How to Survive Your Freshman Year of College

The summer's coming to an end, which means it's time to dust off the beer bong and prepare for a grueling semester at your student loan creditor of choice. If you're entering your first year of higher education, then you also need to prepare for an extreme lifestyle change. Your mom's not there to wake you up for school. Your dad's not there to throw you a $20 bill, and your delinquent older brother Curtis isn't there to roll your dutches, either. In other words, you're on your own. But to help you prepare for your inevitable trysts, downfalls, and molly overdoses, we present our complete guide to surviving your freshman year of college.

Written by Sean Evans (@seanseaevans)

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Do: You
Don't: Let any of those bruhs violate your anus during a hazing ritual

There's something messed up about taking orders from a college senior who is two or three internships away from landing their first full-time job. Fraternities are bizarre because, as a pledge, some clown who wears Hollister & Co. flip-flops exclusively will make you clean his toilet with a toothbrush. Like, he's the alpha, only he doesn't even pay his own cell phone bill. If you can endure initiation week without blind-siding an upperclassman with a tube sock full of batteries, then congratulations. Your parents did a good job curbing violent rage during your pillow soft upbringing.

That said, Greek life does have its advantages. If you want to get a bartending gig, have easy access to tanning oil, or borrow a dude's ankle bracelet when yours breaks at the Zac Brown Band concert, it's good to have "brothers."

Do: Attend
Don't: Hire a day laborer to take your calculus midterm while you fire a pumpkin launcher at Pi Kappa Phi house

Relative to the rest of your life, college isn't all that hard. Chiefly, because you're physiologically better able to manage hangovers. After your 27th birthday, three glasses of white wine on a Friday night will have you chugging Gatorade and hurling up after-hours nachos all weekend. Have you seen Vince Vaughn lately!? There's absolutely nothing glamorous about getting old.

You, on the other hand, are spry and able to wear sweatpants pretty much 24/7, so spare us your sob stories. Your poor parents didn't pull out a second mortgage on their home so you can chug flavored vodka out of a fish bowl and spend the next day watching an entire season of Breaking Bad in one sitting. Class is only, like, 15 hours a week and the rest of the time is yours to play X-Box and funnel Four Loko tallboys down your butthole. That seems like a pretty fair work-life balance to us.

Do: Buy used text books
Don't: Double down on State winning the NCAA Tournament

That worthless bachelor's degree is going to cost 100 grand and, while it might seem like a lifetime away, the real world can be an absolute bitch when you're crippled with loan debt and have a lower credit score than Allen Iverson. Now is not the time to buy retro Jordans on layaway or treat yourself to the guacamole upgrade at Chipotle. After graduation, you'll spend 18 months cycling through internships and shitty entry level jobs and by then, gas will cost more per gallon than Moet & Chandon Imperial (that's expensive ass French champagne for you clueless kids that didn't get the reference). Spend responsibly.

Do: Drink responsibly and always designate a sober driver
Don't: Chase your tequila shots with a rail of ketamine and a canister of nitrous oxide (trust us)

We're not your overprotective, Sunday school teacher mom. We know you're going to drink in college and this slide is not about declaring last call on your good time. We just don't want you to end up like a North Face Denali adorned Tara Reid. Unless you're Kid Rock, there's nothing endearing about vomiting in the laundry basket and taking a leak on your roomie's Mac Book. That's rock star shit and you're two summers removed from vaunting a learner's permit, guy. Check yourself, before you wreck yourself. And by "wreck yourself" we mean expose yourself to a police officer while carrying a stolen flat-screen.

Do: Eat your vegetables
Don't: Pair cheese fries with Cornoa Extra at 2 a.m. like some sort of blacked out, morbidly obese sommelier

You'll be on a steady diet of stuffed pizza and 40 oz. King Cobra. Unless you're doing four hours of cardio a week, you'll come home for Thanksgiving break looking like Rob Kardashian with a glandular problem. You have a lot of free time and that money-grubbing university of yours is probably charging $950 a semester to use their athletic facilities; take advantage.

Do: Give careful consideration to your post-graduation goals
Don't: Pick something fruitlessly pretentious like philosophy, mostly because an eloquent troll in the New York Times' comment section is not a job

Don't rush it. You have a year or two to figure this out, so own your gen-eds and see if anything speaks to you. If not, go with communications because that shit is easier than Christina Aguilera on GHB.

Do: [redacted by Complex Media's legal team]
Don't: Fuck with bath salts; you're not about that life

You will have access to a wide variety of recreational drugs, especially if you go to one of those goofball schools like Colorado or UC-Santa Cruz where they offer graduate programs in ghost hitting blunts. All we're going to say is be careful. Your life experience is tantamount to a part-time job at a mini golf course and backup right fielder on the sophomore baseball team. You're not Jim Morrison—you just have his poster on your wall. The only thing you have in common with Bob Marley is smelling like a compost pile of burnt hair and castor oil. Pace yourself, Charlie Teen.

Do: Block your mom
Don't: Create a Facebook album titled "YOLO" made up entirely of naked keg stand selfies

You can drink with impunity. We get it. You're in college and totally entitled to have a good time, but don't overcompensate by OD-ing on beer bong uploads. When pictures of you shot-gunning Keystone Light outnumber pictures of you not, it's time to cap the fuckery. Don't force your debilitating alcoholism on your network, mostly because it's corny but also because an incriminating photo of you guzzling Franzia from a shoe will cost you the 2032 Presidental Election.

Do: Be respectful
Don't: Frequent Brazzers.com on your roommate's laptop while he's at a PSY 101 lecture

Dorm rooms are about as comfortable as a Real Housewives of New Jersey reunion, so plan on making some compromises to your lifestyle. Use headphones whenever possible, tread lightly in the morning, and, above all else, get out of the crib once in awhile. It's easy to rail against loud music or piping one's girlfriend on the top bunk, but the absolute worst thing you can do is become the room's pimple-faced house plant. Get out there, friend. There's a drum circle in the quad with a space just for you.

Do: Use protection
Don't: Cry and call your senior prom date afterwards

In the real world, you're just another 18-year-old bonehead who has to fill up their moped with $7 worth of gas at a time. But on campus, you're an asthmatic Ryan Gosling and surrounded by nothing but liberated women and pervasive daddy issues. If you act like a gentleman and keep the drunk texting to a minimum, you'll get more action than Maroon 5's tour bus. If you do any of that cheesy, college douchebag shit, like carve notches in your bedpost, you'll exaggerate the number of women you've been with for infinity. Your move.