Mullet (n.): business in the front, party in the back.
Based on the song, “I Love College,” many incoming freshmen might have thought that college was all about the party rather than about the business. As the first semester draws to a close, freshmen should definitely have overcome the surprise and have more of a realistic idea about what it means to have a work/fun balance.
Erica Johnson, freshman at Harvard University, explains that the “amount of unstructured time wasn’t something I expected going into college…There’s a lot more time where I’m not in class or practice and have to make a conscious decision about what to do with it.” She also reflects on dorm life being extremely different from her previous experience boarding in high school. “[G]oing from having a single in a single-sex dorm with a curfew and a teacher living down the hall to living in a quad in a co-ed dorm with people from all around the world is a big change but also a very positive one.” Hopefully she’s used to avoiding procrastination and being caught in a towel by her entire floor by now.
Jackson Blum, freshman at Miami University, says, “college is nothing at all what I thought it would be like. Classes are harder, and life isn’t all party like TV shows depict it to be.” She never realized that she would have to study this much and says, “I also expected people to be holding my hand and guiding me through the process of signing up for classes or even just getting adjusted to school. But instead they just threw you in with not much guidance…The fact that I now had to grow up and figure out everything for myself was a bit nerve racking, but in the end it wasn’t as hard as it seemed.” After this learning curve, Blum should be well on her way to making it into the business school, knowing that studying does not just take five minutes and the world is not just handed to you (despite what Gossip Girl may have to say).
Drew Lee-Young, freshman at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, says “[t]he reality? Moving from high school to college was unreal.” He says that “college studying is entirely different from high school, where you could goof around, not study, and still get an A in the class…I had to learn how to study, and I’m still learning how to be more efficient with my time.” Lee-Young was surprised though because as he says, “I didn’t expect myself to be so dedicated when I got to college.” Now, he’s in the big leagues; in the big leagues, you have to believe in yourself if you’re going to convince anybody else, too.
Although we hope that freshies everywhere are on top of their college game by now, we mostly want to send out a public service announcement: leave the mullet to past decades.
