I just finished my first week of classes at the University of Iowa, and I feel like I’ve already learned a ton about what to expect over the next four years. A lot of the qualities of college life are easy to assume and prepare for, but there’s also a few things that you definitely don’t expect when you’re getting ready to move in.

I’ll get the obvious things out of the way. Classes move much, much faster than in high school, so you need to come to school prepared to stay on top of your work. I can already tell that if I slack for even one week, I’ll be spending the rest of the semester trying to catch up. But, you also have a lot more time on your hands than you did in high school. I find it easy to just walk a short distance to the Honors Center and get a few hours of work done in between classes. It’s so much nicer not having to sit in class for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week.

Something I didn’t expect to be such a nuisance is the dining. One thing that’s nice about high school is that lunch is built into your schedule, so you and everyone else goes at (roughly) the same time every day. College is a lot more freeform, so you might eat at different times every day. It’s a hassle to walk down to the dining hall, and it’s even more difficult to find someone to eat with. I’m excited for the Market2Go program to launch at Iowa soon because that will make eating a lot easier, and less time-consuming.

Also: waking up to use the restroom is ANNOYING. You have to throw on shoes, grab your key, and walk all the way down the hallway. And, at Iowa, the restrooms don’t have paper towels and only have hand-dryers (which are really loud), so it wakes you up a bit more than you’d like if you’re trying to go right back to sleep.

Finally, the height of your bed has a much bigger impact than you’d expect. I live in Daum, and most people there chose to have their beds lofted so they could have more space in the room. That sounds great until you sit up and smack your head off the roof. Again and again and again. I set my bed to the Captain height, which is high enough to have some room under my bed, but not too high to be a bother. The thing is, if you plan on filling a lot of space in your room, you probably need at least one of the two beds to be lofted. It really isn’t too much of a problem, but it’s something that you should put some thought into before you choose how you want your bed to be oriented (and, if you don’t like it, you can always have it changed later in the year).

I know a lot of the things I just mentioned are unexpected annoyances, but there are even more unexpected joys that come with living at college. Making friends with everyone on your floor is something I didn’t really expect, but I hang out with people on the same floor as me every single day. Something else that has been really nice is the ability to just go to the library, or the Blank Honors Center, or the IMU, etc. to have a nice space to study and get work done. For me, one of the biggest challenges during virtual learning was having to do work at home. I felt so much less motivated knowing I could just walk 15 steps to my room and take a nap instead of doing work. At college, there are tons of places to go and study that make you so much more productive.

A final note: for a lot of people, the summer after high school graduation is filled with anxiety, dread, and a longing to go back to high school. Once you move in, those feelings go away so insanely fast. You realize how much better college is than high school and you can’t believe you ever felt hesitant about going to college. Once you get a taste of what campus life is like, you never want to go back.