem, while important, is no excuse to go around slutting it up because you feel like it and what other people think of you “doesn’t affect you.” 
 
Anyway, back to the matter at hand.  Your first week in college you’re going to meet a lot of new guys, and a lot
of them are going to show a lot of interest in you.  Now if you continue to read my articles you will find that I am completely for sexual freedom and experimentation.  I happen to think that both are not only extremely healthy but extremely important aspects of the college experience.  That being said, your first week of freshman year is no time to go Girls Gone Wild with sexual liberation.  First impressions are important and along the same lines of not getting a rep for being the DGAP, you likewise do not want word getting around about how you banged two roommates in the same night. 
 
Now we all come into college with different levels of sexual experience and that’s a good thing.  You hate to see
the nice Catholic girl from Montana become a raging whore in the matter of a week because a couple guys know how to flash her a smile and compliment her eyes.  My advice in terms of sexuality is the same as it is for drinking: take it slow at first. 
 
You may very well find a nice guy and hit it off and feel comfortable with him and in that case by all means, go for it.  You may even take a semester and open up sexually and become more comfortable with yourself.  That too is OK.  But don’t go around sleeping with every guy that buys you a drink at Maggie’s or takes you into his room for a few shots at a party.  You will undoubtedly regret it. 
 
And God, Oh God, whatever you do, do not sleep with two brothers in the same fraternity.  If you think they are not throwing that fun fact out there at their next chapter for a few laughs, you are sadly mistaken. 
 
The First Semester Grade Slip
Now we’re getting out of the social realm and into the academic aspect of college.  Yes, there is actually work in college, I know, it’s bull$**t but it’s a fact of life.  The sooner you come to terms with this fact the sooner you can start to get on top of your $h*t and give yourself more time for the gratuitous boozing and partying we have all come to know and love about college. 
 

I know a lot of intelligent people, both guys and girls who f***ed up their first semester classes because they got sucked in by the excitement of a new social scenario.  The pressure will always be there to go out instead of finishing your paper, or sleep in instead of getting up for your 9:30 class, but will power is huge in college.  Especially when your comfortable bed is compared to a blackboard of notes and $2 Tuesdays are compared to a pale computer screen.  But you gotta pick your battles. 
 
Sometime you may decide that you can put off studying for one more day and go out on a Tuesday but sometimes you just have to glue your @$$ to that chair and get your $**t done.  It really is as simple as that so
there isn’t much more to say.  There will inevitably be nights where you have to sacrifice a good time to get your work done, and while it sucks, you’ll thank yourself later when you’re not staring into a paltry 2.2 GPA for your first semester. 
 
Trust me, you will not graduate and say I wish I partied more and did less work, you’ll thank yourself for the nights you stayed in and aced a test, even while you’ll remember the nights you went out  and danced on the Maggie’s bar.
 
Balance is the key, both in terms of your studies and in terms of dancing on the bar at Maggie’s, ‘cause that b!**h gets slippery.
 
See ya next time,
 
RLEG