What No One Tells You About Freshman Year

Josh Felgoise (00:00.204)

Welcome to Guy's Set, a guy's guide to what should be talked about. I'm Josh, I'm 24 years old, and I'm here to find all the tips, advice, and recommendations for everything you're wondering about. Let's get into it.

Josh Felgoise (00:17.976)

Hi guys, welcome back to guyset, a guys guide to what should be talked about. This week we are taking it back to freshman year of college. Specifically first semester of freshman year of college. And I think that is a time in which is not talked about enough. We do not talk about or reflect on that time in our lives because we either look at it as we partied and got drunk and blacked out for the entirety of four semesters and don't remember it.

or we look back at it with a sheer amount of cringe and do not want to look back at it and just black it out in that respect. So you're blacking out for one of those two reasons or you just like don't think about it that much because why would you? was literally seven years ago, which is also crazy to think about that it was seven years ago, maybe even more like seven and plus years ago that we were freshmen in college. If you're my age, listen to this or yeah, me, I'll say me. can't say, I don't know how old you are listening to this, but college for me was like seven plus years ago.

and the time and the transition from high school to college is not a topic or like transition period that I've talked about at all on here. I've talked in length and probably will continue to talk about in length the transition period from college to after college, where people are completely on their own again, making completely different decisions, living in completely different areas, doing completely different things on completely different career paths in relationships, all this shit. Like everyone's on their own thing after college again, but

You're totally on your own when you start college too. Like, and that is not something we talk about. And the reason I want to this episode is because college is starting up again now. if you're a freshman or I guess any year in college now, but specifically for those freshmen, like this is something that I would have loved to have going into college, just hearing somebody's perspective or take on their experience from that time, like eight year, every time I say it's gonna be more, but eight years out from that time and reflecting on it by

acknowledging how cringy and how some of the decisions they made were definitely the wrong ones and look back at with some regret and definitely made bad decisions. Because I feel like I can look back at that time now and learn from it and learn from the mistakes and not just look back at it and be like, that was incredibly cringy. I can't believe I did that. can't believe I would make that decision or do that.

Josh Felgoise (02:38.258)

and not just think about it with regret or with animosity toward that time or those things that I did, but with learning and with growth and knowing that you're not the same person you were then. Going into college, I would have loved to hear from somebody who was far out from that specific transition period to hear what they have to say about it and share their learnings and how they grew from the mistakes they made and decisions they made. So that is exactly what I'm here to do today. And

It's for people who are going into college, so if you know somebody that's younger than you, a younger brother, younger sister, younger anybody, it's for them, so please send this to them. But it's also for anybody that's out of college now, and also for anybody that's in college and can look at that specific time period that you may look at incredibly fondly and look at it as some of the best times you had, but you also may look at it as one of the cringiest times. And there's things we can learn from the decisions we made and the people we met, and that's what I want to talk about today. The craziest part about going to college is that even though

There's somethings that are set up for you and there's an orientation week to try and prepare you for the rest of your college career. There is really no guidebook and there's no thing to follow or anybody to model your experience off of. It's really all up to you and it's the first time in your life with nobody telling you what to do or how to do it. It is the first time in your life that you are really on your own. There are things set up for you of course. You know where to go have lunch and dinner and you know where go to class.

But you don't know who you're gonna go to lunch and dinner with and you don't know if you're gonna like that class and if you want to pursue that similar class trajectory and take that major and do that minor and all that stuff. So the rest is really up to you. Everything else is on your accord. You get to make the decisions of who you want to hang out with and who you want to seek out and what friendships you want to continue making and what relationships you want to make and who you want to make out with and what parties you want to go to and where you want to drink and what friend groups you want to make and if you like that friend group and if you like the person you're becoming around that friend group.

That's the thing we don't really talk about. When you go into college, you... I'll say me, I'm not gonna say you. I'll say me. I really hoped that people were gonna like me. I really hoped I was gonna make friends that I was gonna make for life. And these friends are gonna be in my bachelor party and in my wedding and with me for the rest of my life. And I put that expectation on myself and that backpack on my shoulders.

Josh Felgoise (05:00.226)

thinking that I was gonna make friends forever in the first couple months of college, which is four years, an incredibly long time, and that's what I was hoping and expecting from that time. Needless to say, that may not have happened. I am still friends with some of the people I met that first semester of freshman year, but it's not really the ones that I expected that I'm still friends with now. And I look back at this time as one of the most fun periods of my life. Those four months were absolutely crazy and so, so much fun.

but also a time in which I look back at and cringe at the way I acted and the way I behaved and the decisions I made. But even more than all of that, I look at that whole year, the four months, not year, as the time in which I learned how to make big decisions and the time in which I learned how I want to carry myself throughout the rest of college and throughout the rest of my life. And as I said, you go into college hoping people are going to like you, but you really don't go into it.

I should say me, I'm sorry, I keep saying you, but I really should say me. I went into college hoping people would like me and hoping I'd make friends, but I didn't really think about the other side of it, of do I like the people that I'm around? Even more so, do I like the person I'm becoming when I'm around them? So I wanna tell you about a few times from first semester freshman year that I look back at as being some of the most formidable, I don't think that's right word, but I'm gonna go with it, formidable moments.

that changed the trajectory of that semester for me. So I wanna first talk about roommates. I got incredibly lucky with my freshman roommate. It was a friend of a friend. was like a, that's called a mutual friend. Thank you, Josh, genius. It was a mutual friend that we both got set up through and it worked out really, really well. Whether you live with somebody completely random or somebody you pick like I did, I think it's the most important that you are civil and friendly.

You do not have to be best friends with this person, but you do have to be inclusive and kind. Not hard things to do for anybody. You can easily say like, I'm going to this with a couple people, do you wanna join? Or hey, do you wanna get dinner tonight? The nice part about having a roommate is it gives you a built-in buddy when nobody knows anything or knows anybody. So you have somebody to start making friends with or you have a friend to start with the rest of it. But you do not have to be best friends. And if...

Josh Felgoise (07:15.222)

you don't feel a connection or you feel like it's not working that way, like don't try and force it, you don't have to do that. But the best part about having a roommate is you have like a built-in buddy to go with and have through this time. And I remember with my roommate, we both like, that was the person I went to during orientation, that was the person I talked to about all, everything going on, like we both confided in each other about everything and it was really like the start of the best friendship.

Still one my really good friends to this day, by the way, which is amazing and like just so rare, I think. I have a couple other friends who are still really good friends with their freshman year roommates. That's really rare and I'm, I look at that and I think it's amazing because like living with somebody versus being friends with somebody is a completely different, like completely different thing. And if you live with somebody or you live with roommates now or you have lived with a roommate, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Some friends are just better off as friends than they are roommates and

I'm sure when I say that you have somebody that comes to mind that you're thinking about. I'm not thinking of somebody specifically right now, but I'm sure some if I wanted to I could. Anyway, whatever you can do to keep the energy in the room calm and pleasant, like it will work so well that way. Remember that you are sleeping there, if not most every single night, five feet away from another person, like maybe even less. It's you're so close to that person in those tiny rooms. So try as best you can to keep the peace and not rock the boat.

My freshman year roommate who I know listens to this so shout out, you know who you are, was and is the nicest kid and just truly such a good person. As I said, we became friends fast and stayed really close friends. And of course shit happens and there were a couple things that led to like our rift in our friendship. And of course throughout the first semester, like you become friends with different people and you gravitate toward different friend groups and you meet different people and you go different ways. And we ended up getting in some sort of fight in the middle of the first semester of freshman year, which was so, so dumb.

And I look back at it as a time in which I was so incredibly immature and I look back at that version of me with such a distaste for how I acted and I've tried to black out that behavior, but obviously I remember how I acted. and it just doesn't feel like the version of me that I am now. And the reason I bring this up is not to open closed wounds or look back at old fights because I really don't think ruminating on old fights is necessary all the time.

Josh Felgoise (09:37.986)

But more so to look back at that time and recognize how much I've grown from the person I was then. And if you don't ever look back at the times that make you wince or cringe at the way you behaved or the way you acted, then I don't see how you can really grow from those experiences. Then you can't step back and see how far you've grown from that time or how much you've changed from that experience and how much you learned from what you did in that moment. Then you don't give yourself the opportunity to see how far you've come from that time.

That type of growing is really hard in that moment, and I think it's only the type of growing that can happen when you look back at that time, or when you're so far out of it until later when you've realized that the way you acted is not how you want to continue to act, and you can realize how immature you were, or how stupid the decisions you made were and the mistakes you made were. The ending to that story with my freshman year is actually not an ending, because we're still really good friends to this day.

But we did end up becoming friends again and made up from that shitty experience and that shitty fight over God knows what I do But God knows what basically and that time also taught me a ton about forgiveness and about forgiving people in situations that you don't really have a lot of control over and forgiveness in myself for the way I acted and the way I spoke and that I regretted those things I said or what I did in the moment and wish I did it differently but you can't take the things you do back but

You can take that opportunity to grow from that experience. You don't have to stay that person. You aren't the decision you once made. You aren't your worst mistake. And those are all things I learned from that experience, many others, but that experience really colors it well. I'm so grateful that we were roommates because I learned so much. So if you can take anything from me and the lesson from all of that, obviously I want you to make your own conclusions from whatever I say, but if you can learn something from my roommate experience, it's that...

The most important thing is that you're kind and civil and that that shared room, that shared living space, which is so small, is a space that you can both be comfortable in and not a place that you're going to feel a lot of animosity or like you don't want go back to that place because you're annoyed at that person or you're annoyed at way they act. Learn to forgive quickly, learn to forget quickly, move on and you'll be so much better for all of that.

Josh Felgoise (11:55.222)

Try your best, your best, your best, not to let the little things get to you when living with somebody. If they left something a place you didn't like it, if they made a mess and didn't clean it up. I think the best thing to do is to say how you're feeling and not bottle anything up. If you bottle the way you're feeling up, then you're, I heard someone say this a while back, but you're just holding a stone in your hand and squeezing tighter and tighter and the other person doesn't even know how you feel.

So if you never tell them how you feel and you're the only one annoyed, then they will never know. So deal with your shit head on with that person. I know it's uncomfortable. know confrontation is incredibly uncomfortable. I'm not good at it. Nobody is good at it. But it is something you will have to do with a roommate at some point, at some time in your freshman year. So share how you're feeling and let them know if something is up or something's wrong. And don't be afraid to use your voice in that way. But...

if you're holding it and bottling up, will only get worse. So take a note for my book and don't do that. And the second thing is this friend group I became part of pretty quickly freshman year that I just felt like I did not belong in. And to me, it just felt like they were like a little bit too cool for school. Whereas I had no idea what I was doing and the farthest thing from too cool for anybody. For a few weeks, I was kind of feeling that way as if like,

They weren't my people and if I stayed with them I'd never really find anybody else but if I left them then I don't know if I will find anybody else because people already have friends and there's already a lot of friend groups being formed and I don't know how to even make other friends right now because I have this group and and I remember thinking one night that like I didn't really want to go out with this group of people anymore like I wanted to go try and make new friends and

meet new people and there's a thousand, there's literally thousands of people that I have not met yet and just staying with this small group that I wasn't really vibing with, I knew wasn't right for me, but I didn't know what else to do and if I left that group, then where would I go or what group would I find and the worry that I have in beginning of like, I wanna make these friends for life, like what will I do? And I remember this feeling like the weight of the world was on my shoulders to make this decision of like,

Josh Felgoise (14:04.27)

to be or not to be to stay with this friend group or to try and make new friends and go elsewhere. And I ultimately decided not to go out with that friend group that night without really knowing who else I was gonna hang out with. But knowing that I really didn't feel a part of that, I had no other plans, I just knew it couldn't be that. So I ended up finding people on my hall to hang out with and those are people that I really hadn't given a chance to up until that point, probably a couple weeks in, maybe three weeks in, who I ended up becoming really good friends with.

And we stayed friends throughout the rest of the year. And my little takeaway from that is that when one door closes, and it's a stupid thing that people say all the time, but I really do believe like when one door closes, another one opens pretty quickly without you having to look so hard for it. And as I said, like that decision in that time, like felt so intense and that's, it really sounds so like dumb and shallow to say now that that decision of whether to stay with this friend group or not was like,

Felt like earth-shattering to me, but it did feel that way and it was because that's what freshman year is made of It's made of lot of decisions like that whether you want to hang out with the people or not whether you like the people you're with or not whether you like the person you're becoming with them or not and That's what really what freshman year is made up of is deciding Who you want to hang around hang out with who you want to become what you want to do and where you want to see yourself going? And you have to make the decision sometimes that feel really hard

looking back as I said, looks really stupid, but felt really hard in that moment and I really remember vividly like that moment feeling so intense. And my takeaway from this is that some friendships fade over the course of first semester freshman year and I think that's okay. I think that friends and people come into your life for a reason at some point and you're friends for that person for as long as you're supposed to be. And

If it doesn't last forever, that's okay. It was not meant to be. If the friend that you thought was going to be your best man and the person in your wedding and the person for rest of your life, and they're not because you didn't end up making it out of freshman year with that person, that's okay. I look at that as a reminder to take in what you currently have and be grateful for who you're currently with because it won't always stay that way and that's okay too. The ones who are supposed to stay will stay.

Josh Felgoise (16:29.206)

and the ones who are supposed to come back will also come back. Not everything has to be forever, especially if you feel like you don't like the person you are around them or how they make you feel after you hang out with them. They shouldn't change you, and even more importantly, they shouldn't want you to change for you to be with them. And the third thing I wanted to talk about was fraternities. There was a fraternity a lot of my freshman year friends were rushing.

And because they were gonna be a part of that one, I thought that one was supposed to be my fraternity as well. And I wanted to be a part of that one, because they wanted to be a part of that one. And the way it worked at the school I went to is you got a text from the rush chair, which is the kid, literal like 19 year old kid, telling you to come to the party and where the address was and that's how you got in. And you either were on the list or you weren't. And that was kind of that.

It's actually exactly like a club in New York or any big city like how you get in you're either on the list or you're not or you're either with girls or you're not and otherwise if you're a guy you are not getting in unless you're paying a ton of money which you you didn't pay obviously to get into these but it's like you know what I mean so anyway it was a really big weekend for parties right before Thanksgiving it was a really big rush weekend and kind of like if you were on the list at that time you were pretty much gonna be in the fraternity you were pretty much guaranteed to like get a bit at that point

And you were making it to the end, your new beginning. Until I didn't. My friend's text started coming in for that party and as sad as this sounds, I literally waited by my phone looking for this text. And I waited and I waited and I waited. And I even acted as if I got the text from this party with around those friends because I didn't want to tell them that I didn't. And that's like super awkward and

embarrassing in that moment. And as the time came closer and I still didn't have a text to this party, I just thought the absolute worst. was like, I spent these past couple months getting to know these people that I thought were supposed to be my friends for the rest of college and were gonna be my good friends. And if they all joined this fraternity and I didn't, they would all become best friends and they would just kind of forget about me.

Josh Felgoise (18:45.334)

And it was such a dreadful feeling. And as sad as that sounds and embarrassing as that sounds, like, it was dreadful. Like, rejection fucking sucks. Being rejected absolutely sucks. Like, there's no other way around it. It just fucking sucks. And how you deal with rejection, I believe, says a lot more about you than the person rejecting or the thing that you got rejected from. How did I deal with it? Terribly. I was so upset about this. I was like really just anxious about

losing all the friends that I had just made for three months or so and just not feeling like I was in a good place or that I set myself up well for the rest of this year or the rest of my college experience because of this, these couple things that led to like a couple downfalls, like one, the fight with the roommate. The other thing was the leaving that friend group and the last straw was me not getting into the fraternity that all my other friends were getting in. So three things that really just kind of hit like a bus and I was like, well, I've

I've shit the bed. I did it all wrong. I spent the first couple months of college and I have nothing to show for it. And I had a great time, but like there's nobody there to show for it. And as I said to you before, one door closes, another one opens. And because I got rejected from that one, I was able to then invest more time into other ones. And the best thing I can tell you from those three experiences is that rejection is redirection.

This experience specifically forced me to pick myself back up and find a new path and a new group. And it led me to some of my favorite people that I have ever met. Genuinely. It led me to the people that I am lucky enough to call some of my best friends now. And I am so grateful for that rejection. I think that's why I'm able to come on here and share these things with you that...

even in saying them, like are inherently embarrassing. Like sharing rejection is embarrassing and it's not easy to share that type of thing or put it out for who knows who to hear. But had I not been rejected, I would have had an incredibly different experience. And had I done what I wanted to do and figure out a way to get back on that text list and back in those people's good graces, I would have ended up surrounded by people who did not want to be surrounded by me.

Josh Felgoise (21:09.366)

And how sad would that have been for me? I would have ended up surrounded by people who did not want to be surrounded by me. I want to say that again because that is something that like, I don't think we take into consideration enough. When you get rejected by somebody, that means that they do not want to spend time around you. So why do you want to spend time around them? In my case, I so desperately wanted to spend time with these people and be a part of that, even though they didn't want to spend time with me. Like, why would I want that?

And when I stopped trying to make sure everybody liked me, as it was apparent that was not the case, I had to ask myself the question I keep coming back to, was do I even like them? And why would I want to spend time with people who do not want to spend time with me? So why get anxious and upset about learning such helpful news? These people don't want you, so why are you trying so hard for them to want you? The reason is because I said before is that rejection fucking sucks.

But as I said, rejection is redirection, and that's the only way to look at it. And from this redirection, I was able to spend time and get to know people who I actually really liked spending time with and had a genuine connection with and joined a group of people in a fraternity that I loved and was so excited about, and that is how I made some of my best friends today. And had I tried to force myself into the one that did not even want me,

I would have missed out on such an opportunity to meet such amazing people. I believe that people come into your life freshman year for a specific reason to teach you something about yourself, to teach you how to handle something. Forgiveness, rejection, redirection, decision making. You will in this freshman year experience rejection. You will behave in ways you'll look back at in seven years and still cringe at and wish you had never done. You will make the wrong decision.

You will become friends with people that you may not know for the rest of your life. You will do things you will regret. You will fuck up a lot and you will learn even more. Forgive yourself, learn from your cringe and grow from your mistakes. You won't know all the lessons and takeaways when you're in it. It's literally impossible to do so. But in a few years from now, you'll be able to look back and see how far you've come and how much you've grown.

Josh Felgoise (23:25.152)

I share these three stories not to scare you about freshman year or about what you may experience freshman year and I picked these three moments to share because I think they're some of my defining moments from freshman year and they're the defining moments because they are the ones I've learned the most about myself from and as I said it's impossible to know the moments like these when you're in it. You probably won't even know them for a few years after but when you look back and

realize that some of those moments that you cringe at or are still upset about or make you anxious to think about, that those are some of the moments that you will learn the most from. It's okay to make mistakes, it's okay to fuck up, you are almost guaranteed to do so in the first couple months of college or throughout the first year of college and as you can see I did in threefold or at least fortyfold and

you're expected to because what else do you know you don't know anything in your you're just navigating this on your own and you're doing the best you can with what you know and from those experiences i can guarantee you will learn what to do and you will grow from the mistakes thank you so much listening i said a guy's guide to what should be talked about if you have anything i would talk to me to be talked about any questions for college or anything after college and that anything at all

Send to my email send to my DMs. It's josh at guyset.com j-o-s-h at guis et.com or to my dms at the guy set th e guis et If you like this episode of dead, please give this podcast five stars It's one two, three, four five and leave a review say something really nice or not, whatever Thank you so much for listening and I will see you guys next Tuesday. See you guys