By Graham "GSM" Matthews

This weekly blog will document my firsthand experiences as a student at Endicott College. Additionally, I will attempt to offer advice to fellow college students or those looking to attend college down the line.

I have mentioned in past posts that I have opted not to go home since initially leaving for college on September 1. It wasn't that I didn't miss my friends and family, my reasoning was that going home would mean more had I waited longer to go home. Some may find that to be a bit crazy, but that was my mindset. Sure enough, upon arriving home this Friday night, my theory proved to be effective.

In the weeks leading up to my departure for college, I maintained a mindset that helped me put everything into perspective. I knew I was going to miss a lot of things about being home, but at the time, I also really wanted to leave home and begin the next chapter in my life. In missing my friends and family, I remembered that it wasn't goodbye forever, but simply goodbye for now. I was going to see them all again, and as the famous line saying goes, absence makes the heart grow fonder. In a nutshell, I was excited about coming home from college before I had even left!

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

This weekly blog will document my firsthand experiences as a student at Endicott College. Additionally, I will attempt to offer advice to fellow college students or those looking to attend college down the line.

On the long list of things that people tend to take for granted nowadays, sleep most definitely has to be in the top five. College student or not, people simply don't understand the importance and power of sleep and how beneficial it can be for one's health. Granted, the amount of sleep you should get differs depending on how old you are, but a lot of people think they are fine without getting enough sleep. Of course, that couldn't be any further from the truth.

As a high school student, I hardly got any sleep. I was usually up late finishing homework, watching wrestling or writing an article, so I was pretty exhausted during the day that followed. Part of that can be attributed to the fact that it took 30 minutes to school every day (and another 30 minutes back), so sitting in the car at 6:45 in the morning for a half hour caused me to get sleepy rather quickly. It was hard to concentrate during classes, and while it didn't directly affect my academics, I was rarely ever energized (and I didn't drink any of those crappy energy drinks, either). Surprisingly enough, though, all of that has changed since coming to college. Well, for the most part, at least.

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

This weekly blog will document my firsthand experiences as a student at Endicott College. Additionally, I will attempt to offer advice to fellow college students or those looking to attend college down the line.

As fun as your senior year of high school may be, it can also be incredibly stressful. Aside from taking the SATs, applying for college is one of the most difficult and time consuming processes one will ever have to go through. The time you start looking at college varies for everyone, but it normally peaks around this time of the year when college applications are due. Dating back to my sophomore year of high school, I had people asking me what colleges I was looking at. I replied back with a dumbfounded answer most of the time because at that point I hadn't looked at any colleges at all. Hell, I didn't even know what I wanted to major in. (By the way, some of what is said in this blog was written in a post at the end of August, so check out that post for more information.)

When I finally decided that my passion was for journalism and that is what I wanted to major in, I started searching for colleges that sparked my interest in the summer before senior year. I went to the open houses of three colleges that October and November and went to an additional one the following April. The second university I visited was Endicott College on November 10, 2012 (one year ago from the day I write this). After taking a tour of the campus, I knew immediately that was exactly where I wanted to be the next year.

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

This weekly blog will document my firsthand experiences as a student at Endicott College. Additionally, I will attempt to offer advice to fellow college students or those looking to attend college down the line.

As stated in many of my previous posts, you will have an abundant amount of time on your hands while in college. The key is to use that time wisely and to your advantage. Of course, you won't be doing school work all the time, and once you are finished with it, you'll be looking for something to do. If it is in the middle of the week, going out with friends might not be possible, especially if their schedule differs from yours. Another option is to take up an extracurricular activity, which there is plenty of at most universities.

There might have been an intramural at the school that you are currently attending that convinced you to choose that college to begin with. Sports, obviously, is a huge factor in every college, but if you played in high school and aren't looking to play in college, then maybe it isn't for you, especially if you don't want to dedicate most of your time to it (I know of a few kids on the football team who arrived at college two weeks prior before everyone else did). You want something to take up your time, but not something that will take up all your time. That is fine and completely understandable. It is either that or you don't play sports to begin with (or they just don't interest you), like me.