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Part of acclimating to a new community is learning its “culture”: its inside jokes, its history, its apocryphal tales, and (what I like to call) its Folk Wisdom: “common knowledge” well-known to long-time students, but only spread to freshmen through experience or word of mouth.

As a Michigan student who has learned these things (and had to walk uphill both ways, etc.), I feel that I should let you discover these things yourself. However, as an engineer, I staunchly oppose the practice of leaving things undocumented. Hence this post!

 

You will pack too many things and use almost none of them

Or, as a corollary, “You will pack everything you don’t need and almost none of what you do need.” When I moved in, University Housing provided a long list of things to pack: to their credit, the vast majority of their suggestions were good, but many items simply lay disused in an underbed storage bin or in my closet for the entire year. (They’ve since streamlined their packing list: the modern version, in my opinion, is much more reasonable.)

Things I brought which I didn’t need included:

• A Kensington lock for my laptop
• Rechargeable batteries
• Over-door storage racks
• Desk organizers
• A clothes iron and compact ironing board
• Eating utensils and tableware
• Dish soap and kitchen sponges
• Sticky tack (which didn’t adhere well to the rough plaster walls in Bursley)
• My old AP test review books
• My high school calculus and chemistry notes
• The novel Moby Dick

Things I brought of which I wished I’d brought more (or any at all) included:

• Command strips and command hooks
• A rug
• Any sort of decor. Literally anything. I’d’ve taken anything. Twilight fanart. Sports paraphernalia from rival universities. Bieber posters. Anything.
• 9-volt batteries
• Underwear

 

The unlimited meal plan may promote questionable eating habits

When you live in the dorms, part of your housing costs go towards an unlimited meal plan. This allows you to swipe into any dining hall on campus whenever they’re open. Having swiped in, there are no further restrictions on how much you may eat.

Every dining hall (to my knowledge) comes with a waffle maker. Every dining hall comes with a soft serve ice cream machine.

This discovery prompted me to take my favorite selfie of all time:

 

Despite this, you might still lose weight your freshman year

Moving between classes involves a great deal of Brisk Walking, especially if you have classes scheduled back-to-back. Furthermore, if you don’t manage your time properly, it’s entirely possible that you will simply forget to eat.

I went home to visit my parents over Thanksgiving break. On a lark, I weighed myself on the bathroom scale, only to discover that I had actually lost five pounds.

 

Your semesterly printing balance is a “use-it-or-lose-it” affair

All Michigan students receive (as of the time of writing) a balance of $24 to be used for printing, per semester. At a rate of $0.06 per impression, this translates into 400 pages of letter-sized black-and-white printing. Your leftover printing balance will not carry over between terms.

Due to an administrative quirk, students in the College of Engineering receive a “supplemental” printing balance of $16 per term, as of the time of writing. (This is slowly being phased out, for reasons that will soon become obvious.) Moreover, engineers typically aren’t assigned readings, nor do they need to turn in hard copies of their homework, since homework submission is usually digital.

By the end of my freshman year, I had printed almost nothing. I had nearly $60 of printing left over. And I was tired of lacking dorm room decor.

Did you know that the University offers poster printing?

This isn’t even the worst use of this money that I’ve seen. I wish I’d photographed it, but I have seen students use an entire semester’s allocation on a 6-foot-tall Thinking Guy meme.

I do this every semester.

The most recent version of MPrint literally tells you how many trees your printing has killed. I sometimes wonder if that feature exists because of me.

 

Michigan’s campus is large and open to exploration

This item is less humorous, but it is still sincere. The University of Michigan sprawls across Ann Arbor; it occupies multiple campuses, even before considering satellite campuses like UM-Dearborn and UM-Flint. Only rarely will all your classes fall within the same building, and even then, it’s possible to graduate without having seen many of the school’s most trafficked buildings.

Near Bursley Hall on North Campus lay the Baits Houses. While most dorms on campus are “traditional” in their layout, Baits occupies an odd middle ground between a residence hall and an apartment. (Baits residents have roommates and RAs, but also have private bathrooms.) Each “house” is small, and usually physically separate from houses nearby.

There are two “neighborhoods” of Baits houses: Baits I and Baits II. Only the latter actually houses students; for reasons unknown to me, no student has lived in Baits I in years.

At the end of my freshman year, during that lame duck period after you’ve finished your finals but before you’ve moved out of the dorms, myself and some of my friends decided to “explore” Baits I to learn its secrets.

Of course, because we couldn’t unlock the doors and weren’t willing to trespass on university property, we didn’t learn anything of note.

I’m still glad we went.

Hopefully, I’ve opened up a small window into campus life for you. Part of me worries that I might’ve spoiled the magic, but things change with any living place, especially one as large as the University of Michigan. By the time you get here, there’ll be new snippets of “folk wisdom” to discover for yourself.