- The First-Year Seminar is really an introduction to the academic community of York College for new college students. Students need guidance in making that transition from high school to college and understanding that the college classroom is really a different kinda classroom than the high school classroom. And First-Year Seminar is designed, first and foremost, to help kinda ease that transition.

- Let's go to chapter one.

- First-Year Seminar courses are topics courses. That means that professors are teaching a topic that they're really interested in. Something that they're passionate about, that they wanna share with new college students.

- So do you see how complicated it is to even arrive at an estimate?

- We also talk about how to succeed in college. We talk about how to manage your stress, how to read a syllabus, how to write a college-level paper, how to use the library. One of the best things about First-Year Seminar is that every First-Year Seminar class has a peer mentor embedded in the class. That means this is an upper-division student, a sophomore, a junior or a senior who was in First-Year Seminar themselves and now they're a peer mentor in a First-Year Seminar class.

- So the one piece of advice that I would give is don't be afraid to talk to your FYS fellow whether that's about the school work in your FYS class or in any other class or don't be afraid to ask them about laundry on campus or the dining hall or anything outside of the classroom because that's why they're there.

- The fellows provide additional support to students. Students are sometimes more comfortable reaching out to a fellow than they are to a professor.

- I remember what it was like transitioning from high school to college. I understand that it can be a little bit overwhelming, at York too. If you come from a small school like I did, York can seem so big but it's nice to have someone there on your side to support you, say "Hey, like I understand if you're struggling. "let me point you in the right direction "to get help that you might need."

- So we're gonna focus today on organization, scheduling, setting your priorities and then, of course, goal setting.

- Common Hour is a very special time for first year students where we put on programs and give them information and let them participate in workshops that are all geared towards first-year student success.

- If you then seek out help, they know that you care.

- I think one of the skills I learned was time management because I am a very involved student at school and so I was able to plan out when to do my schoolwork, plan out when to do my extracurricular work and the time management is really key for me in surviving the college life.

- Any other ideas?

- First-Year Seminar is really the first step in understanding that an education really goes beyond your major and your career interests and it's gonna provide skills that will serve you well in all of your college courses, whether they're general education, major or elective courses.

- My best advice to any incoming student into York College is get involved. We have amazing clubs and organizations on campus. Please get involved.

- Tips for incoming freshman. I'll tell you that it's probably not gonna go as you're expecting it to, but that's okay. Students need to learn how to roll with the punches. Things aren't gonna always be easy, but that's part of the process. Part of the journey here at college is learning how to deal with things that you might not be expecting.

- You wanna come outta college being broadly prepared to go in a lotta different kinds of directions and in some regards, First-Year Seminar is really that first step.

- And that's how we designed our First-Year Seminar classes. Together they're progressing towards becoming more competent college students in just their first semester at York College.