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Humorous Teenage Pranks From The Trenches

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One thing is for sure – your teenager will always be up to something. That age group is always seeking out ways to push their boundaries so teenage pranks make for some great stories. I’ve got a couple of stories to share and I have omitted all the names to protect the guilty and the unwitting parents, so enjoy. You probably have some even better than these, so join the conversation and comment below!

Rolling yards is one of the classic teenage pranks. While it is frustrating to the parents, it’s also a badge of honor for the teen. At least in the South, if your yard gets rolled it’s probably because you’re popular among some crowd. But if you’re out rolling yards, don’t leave any evidence behind. A WalMart bag was found among the mess, and in that bag was a logon ID and password written on a piece of paper. Enough information was there to find out exactly who was part of the toilet paper gang – busted!

Let’s just say that teens have a curiosity for the opposite sex. I’ve heard a couple of stories lately about kids experimenting in various places – on the school bus, in their bedroom while Mom or Dad is home, and others. The funniest thing about the school bus story is that although the children were both suspended from school, they were both lauded as heroes among their friends. Hmm, not sure the kids learned their lessons from that one…

Think you’ve cut off internet access? Think again. In this story, a dad thought that he could impose an internet curfew by disabling the home router at a set time each night. This worked for one kid but not the other. You see, the neighbor’s Wi-Fi access point was unprotected so one kid simply connected to their network and kept right on surfing. But the signal wasn’t strong enough to reach the other child’s bedroom. Their big mouth, though, was the end to this little trick – once the other sibling found out about this, parents were quickly informed. Dad turned on the parental controls on each computer to cut off access at the desired time, and that problem was solved.

A whole category of teenage pranks involve being somewhere that you shouldn’t be. Parties will happen and teens want to be there. But if you put a cell phone in their hand, it’s getting to be very easy to find out where your kids are at all times. All of the major carriers now offer some form of GPS tracking to tell where all of the phones on the plan are at any time. So when a dad checked in with his daughter and she said she was at the home of one friend but the GPS locator said she was elsewhere, Dad showed up and put an early end to the night’s events for his teen. An embarrassing moment for the teen, to say the least.

Sometimes your child will live a double life – online, that is. It’s becoming more common for teens to have two Facebook profiles – one for family and one for friends. When that happens, this becomes the place where their teenage pranks are lived out online. Teens are starting to hear the message that their online reputation is important, and they don’t want their parents seeing the pictures from that party or messages from certain conversations. Those alternate profiles can be tough to find – in the case of this story, the only way it was noticed was that an unfamiliar email address popped up in the login prompt for Facebook.

My point in sharing these is more than just to provide humor. We should always be on the lookout for what your child might be up to. We can (and should) trust our children, but occasionally verifying that what they say is true will help keep them on the straight and narrow. It is their nature to test their limits and boundaries with these teenage pranks and it is up to the parents to keep those limits firmly in place.

Application Question: Are you on the lookout for these and other ways that your teen might be overstepping their boundaries?

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What Happened to Community Parenting?

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In my youth, parents were the eyes and ears for one another where their kids were concerned. Parents trusted one another to make sure that their kids stayed out of trouble. Sadly, that trend has changed and with that I believe our kids are getting into more trouble than ever before. This post explores the reasons for this phenomenon and how we can begin to swing the pendulum in the other direction.

I think the foremost reason for this change is the loss of community. We are all so busy and so consumed with the rigors of everyday life that we no longer know our neighbors, much less the parents of our kid’s classmates. Moms and Dads both work nowadays, and coupled with the migration to the suburbs the “bedroom community” is the new norm. People spend their evenings in their homes, rarely with enough time to get all of the daily chores complete before they collapse for the night.

The second trend that has caused this breakdown is the digital age. The ease through which we can chat, or send an email, tweet, or update a Facebook status has drawn us indoors. No longer do neighbors meet and talk face-to-face or over the phone. The backyard conversation between two moms is all but history. What has been sold as the way to make the world smaller has become the way the world has grown more isolated. Our neighbors are now strangers, and nobody trusts strangers.

The third reason that contributes to the loss of community parenting is litigation and lawsuits. A small percentage of our population is quick to point blame and pull the trigger at any hint that a lawsuit might lead to some financial reward. Even well-meaning individuals with good intentions are often targeted by these people. The old saying goes that no good deed goes unpunished. This has created an environment where people would rather not get involved than risk being sued, so they turn the other way instead of getting involved.

Finally, parents by and large believe that their kids can do no wrong. Or, at least they don’t want to admit their child’s wrongs to someone else. Any accusation by another parent is quickly met with defensiveness from the accused’s parent. So, parents turn a blind eye to what other kids are doing as long as their kids aren’t involved.

I don’t think it’s a lost cause even with today’s hectic schedules. Here is what I think we can do to restore the partnership with other parents and know what our children are up to:

  1. Go to school meetings. Get involved in as many school activities as you can as a parent.
  2. Talk to other parents who have kids involved in the same activities as your child.
  3. Pick up the telephone. Get the phone numbers of these parents that you connect with in steps 1 and 2 and don’t be afraid to establish and maintain an open line of communications with other parents.
  4. Trust but verify. If your child is going to someone’s house, call in advance to see if the parents will be home and if they are OK with it.
  5. Give permission. By now, if you’ve done steps 1-4, you have established trust and rapport with other parents. Extend to them the confidence that they can correct your child within your guidelines during your absence, and if that isn’t working to let you know.
  6. Remember your youth. As a child you know that you got away with a lot of things and you know how the child’s mind works. Children today are no different; always be on the lookout for any wayward behavior in your child and others.
  7. Follow your instincts. If you sense that something is wrong, go with it. Do not be afraid to talk with another parent. You might be protecting more than just your child by bringing something to their attention.

The African proverb says that it takes a village to raise a child. With all of the distractions and temptations that face our kids today, I fully agree. As busy parents, we simply cannot be everywhere or know everything that our children are up to so we need help from others. How else can we restore community parenting? In what ways is it working for you?

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How Social Media Can Benefit Your Child

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Let’s face it – as parents, if we’re past 30 (which I am) then we don’t fully get this social media stuff. We might think we do, but not nearly to the degree that our teenagers understand the technology. We just roll our eyes when we see our kids with their heads down and thumbs blazing across their phone or iPod. Social media is here to stay. This post will take a look at how this technology can benefit your child and how we as proactive parents can enable our child to take advantage of this technology.

Social media has made its way into the classroom. In an article posted on March 4, 2012 on the USAToday website, writer Mary Beth Marklaine describes how teachers embrace social media in their classrooms. More and more teachers and professors are broadcasting homework assignments, posting presentations, communicating with parents and running group projects through social media. This new reality is the way that our children communicate and teachers are finding that by embracing this they actually get more engagement from the students.

And social media is making its way into the workplace. Most companies realize the power of Facebook and have pages there, and even this blog is beginning to spread through Facebook on the Affluent Student page. Marketers are using video hosting sites like YouTube and Vimeo to distribute product commercials and information sharing. Still others are running their own live internet broadcasting channels to provide podcasts, webinars, training and other company media through sites like JustinTV and UStream.

Internally, companies are figuring out ways that they can leverage social media in their workforce. Facebook lookalike Yammer is sold as a private social media presence. Twitter is being looked at by companies for multiple uses. A tweet can provide a quick status update. It might also be used to alert on the existence of a problem. Still another use would be to communicate to all associates in the event of an email or messaging outage affecting the entire company.

The uses for social media aren’t all rosy. Besides the obvious security concerns, the distraction factor can be substantial. Teachers and professors find that students who are constantly attached to Facebook and text messaging are much less likely to be paying attention in class, and thus miss key lecture points. According to Marklaine’s article, 58% of students are on these sites during class when they shouldn’t be. And that is also a phenomenon that has made its way into conference rooms in businesses all across America. As smartphones and laptops make workers more portable, they also eat into the productivity of the American worker. Tim Mullaney wrote in May 2011 that these distractions and others cost the average 1,000 employee company $10 million dollars annually. He further went to write that workers spend over an hour a day on interruptions, 60% of which come through electronic channels.

So how best to manage it? At some point, your teen will be faced with the prospects of using social media. They will need it in their upcoming work life so it will pay for them to be tech savvy before they get there. But don’t let that be an excuse to buy them the all-inclusive data plan with the best smart phone on the market. Slowly bring teens into the mix. Monitor their computer activities on the home network before deciding to proceed onto a phone. All of these services can be used through a desktop or laptop computer so start there. Set expectations and usage limits for your child. Once they have a phone, enable only the services needed; I doubt they need to be able to send unlimited video mail or have unlimited text though they will tell you otherwise. Get a similar parental control package for your teen’s phone to protect them from online predators, either as a separate piece of software or as an add-on service to your cell plan.

Yes, social media can benefit your child. There are problems with untrained access, just like there is a problem with an untrained person using a gun or a chainsaw. It is a tool, and with the proper training and guidance your child will be well equipped to use social media to their fullest advantage. Parents, take the time to learn about these tools so that you know what your child is up to and so that you can guide them responsibly. What are your ideas on how parents can best teach and equip their child to use social media?

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Does Your Teen Need a Curfew? Seven Reasons I Say Yes!

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As we move into the teen years, your child will want to go out into the world with their friends. Discussions of bedtime tend to wane, and they are replaced with curfew times. It is the position of many teens that they are responsible enough to come home at a reasonable time. It is the reality that so many parents have seen that this simply is not the case. Here is another opportunity to make your child mad for their own good, and in turn reduce their chances of getting in trouble, getting hurt or otherwise messing up their life permanently. Impose a curfew. Here are my reasons:

  • Many municipalities around the nation have already put a curfew law in place for children under 18, and some have a second or third tier of law that applies to those under 14 and/or under 16. Out past the city’s curfew, and caught, and your child faces a fine, community service, or both.
  • Traffic fatalities. According to AAA, the hours between midnight and 4 am have the highest percentage of traffic fatalities compared to the number of people on the road.
  • Peer pressure. When kids are out together, their strongest motivator is the approval of their peers. The longer they go into the evening, the more likely they will encounter someone who is doing something that they shouldn’t be doing.
  • Rest and sleep. The teenage body needs lots of sleep because both body and mind are growing. Staying out all hours of the night leads to irregular sleep habits, mood swings, and poor performance in school.
  • Setting of boundaries shows that you care. Teens might not like it, but they need their parents to behave like parents now more than at any other time in their lives. A curfew is one of those healthy requirements that not only show you care but also sets the pattern that most adults don’t stay out and party all night either.
  • More opportunities to get into trouble. As most businesses close down by 10 pm, there are fewer things for your child and their friends to do so they come up with things to do on their own. Opposite-sex encounters can lead to sexually-transmitted diseases or unwanted pregnancy, both of which are life-changing consequences.
  • Lack of judgment. This one plays back on several of the reasons mentioned. Your child thinks that they are invincible; that’s part of the teenage psyche. They underestimate how tired they are and they overestimate their restraint and self-control. Likewise, the chances of falling asleep at the wheel, falling victim to peer pressure, or some other hazard of impaired judgment is greater in teens.

As your child graduates high school, there will be another conversation about curfews as long as they live in your home. Stay strong on this one parents – for all of the same reasons this applies to younger teens, your college student or young working adult needs to adhere to a curfew as well. While they live in your home, your adult children need to adhere to your house rules also.

As Facebook and other social media hangouts have entered our home, you might also consider electronic curfews. Even though your child might be home the fact that they can hang out with their friends online all night is now a reality. In addition to losing sleep, webcams and other interactions present many of the same dangers that are mentioned above through permanent damage to online reputations.

Your teenager, although adult-like in appearance, is still a child inside. They need your protection, your guidance, and your wisdom. A curfew is just another one of the tools that you can use to raise your child in a loving manner. Parents, what sort of curfews do you set and at what age? What penalties to you impose for breaking curfew? Please chime in and let others know your experiences!

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Big news, and a shift in strategy

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The Alpha release of The Affluent Student e-book will be available on December 5, 2011! To get your copy, go over to my Facebook fan page here and “Like” the page. Then, share that link with everyone you know! I’ll be putting the book online this weekend through my fan page, and for those of you who “Like” before it’s up you will receive the copy as soon as it’s available. This will be a pre-publication version so I ask that you read it, share your critique openly and let me know of any typos, problems with flow and logic, references that belong in the blog but not in the book, and so forth. I’d also like to know what you don’t agree with in the book. I’m looking to finalize this project and formally publish the book in early 2012 and your critical eye will go a long way towards making that happen.

I’m also going to change up the direction of the Affluent Student. To date, most of my articles have been educational in nature and have usually been posted 4 or more times per week. Going forward, I’ll be changing the frequency of posts to 2-3 times per week. Our focus will still be on the primary concerns of the Affluent Student. However, the articles will have more analysis of current events related to education, families, and careers and will focus on stories and questions from the readers. From time to time, you’ll see the educational articles cycle back through and be updated with relevant content, and I’ll be working on the blog to tie related posts together. In short, I want to shift the focus to you, the reader. But at the core, The Affluent Student will never change. It will always be about helping parents raise lifelong learners.

I’ll close with this quote that I just ran across: Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow. (Anthony J. D’Angelo)

If I haven’t said so lately, thanks for reading and God Bless. Please spread the word about The Affluent Student!

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Your Online Reputation

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It used to be that your reputation was pretty safe and secure. It took some time and some digging to find out information on someone. Unless you were a government or corporate entity seeking information through a background check, you had to rely on word-of-mouth and your own impressions to form your assessment of someone you just met. Opinions of others and the context and environment in which you interact with someone give you only a limited picture of who they really are.

Today with all of the on-ramps to the internet, everything you search, email, tweet, or post adds to your online reputation. Employers, now more than ever before, are scrutinizing all of the online avenues for your current and previous information. In June of this year, the Federal Trade Commission gave approval to a company named Social Intelligence Corporation to sell this service to prospective employers. Your videos, pictures, blog posts, and profiles are, by default, accessible for all to see. Because we tend to relax and let our guards down when we’re online, it is very easy to post things that maybe you don’t want everyone to know about. And nothing prevents others from creating or posting information about you. Social media has made it so easy to connect with others but it’s also opened up a minefield of dangers.

So how can you best protect your online reputation? Just like monitoring your credit, this is an ongoing process that you’ll maintain throughout your lifetime. Here is a list of strategies that you can do and that you can teach to your child.

  • Change your passwords on all of your accounts regularly.
  • Make all of your passwords different for the various services.
  • Learn how to customize the privacy settings for each service that you use.
  • Look at Facebook and review the pictures which have been tagged as you.
  • Keep your profiles current, but be careful about how much information you include for all to see.
  • Review your friends list and the list of your followers. Remember that the things which are posted and updated by your friends on their sites can be displayed on your site or profile. People formulate opinions about you based on who you hang out with, online and in real life.
  • Don’t share location or comments about where you are when you’re away from home. This includes uploading pictures and other media. This is as much for personal safety as anything else.
  • Keep your posts, tweets, and updates positive and upbeat. Spelling and grammar really make a difference, especially when a potential employer reviews your data.
  • Look at the things that you follow or like. Again, you are judged by the things, people, and products that you associate yourself with.
  • Disable or cancel any services that you no longer use.
  • Google yourself. Search your name within Google and within all of these services and see what pops up.
  • Highlight your best in your online activity. Make others feel like part of your community.
  • Don’t say anything in type that you would not say in person to the person you are talking about. Too many folks hide behind their online identity. Remember that the computer is no replacement for a phone or face-to-face conversation.
  • Be careful when reposting, sharing, or retweeting humor. What you may think is funny may offend your reader.

Social media is fun. It allows us to connect with those who have moved on or that we haven’t seen in many years. But do what you can to protect the impression that you make. Your online and real-life reputations combine to paint the picture of who you really are.

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Computers and children

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Technology advances of the past twenty years have brought the world into our homes.  What used to be the domain of libraries and universities has now become ubiquitous – the internet is everywhere.  Because this powerful research and business tool now lives at our fingertips, it brings with it both benefits and challenges.  How you manage these resources in your home, and more importantly how you teach your children to harness the power of this resource, can shape your family’s dynamics.  Here are a few observations.

First of all, let’s clear the air – the internet is a tool.  It is not evil nor is it the solution to all of life’s problems.  There are bad things on the internet, and there are wonderful things out there too.  The internet is a mechanism for information and content delivery, and a network for connecting people in a new way.  The nature of the information, content, and communications cannot be contained, but what we choose to consume and allow our families to consume can be contained.  As responsible adults, we should be monitoring our child’s online activities.  We should put in safety mechanisms such as parental controls, anti-virus and spyware/malware detection programs, firewalls to prevent outside traffic from entering our homes, routers with logging mechanisms to track sites visited from your network, and time limits on when our children can use the internet.  These controls should be on every computer in the home.

Next, the social aspect of the internet is very appealing to children, particularly teenagers.  Sites like Facebook and tools like text messaging allow people to remain in touch like never before.  What we as parents need to be aware of is the amount of time our children are spending with these tools, how they are using them, and who they are communicating with.  It is very common for a child to create a Facebook site that they show their parents and another one that they really use with their friends.  Text message transcripts, by default, are not recorded so it is simple for a child to delete any offensive messages from their phone.  Cyber bullying is a recent trend that your child may be a victim of or may be involved in.  Too often, children (and adults) trust the identity of those they are communicating with on the internet and share way too much information.  As such, children can be at risk for their safety and health if someone with bad intentions picks up on patterns, habits, and so forth through status updates.  Reputations in both personal and professional life are largely shaped by your online profile.  The problem with this is that children don’t think about this, and they allow pictures, messages, tags, friendships, and other social connections to run wild on the internet.

The internet isn’t just limited to computers anymore.  Think about all the ways you can get internet content.  Mobile phones and iPods are much tougher to place parental controls on if they don’t use the home connection.  With these devices, a picture can be taken and be up on the internet in under a minute.  I believe that every parent should evaluate whether their child needs the internet and text messaging on their cell phone.  It provides them another means for access that likely bypasses any controls you have in your home.  Also, newer televisions and DVRs have internet content delivered directly to them, and most have little protection from access.  This is why it is important to have something to log the internet usage from your home.

Computers are here to stay.  Computer literacy is one of the requirements for success in the Information Age, so your children need to know how to use them.  As parents, you must know what your children are doing online.  If you believe that they are simply playing innocent games or researching assignments, you would be wrong.  Get control of your home computing environment.  Place your computer in a conspicuous place in your home.  Set time limits for usage.  Disable internet on their phones.  Put in monitoring software and parental controls.  Regularly check the activity logs on these controls.  Teach them responsible computing principles.  If you don’t care enough to monitor these activities, then you’re setting yourself up for heartache down the road.

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Overcommitted kids

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100 years ago, children and families generally had a very simple life.  Many of the jobs were still agricultural in nature, and that meant most families farmed their own land.  Children in these families attended school and worked on the farm.  Television didn’t exist, few homes had electricity, and radio was still a new discovery that had not yet made its way into homes.  Only the most affluent families could afford to send their children into activities, and most of the ones available were structured around the arts like music, drama, and literature.  Life really was much simpler. 

Fast forward to today.  The “luxuries” that I mentioned above are not only staples in each home, the children of today take these things for granted.  I’ll share a story – my daughter, who is eight, goes to her grandparents house and doesn’t understand why she can’t pause live TV or play back episodes of Sponge Bob.  She has grown up with TiVo in the house so she too takes this technology for granted.  Kids today are more distracted by video games, computers, and television than ever before.  Parents, in an effort to get them disengaged from these electronic babysitters and to provide all they can for their children, place their children in activities like sports, clubs, music, and volunteer activities.  Many families do this in spite of the financial impact; besides the fees to sign up for these programs, supporting materials, fundraisers, uniforms, travel and the like run into the hundreds, and some cases thousands, of dollars per year for the typical family.  Time commitments can be huge; the average sports activity can consume eight hours of more per week.  Because children can’t get themselves to these activities, this further places demands on the parents available time in addition to the children and their available time.  Once everyone gets home after all of the activities of the day, children are tired and grumpy and parents are frazzled and hurried to get their kids in bed to start over the next day.  It’s no wonder our children have “contracted” the behavioral conditions of ADD/ADHD and other disorders of the last thirty years.

I fully believe that our kids do way too much today.  School is demanding for our kids.  By the time they spend seven hours in school and maybe an hour per day on homework, they have done the equivalent of a full-time job just like an adult.  If they are playing a sport, as mentioned above that is another eight hours per week of commitment during that sport’s season.  Can you honestly say that you spend an additional eight hours per week on a single hobby or activity?  Could you sustain that for very long?  If not, then neither should your child.  I would recommend that the total time they spend on structured extracurricular activities in a week not exceed eight hours.  This might mean they could take a drama and dance class together, or play a single sport, or be in Scouts and learn piano.  But there are kids who do three, four, or more of these simultaneously.  We’re wearing our kids out if this is happening.

None of these activities by themselves are bad for our kids.  It gives them exposure to different things and may lead to them discovering their true passion.  In fact, they are much better than the digital solitude of Facebook, video games, and so forth that many children lock themselves into when they get home from school.  There is a way to let them participate responsibly, as mentioned above – none of your children should spend more than eight hours a week in these activities.  Look at how much time your children are spending in these activities and manage it for their good and for the good of your family.

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Making the leap

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This post is for parents of newly-minted sixth graders. Across the US, the vast majority of school systems make the transition to middle school as students go into sixth grade. In the next month, your child will enter this strange new world. This is a critical time for the students and parents alike. For students, this often means the merging of two or more elementary schools, which means that there will be a lot of new kids in their classes that they may not know. Sixth graders are notoriously smaller than their eighth-grade counterparts, which can create a lot of stress for the younger kids. Where they were the big kids just last year, now they are just the new set of victims for the older kids. Sixth graders also have their first daily experience of changing classes and teachers which brings about its own challenges. There are new clubs, sports, and activities for the kids to get involved in so their social network will begin to expand rapidly. They will experience things, good and bad, that they would not have heard in elementary school. We want to shelter and protect them. I have a third grade daughter and my wife and I are already talking about what we’re going to do when she reaches middle school. Although I have two boys who have already navigated middle school successfully, I can’t help but worry about my daughter.

So, what can you do to help your kids have the best experience possible? Here are a few ideas; I’ll attempt to expand on these in future posts.
1) Take every opportunity that you can to be at school. During open house, meet-the-teacher, volunteer opportunities, fundraisers and other events requiring a parent or chaperone, you can be there to show your child and their teachers that you care.
2) Get contact information for each of your child’s teachers and establish a communication schedule. This is extremely important for ensuring that you are fully aware of what’s going on and where your child may be struggling.
3) Do more than the minimum required. Times may be tough in your home, but things are especially hard in public schools around the nation with limited budgets and overworked, underpaid teachers.
4) Know your child’s friends. Get to know their parents. Be the house that all the kids want to come to and you’ll always know what your child is up to. Ask questions.
5) Monitor, limit, or better yet do not allow online social networking activities.
6) Be on the lookout for changes in demeanor, personality, and behavior. If grades begin to slip, dig in to find the root cause immediately.
7) Allow your child to make more choices but always keep the final say-so.
8) Remember that your child is still a kid. They need time for play and unstructured activities. Don’t over-commit them or yourself.
9) Stand up for your child for when they are right, but also hold them accountable when they are wrong. Teachers aren’t evil and they aren’t picking on your child; they simply don’t have time to do so.
10) Don’t talk badly about your child’s teachers in front of your child. Some are better than others, admittedly so. However, to talk bad about the teacher gives the child the green-light to make excuses, disobey, or otherwise disrupt the teacher’s classroom.
11) Hang in there, even when all hope seems lost. Let your child know that you believe in them.
12) Don’t give in just to be the cool parent. You’ll repeatedly hear that so-and-so gets a cell phone, gets to stay out till 11, gets to be on Facebook, blah, blah, blah. Set and maintain your own boundaries and do not let someone else do it for you.
13) Most importantly, be there for your child. Give them your time. Talk about their day, help them with their homework, really take time to listen.

You might ask how all of this plays into getting money for college. The answer is plenty. If your child is successful and learns winning habits and behaviors in middle school, then that will translate into high school when the grades really count. What you do now is extremely important – so please do it for the sake of your child.

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Freshman don’ts

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In the spirit of completeness, here is a complementary list of freshman don’ts for all of you upcoming college freshmen to go along with my last post.

1) Don’t go Greek. Not just yet. College is a huge transition even for the best student and your favorite fraternity or sorority will always be there. Plus, it costs a lot of money – add it up!
2) Don’t rush into a relationship. There are many people you will meet in the course of activities, games, classes, clubs, and study groups and you don’t need yet another distraction.
3) Don’t get a credit card. You might feel like it’s the adult thing to do and many vendors will be trying to get you to build your credit. The last thing a college student needs is this equivalent of a loaded gun. Live and act like a broke college student.
4) Don’t hibernate in your room feeling sorry for yourself. Facebook is not a substitute for real world experiences and relationships. The best antidote to home-sickness is staying busy.
5) Don’t cheat. Universities have a reputation to uphold and they take very strong measures against cheaters and plagiarism.
6) Don’t badmouth your professors or instructors. They aren’t picking on you so don’t take it personally. Do what is expected and you’ll have a great experience and probably learn something cool.
7) Don’t drink underage, even if offered and others make you think you’re safe, and don’t do drugs. Underage drinking can land you in jail and if you combine it with driving at any age you could kill yourself or someone else. Your school probably has some anti-drug policies, but you’ll be offered and tempted to try things to make you feel better or enhance your performance that sound innocent enough. These things are dangerous and, if you don’t know any better, they can land you in jail even though you thought they were legal.
8) Don’t get into compromising situations. This era of camera phones that are always connected to the internet can land an undesirable picture of you in cyberspace forever. Employers check out your social media activities so make sure your reputation remains intact.
9) Don’t steal or let your guard down. This one should also be obvious but when you get on your own and nice things are left out in the open the temptation can be great. Also protect yourself by locking up your valuables.
10) Don’t be a mooch or bad roommate. You’ll be sharing living areas, bathrooms, eating areas, and maybe even a bedroom depending on your dorm setup. Be courteous and conscious of those around you.
11) Don’t change majors in your first month. Many of you chose the school you’re going to based on your major. It’s going to be hard and it might feel like you’ve chosen the wrong field of study. Give it a chance for at least the first year.
12) Don’t procrastinate. I can’t stress enough how much heavier the workload will be in college. Even if it feels like you have plenty of time, get your assignments done as soon as possible. Bad grades are the quickest way to ensure that a four-year program turns into five.

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