Cartoon by Carolina Guillot/Contributing Cartoonist
Lauren Bana/Staff Writer
As my time in college draws to an end, I think about how nice it would have been if I were given a set of guidelines to follow at the start of my university career.
Of course, the kind of guidelines that I’m referring to are not at all like the ones we’ve all received at orientation. Instead, these guidelines would teach every college freshman how to blossom from their originally immature status as high school students to mature and dedicated university students.
Cartoon by Carolina Guillot/Contributing Cartoonist
If I were to write these instructions myself, I’d focus on the individual changes that college freshmen repeatedly undergo, usually beginning with a complete modification of a personal image.
I really believe that when you start college, it’s always good to start fresh, unlocking new opportunities for your future in friendship and in your career.
I can personally say that I’ve changed my personal style several times and have undergone several different mindsets before I fully understood how I wanted to look and think.
Of course, this being the age of technology, changing your image also means making yourself look more presentable to the public eye via the Internet. One of the main things you should do is demonstrate a more mature version of yourself through the redecoration of your online presence on social networking sites, such as Facebook and Instagram.
Nowadays, anyone can find anyone on the Net, and if you’re looking for a job during your time in college, it’s always best to have cleaned up your “high school” image beforehand. You want employers to see that you are a mature and hard-working person, and not the young and naïve child that we all were in high school.
For example, try to prevent posting pictures of yourself at a party with a drunken face and a mysterious red cup; don’t post those late night statuses of anger towards your ex either.
These slight alterations can make all the difference when someone is trying to get to know you through the Net.
Junior Melissa Del Toro said cleaning up one’s online presence was in fact one of the points mentioned in her Human Resources Management course.
“We were discussing the recruitment methods of employers for new employees; one of the points we discussed was how employers are checking the Facebook pages of potential candidates, and how college recruiters have begun to adopt this method for the selection process of incoming freshmen,” said Del Toro.
Del Toro also mentioned that with this idea of evolving into a mature individual in mind, students should do their part in taking classes unrelated to their major or outside of their comfort zone.
“This is the time to explore new things and broaden their perspective,” said Del Toro.
If I were to truly write my own incoming freshman guidelines, I would make sure to remind our young freshmen that you’re not changing who you are as a person in this process but are instead growing with the experiences that you have throughout your time in college. And in this short amount of time in college, you should make the best of it!
lauren.bana@fiusm.com
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