Preppin’ for College: FAQ

Good morning everyone!

Hope you’re all doing well. This is my last week in MN before I ship back out to Boston again! One of the things that I find the most strange, and yet enjoyable, about being here is moving around as a family. Going out in public with my sisters, running errands, driving places… the contrast of having my sisters and parents with me is so different from walking around the city with a group of friends. Here, we’re obviously a family unit—we all look alike, we’re different ages, we talk to each other like we’ve known each other for years (because we have)—and I think what gets me is how safe it feels. Not like wandering around the city alone or with a group of friends doesn’t feel safe—I’ve never had any problems— but it’s different, with family. The expectations are different.

But I digress :). I’m planning this post as an info-dump, as it has come to my attention that there are a lot of little things about Wellesley—especially online resources—that I check routinely but that actually took some time for me to acquire. Having a sister about to enter Wellesley as a first-year in the fall makes you aware of all sorts of things :).

Anyway, my aim here is to help make you aware of some of these resources. I’m thinking maybe I should link all of my FAQ posts together for easy access… in the first step in that process, here’s a link to an FAQ post I wrote in the fall. Hope they’re helpful!

Let’s begin…

Social

• If you have a Facebook, you should join the Wellesley Class of 2018 Facebook group. It’s a private group, so if your settings are too restricted, you might have trouble finding the right one. Currently, their background is set as the iconic Wellesley lampposts shown in winter. I’ve got a picture here:

(Usefulness: events happening on campus are usually posted on these Facebook groups, as well as being distributed on campus as paper “spam”. Moreover, members post questions they have about school/logistics/etc., and it can be useful to go through the archives or just read these updates. Many of my friends are members of not only their Wellesley Class page, but also the classes above and below them, so they can access and answer these questions for everyone in the school.)

• You all now have a Gmail account—go and configure your new email account if you’d like! You’ll be accessing your Wellesley Gmail account several times a day for the next four years, so it can be nice to get a look at it before school starts. The Wellesley Gmail is a little weird, in that you can sort of access it through Gmail, and sort of access it through MyWellesley. Here’s what you do:

One way is to go through Gmail. If you just type in “Gmail Login” in Google, the page below will come up. Then you fill it in as is shown below. (Your username has already been sent to you by email. It’s usually the first letter of your first name, followed by your last name/ some abbreviated version of your last name, followed by a number if you’re not the first to have that email address.) You don’t need to fill in the password: just filling in the “@wellesley.edu” part will redirect you to the MyWellesley page.

Once you’re at the MyWellesley page, sign in with your username and password (you can reset your initial password.

You’ll be brought to the page below, which will look a little different for you since you are new students. The key bit is to click the Google Icon in the corner. That will bring you to your Wellesley gmail page.

*Note: if you don’t want to go through Gmail first, it’s actually easier just to sign into MyWellesley directly. The steps are the same.

My two major advisements in configuring settings on Gmail is to set up your labels and manage your group settings. One thing that Wellesley does is send you a lot of emails, and if you don’t fix your settings then you’ll be getting 50 messages a day instead of 5-10. Here are the things you should look up in Google and know how to do to your account:

1. Managing Labels in Gmail

Usefulness: this lets you sort your mail (usually by tracking the sender) so that mail is automatically sorted into different categories like “Swimming,” “Research,” etc. rather than having it all sent to the Inbox.

2. Know how to use Google Drive and Google Groups. Here’s a screenshot from the far right of my Gmail homepage… if you click on the icon that looks like 9 squares you will be able to access Google Drive and Google Groups (plus more!) from your email.

Usefulness: you’re going to be using Google Drive (sharing documents online) and Google Groups (these are often class forums) all the time.

3. Once you’re enrolled in some Google Groups (say, “Class of 2015”), go to settings, and reconfigure your email settings for that group. I have my settings set to “Receive Daily Summaries,” so instead of getting 50 emails a day from this group, I get 1 email that I can scan very quickly. I once met a first year who hadn’t been taught this trick yet, and seeing 200 unread emails on her Desktop was a bit overwhelming to watch.

—-

 

• Moving on! One of the most useful resources we have for knowing basic information about students on campus is the Wellesley Directory. It’s this nice button up here on the MyWellesley page. The Wellesley Directory lets you access information on other students (provided you log in with a valid Wellesley username and password), like their name, major, hometown, and current dorm. It’s affectionately known on campus as “Stalkernet.” I use it from situations ranging to figuring out where to meet with a study partner on the weekends (e.g. if they live in Stone D, then it might be more convenient for us to meet in the Science Center…) to reminding myself of an acquaintance’s major. It’s a good resource to have available.

• Getting your phone configured to the Wellesley Network. You guys all know the value of this :). I’m sure there are directions somewhere, but if you need help, head to the Computer Help Desk in Clapp Library. I recently got my smart phone hooked up to the network, and it’s very useful.

Work

Yay, employment! If you’re work-study, like me, you’re going to want to be looking for an on-campus or off-campus job next semester. I personally have only had on-campus jobs, but I’ve had them ranging from working in the library, working at the admissions office, working for pay in a lab (this is rare), working as a grader, working as a tutor, working as a research paper editor, etc. Work-study students have preference for on-campus jobs, especially in the beginning of the semester, but if you’re not work-study you can work as well. The Student Employment Website provides great information on this, and also directs you to the relevant forms you’ll have to fill out. (I’d get started on these with your parents now, if you’re as helpless financially as I am.)

The list of jobs that is currently available on campus is here. Just click on “Find a Job”, and “Show All Active Jobs.” There’s a range of opportunities, mostly posted at the beginning of the semester, I think, but you should apply to a few of them since everyone is trying to get into these same jobs :). It gets a little easier as you get older, since opportunities for work will arise as you better know what field you’re specifically interested in, but I and many of my friends were able to find work starting from the first week of school.

Academics

• Wellesley Course Browser

I’m sure you’ve all got your 2014-2015 green Course Catalog booklets, which is great, since those give better summaries of the classes than are available online. That said, what most students use in practice is the Wellesley Course Browser online site. It’s fairly self-explanatory, so I’ll just link you there. What’s great about the Browser is that it not only shows you what classes are offered during a particular semester (which the Course Catalog doesn’t), but it gives you the time periods when a class occurs during, say, the upcoming fall semester.

During the week of Orientation, when only first-years are on campus in August, you’ll have a day in which you’ll check out all the classes you’re interested in a devise up possible schedules. We do scheduling on a seniority and also somewhat random/skill basis… basically, seniors sign up first, then juniors, then sophomores, then first-years. But within each class, who gets what classes is determined by who can type in the class numbers into a website called Banner fast enough. This will be explained in detail to you when you arrive on campus, but the upshot is that who gets what classes can be fairly random (since most of us have similar speed in typing in numbers—please don’t practice, it’s not necessary) and so you need to have lots of different options available in case you don’t get into your top choices. Thus, scheduling is practically a Wellesley hobby… and I know so many people who enjoy it to a degree that probably isn’t merited (myself included ;P.)

So if you love scheduling, by all means you now have the resources to get started. 3-4 backup schedules as a first-year is about the max you want to have. If you are not a fellow scheduling fanatic, DON’T WORRY ABOUT SCHEDULING. You’ll have plenty of time to do it on campus when you get here for Orientation, and there will be plenty of upper-classwomen helping you through it. I offer it here only as an option for those of us who find scheduling fun, and to show you the Wellesley Course Browser website if you are interested :).

• Buying/Renting Books

Don’t buy books yet! You can’t, since you don’t know what classes you’ll get into :). But once you know your classes, you’ll be able to go onto the Wellesley Bookstore Website, enter your classes, and the books you’ll need will pop up :). From there, you’ll want to buy books either a) through older Wellesley students selling their books, b) through Amazon, or c) through the bookstore on campus.

(A note on buying vs. renting books: the preference between them is entirely personal preference. On the one hand, renting books is cheaper. On the other, if you buy books, you can either write in them, or you can sell them back. I personally only buy books, so I’m going to write “buy” here, but “buy” can be substituted by “rent” for everything I write below.)

a)     The central location for selling books within the college is on Facebook: it’s a group called “Textbook Exchange” accessible when you link up a Wellesley Gmail account through Facebook. This is the best place to buy books, because it’s cheap and you literally walk across campus to pick them up from other Wellesley students. People post which books they have available for specific classes, and you meet up and exchange money for them. The price of books very much depends on the subject and the edition, but for a single class, I’d say the price range is between $30-120 dollars (with the lower end being collections of humanities books and the upper end being thick science textbooks, though this varies significantly.) You can always sell your books back to the community once you’re done with them though (that is, if you don’t enjoy writing in your textbooks, which I know many people do), which can help with the money.

b)    Amazon! I personally love Amazon, though you have to be aware of the two-week shipping time, which isn’t convenient for you as first-years since you don’t know your classes yet. BUT you can also sign up for Amazon Prime Student, which is $40 per year (half of the normal price) and gets you free shipping in two days on selected items. This was my savior first year, because I never wanted to walk down to the nearest convenience store (a CVS 15 minutes from campus) so I just bought everything (books, deodorant, a watch, you name it) from Amazon Prime and picked it up at the Mail Office (thus making the down payment of $40 worth it for me). This is entirely personal preference though, and I’m a heavier user of Amazon (and Amazon Prime) than almost anyone I know.

If you don’t use Amazon Prime, Amazon isn’t a great place to buy books, because the shipping time is too long.

c)     The campus bookstore

This is probably going to be your default if you can’t find your books on the Facebook Textbook Exchange. It’s super easy to buy books from the bookstore, because all of the books are in stock, in a central location, and the process of buying them is extremely straightforward. The only detriment is that books in the official bookstore are expensive. Basically, I’ve written these three options for buying books in order of cheapness, but if you wanted them in order of convenience you’d definitely go to the bookstore first.

• Professor Recommendations

Something a lot of people don’t recognize immediately is that the professor is almost more important than whatever topic they’re teaching :). If you have an awesome professor, they can make any subject seem interesting. Thus, there’s a strong need for figuring out what professors are good… and unfortunately, unlike a school like MIT, there’s not really a centralized location for this at Wellesley. There’s collections of recommendations on the old Sakai website, and there’s some notes on Facebook, but what you really want to do is to go ask older Wellesley students. Specifically, ask students in the department you’re interested in. I, for example, can give you a good opinion about what teachers you’d want if you were pre-med, because I’ve taken a lot of those introductory classes. I’m helpless if you want to know about the Spanish department. But there are a lot of us, so don’t be afraid to go up and ask older students what major they are and what they’d recommend for classes, because this school is full of women who love whatever they’re studying and would love to share it with you :).

What to Bring

There are a LOT of lists out there about what to bring to college. And I’m going to recommend you follow them :). These are just a few things specific to Wellesley that I wish I’d know when I was packing!

• You don’t need a fridge. We have five dining halls, two of them open until 10pm, so you’re pretty much set for food. And when you do order out or bring things back to snack on, there are communal fridges on every floor of the dorms. There are also always fridges that students who are going abroad or graduating are selling, and those are cheaper than what you can buy in the store.

• Try not to bring anything too big. Things like ironing boards, clothes drying racks… you might be able to fit it into your room when you drive out here, but if you’re not local, you aren’t going to have enough storage space to keep it for the next year. Check out Wellesley’s Storage Policies for how much free storage you’ll have every year. You’ll get between 0 (if you’re local) and 4 boxes… and if your stuff doesn’t fit in those boxes, you’ll either have to get rid of it or find some other place to store it (probably buying some storage place with friends at a nearby company.)

• In reference to the storage policies: if you are able to store boxes at Wellesley, invest in some storage boxes! Make them 37”x18”x18” (which, if you read the above hyperlink, is the size of one “label” at Wellesley) and bring out your stuff to Wellesley in them. I have six bright green boxes this size, and they get a tremendous amount of use, as I move stuff around and store things during the fall, Wintersession, and summer. If you’re local, this isn’t such a big deal. But if you’re not, Wellesley seems to be perpetually short on plastic storage boxes, and they are hard to buy on campus if you don’t have a car.

• Cars: not many people have them. You have to pay to have them on campus, and you pay for parking. If you’re local, everyone will thank you very kindly for driving them around on occasion. If you’re not local, I wouldn’t bring one, especially as a first-year.

• Sustainable-Move In! Okay, so you know things like lamps, carpets, and hangers? Wellesley has this thing called “Sustainable Move-In” at the beginning of the semester, when they do a huge yard sale of all of the stuff people left behind at the end of the last school year (when they realized they didn’t have enough storage space :)). You can buy folders, other school supplies, hangers, lamps, etc. for very, very cheap at the beginning of the year at this sale. Definitely come to Sustainable Move-In, and if you don’t have some of this bulky-ish, cheap-ish stuff, don’t worry, because there’s going to be a good amount of it available.

• Athletes: hello fellow athletes! Do make sure to bring all your gear. But don’t buy new stuff—because Wellesley’s going to be dumping gear on you. You collect at least three free t-shirts every year, and you’re required to buy a bunch of Wellesley bags/apparel every year as well. No one else gets all the free stuff, by the way. Athletes are special :).

• Bring all sorts of clothes. East Coast-ers are better dressed than Midwesterners as a general rule, but they’ve got a lot more weather than Southern California. So basically bring warm clothes, cold clothes (you’re going to need a really warm jacket—the puffy ones seem to be popular on Wellesley’s campus), nice clothes, normal clothes (whatever that is for you), and an umbrella. Minnesota’s weather is worse than Massachusetts’s, so I was fine there, but ski jackets aren’t really a thing here. Not that I pay much attention—the best thing about Wellesley is that people come from all over, so if you want to dress to the norm, you can, but if you don’t, that’s fine as well :).

All right, guys, I’m going to finish up now :). Hope this FAQ is helpful, and please send me messages. About anything, but especially about what you want me to write about. Or, hey, enjoy your summer ;P. Last one before you start college—and the best time for family and friends!

Best, Monica