To My Freshman Book Blogger Self: 5 Things I Wish I Had Known

Hi guys!

With the start of a new school year tomorrow (yay for college move-in day!!!), there's no better time to sit back and reminisce. It's not my first year in college anymore, but I decided to reflect and give my past self five tips that I wish I had known before starting my freshman year of college. And of course, since this is a book blog, I geared all of those pieces of advice towards blogging and reading -- because trust me, when I got to school, I was totally thrown and hadn't expected half of the things that ended up happening to me and the blog. 

So without further ado, here are five things I wish I had known about reading and blogging before starting my freshman year of college!

1. You will read wayyyy less books than you think. Don't pack 500.

Sitting in your room reading a book sounds like a good idea until all of your friends are hitting the city or spending the night gossiping over greasy fries at a nearby diner. You're going to be reading a lot less than you think, so only bring one or two books. As guilty as you may feel, it's okay to put down the book and go spend time with your friends -- in fact, it's encouraged. Your book will be there for you when it's 4am and the rest of the building is hushed with sleep -- but for the moment, go out and spend time with the other people who are taking this college journey alongside you.

2. Similarly, you will be taking a lot more trips to bookstores than planned. Bring lots of money.

I've mentioned before that I go to school in New York City, which means, of course, that I am constantly falling victim to sales at The Strand and the Brooklyn Book Festival. Although I was bummed to have gone to school with so few books, I ended up buying so many when they were so affordable and so readily available to me. So it ended up being a good thing that I didn't bring so many books with me -- but I ended up coming home with a large amount anyway! If you can't find any of the good sales, check our Earnest for an option for low interest personal loans. Perfect way to get the books you need for your classes!

3. Your posting schedule will slow down a lot, but that's okay -- your blog isn't the only one.

Before I went to school, we used to be posting once a day (every day!) on the blog. But once my reading time slowed down and I was constantly bogged down by classes and homework and studying, I found it a lot harder to put together posts and I felt really out of touch with the book community. I was even having trouble doing Waiting on Wednesday posts because I hadn't checked the blog Twitter in awhile because I didn't have any free time. The bottom line was that I felt really out of touch and didn't have any time to get anything done, I started to panic and felt like a failure as a blogger. But then I saw that there were other college bloggers that were struggling with this problem and working their way through it, and I realized that I wasn't totally alone in this situation. Which ended up being super calming when I wasn't the only one struggling. 

4. You will meet more bookworms on your vast campus than you ever knew in your small hometown. (Nobody knows the science behind it. Life just kind of works out that way.)

Back in my hometown the only big readers I knew were my co-bloggers, but once I got to school, it was such a breath of fresh air to meet so many people that read the books I did and knew the authors I was talking about, and they even followed our blog and got involved and became a part of the book community. I felt more at home in my school's book community than my hometown's, which was honestly so surprising, but amazing, of course!

5. You will be given so many incredible opportunities in your dream field that you would never expect. Take them all -- some might even end up benefiting your blog.

Similarly to me saying I was shocked to find other readers at my school, I was also surprised by all of the opportunities I was given in the publishing field at my school. For example, this summer we were given the opportunity to read Ask The Passengers by A.S. King, and now in the fall she's going to be running several writing workshops at my school. This past year I also had the opportunity to meet tri-lingual writer through our foreign language department and I got to go to a lecture where he talked all about this multiple writing processes and his travels throughout the world, which totally blew my mind. I never thought I'd get opportunities like that at my school -- especially since we weren't a big English school -- but I was pleasantly surprised.

So those are the five pieces of advice that I wish someone had told me before I started my freshman year of college as a book blogger. While I hadn't had these tips outright, I was fortunate enough to be part of a groupchat with other college bloggers on Twitter where we were all able to talk about things such as blogging/reading in college, going to book events, life and blogging after graduation, etc. It has been a super amazing resource that I'm super grateful to have had the opportunity for.

(If you're a college blogger and would be interested in joining our college blogger group Twitter DM -- which has been super helpful! -- just follow us on Twitter at @thebookbratz and shoot us a Tweet asking to join!)

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some more packing to do -- which includes having to select only a handful of my favorite reads to take with me. :'(