{"id":82,"date":"2026-01-05T18:31:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T18:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/madeline\/?p=82"},"modified":"2026-01-05T18:31:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T18:31:15","slug":"things-i-wish-i-knew-before-my-first-semester-at-iowa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/madeline\/2026\/01\/05\/things-i-wish-i-knew-before-my-first-semester-at-iowa\/","title":{"rendered":"Things I wish I knew before my First Semester at Iowa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Happy New Year! The Midwest winter is officially setting in, and a new semester is starting.<\/p>\n

A few things for future students that I learned in my first semester:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. If you are in a major that has Fundamentals of Human Physiology, wait until your sophomore to junior year to take it; that class is really hard.<\/li>\n
  2. If you have 7 am-9:30 am classes, don’t get a job at the downtown Iowa City bars until your second semester or sophomore year, you won’t get down with work until close to 3 in the morning most mornings.<\/li>\n
  3. Stay as healthy as you can because getting sick sucks, especially during mid-term season.<\/li>\n
  4. Do as many activities on campus as you can because you can meet new people, and most of the time, those things are free.<\/li>\n
  5. Join a club that deals with your major if you can, because they help you network, and some clubs help with both networking and the community.<\/li>\n
  6. Take your weekends as your rest days if you’re not working, because burnout and the overwhelm of college in the first year is a lot.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Hope this helps!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Happy New Year! The Midwest winter is officially setting in, and a new semester is starting. A few things for future students that I learned in my first semester: If you are in a major that has Fundamentals of Human Physiology, wait until your sophomore to junior year to take it; that class is really hard. If you have 7 am-9:30 am classes, don’t get a job at the downtown Iowa City bars until your second semester or …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":168,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/madeline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/madeline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/madeline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/madeline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/168"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/madeline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/madeline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/madeline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions\/86"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/madeline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/madeline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.admissions.uiowa.edu\/madeline\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}