A Bachelorette’s Guide to Being a Successful Undergraduate

College is a frontier of possibilities, filled with an unending list of new challenges. It can be overwhelming at times but, with just a bit of prep, you can make it way easier on yourself. Take it from an alumni who both triumphed and goofed it up a million times.

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Part 1: Miscalculations

In a handful of ways, I royally bungled up my own college experience. Those years can be tough for anyone and everyone, but my greatest takeaway is that I made it so much more difficult than it ever needed to be. I made the mistakes and learned from them. I urge you learn these lessons the easy way, from someone else’s mistakes:

1. Leaving the Financial Junk to My Parents

Financial aid applications are a mess. I remember glancing just once at the forms in my senior year and feeling stress wash over me. I felt too uninformed to even begin to understand what I was filling out. I begged and pleaded with my parents to get them to complete it for me. They told me that I’d need to figure it out on my own but, after days of pleading they gave in and took…