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9 Don’ts and Do’s for your First Year at College. Real Advice From a Rising Sophomore

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Chappaqua-September-44

By Sarah Jane Weill

1. Don’t: Bring your whole closet

Don’t get me wrong, clothes are important. I love all my clothes, so I know how hard it is to choose your favorite clothing items. But when you go to college, you have to make hard decisions like this. Put it in perspective: there really isn’t space in your tiny dorm room to store your entire wardrobe. If you’d rather not have to store socks in your desk drawers and sweaters under your chair, remember to pack selectively.

2. Don’t: Skip over that obscure Art History class

Or whatever class’s course description makes you want to run in the other direction. It may sound weird, but take a chance and sign up for it. Sometimes the best classes are the ones that have nothing to do with your major. Maybe this class will open up your mind, maybe it’ll be a good conversation piece 20 years from now or maybe it’ll give you a good laugh; but either way, it’s an experience that might really be worth having. After all, college is about learning, isn’t it?

3. Don’t: Send emojis as a form of communication to your professor

We all know that texting wouldn’t be texting without the use of emojis. But emailing your professor is not the same thing. It is, in fact, a more serious task. This means using full words (text lingo can be confusing, TBH), proper grammar, capitalization and no emojis. If you’re worried about writing out your thoughts only in words, relax, it’s not as hard as you think. So, save the emojis for your BFFs who will think they are cute and funny, unlike your professors. (Got it? *winky face, *smiling face, *thumbs up)

4. Don’t: Make doing laundry harder than it has to be

Ok, I’m going to say this once and only once: detergent pods are your friends. Let’s be honest here, odds are doing your own laundry is not something you are particularly used to, and you might be a little bit hesitant before doing your first load. But after putting it off week after week, the only clean clothes you have left are two mismatched socks and a pair of jeans. Don’t freak out! Avoid the classic rookie mistake (putting in too much detergent) and simply use pods; all will be well!

5. Don’t: Overdo it when buying your school paraphernalia

You have four years to don your school colors, and just as many years to stock up on all the necessary spirit-wear items. So you don’t have to go buy up the whole store on the first day. Instead, limit yourself to one sweatshirt, maybe one t-shirt too. But that’s it. You don’t need a complete set of school logoed socks, so put them down! Remember this isn’t only about money: there’s that whole space issue again (see above on how many clothes will fit reasonably in your room). And at the end of the day, you really just don’t want to be that kid who is your school’s biggest fan.

6. Do: Wait to buy school supplies at the college bookstore

This one probably applies to your mom. She’s been taking you to Staples since you were in kindergarten for that perfect color-coded set of notebooks, folders and binders at the beginning of the year, and she’s reluctant to give up this tradition. But tell her it has to be done. You don’t need to do all that shopping at home because there’s a huge school bookstore with all the supplies you could ever want. If your mom is really distressed over this change, you can let her shop there with you! Crisis averted.

7. Do: Use textbooks as more than a giant paperweight

They’re heavy, they’re huge, and you might be thinking: “who cares?” But, believe it or not, textbooks hold a vast range of knowledge that most likely will be useful to you at some point. I’m not advocating carrying them everywhere you go; that’s just not realistic. Just make sure you open them every once in a while (cough, cough: exams!) If you’re feeling really ambitious, I’d advise skimming your weekly assignments so that you might understand your professors’ lectures.

8. Do: Take deep breaths when the wifi is slow and Netflix isn’t loading

It’s your worst fear, and, yes it happens. Sometimes it’s the weather, and other times it’s just the amount of people online, but sooner or later the wifi will be down. Of course you’ll be watching Netflix, because you’re “taking a break from work.” But without that almighty power connecting you to the worldwide web, that little loading wheel will just spin to your utter irritation. Don’t panic. This will end. Try, if you can, to look at the bright side: instead of watching another episode of Friends maybe you can catch up on some well-needed sleep. Or you can just keep waiting. And waiting. And waiting. And Waiting.

9. Do: Make sure you convince your parents that you miss them more than your dogs

This is crucial, for obvious reasons. No explanation necessary.

Sarah Jane Weill is a rising sophomore at Bowdoin College.

Community Matters: Mindful Advice on Conflict Resolution

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mywayBy Jodi Baretz

Conflicts can be personal, community-based, global. They can cover all sorts of topics and divide us in a variety of ways. Conflict is part of the human condition, and, while inevitable, is healthy and normal too. However, just as we all experience conflict in different and unique ways, so too do we go about resolving our issues using a variety of methods and manners. Often, it is not the conflict itself, but the resolution process that determines the outcome and impacts our ongoing thoughts and feelings.

Gathering ideas from different viewpoints can be informative and helpful. Town meetings and, more recently, social media are great ways to share ideas and come together; however, there are challenges as well. Emotions and tensions can run high at the meetings, and words and posts can be misconstrued on social media.

Social media is a wonderful resource, but it can also be a place where tension and conflict arise. Local online forums (whether Chappaqua, Armonk, Mount Pleasant or others) reflect community interest in a range of helpful to hot-button topics such as coyotes, community pools, dog curbing, train track crossings and future developments like that of Chappaqua Crossing. It is wonderful that we all have opinions, but pausing to think about how we express them is critical.

When we respond too quickly, based on emotion, we often regret it. Creating space between stimulus and response can make a huge difference. Victor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, writes: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.” Before you respond to conflict, you may want to stop and ask yourself–am I being clear and respectful? What am I really reacting to here? Is it the issue itself or is this personal? When have I felt like this before? Craig Ferguson, late-night host and comedian, had this to say on communicating with his ex-wife: He asks himself, “does this need to be said, does this need to be said by me, does this need to said by me right now?”

The ability to create space sounds great in theory, but in the moment can be difficult to attain. It takes a lot of practice and we are always a work in progress. Personally, I work on this through meditation and mindfulness, but still have moments where I forget to pause. Just recently, I reacted to a situation, without the pause, and ended up hurting someone I care about and regretting my actions. After apologizing, I immediately tried to use this experience as a way to understand myself and uncover what triggered me. Even though it was a less than ideal response, it was an opportunity to examine my behavior in a compassionate non-judgmental way, understand that I am human and that I make mistakes. Hopefully, this will lead to growth, healing and forgiveness, and it won’t happen again.

We all have different triggers depending on our past experiences and how we were raised. People can have varying reactions to the exact same stimulus. We tend not to be open to new ideas and beliefs and only really “see” the ones that we agree with, what we already know to be true. If we can drop our ego when conflict arises, and try to understand what exactly we are reacting to, as well as the other viewpoint, we will be more effective at coming to a resolution. Understanding, rather than accusing, goes a long way in conflict resolution. This does not mean you have to agree with the other side or condone their viewpoint or actions. We are usually protecting something that means a lot to us when we are fighting for it; for example, it is likely that a wildlife conservationist and small dog owner will have different opinions regarding the coyotes in our midst. Opening to what the other person is fighting for can really help with reaching a compromise. It will make you more effective in your position. Can we learn to see our experiences through a wider lens?

When we engage in conflict and get angry at others, it often results in stress and inner turmoil. We want to get our point across, but when we fight, we end up harming ourselves. We may feel wronged, disrespected, misunderstood, but holding on to anger and hostility can affect us more than our adversary. I tell my clients to try to let things go and forgive selfishly. Nelson Mandela once said, “Resentment is like drinking poison and hoping it kills your enemies. “

The open exchange of ideas is what all relationships are built upon. Understanding another’s perspective makes us better leaders and more effective problem solvers. Thinking about why we are triggered by certain issues can be useful, give us insight, and help us respond rather than react. Coming together, we accomplish more; cooperation rather than discord. In the end, we want the same thing, a prosperous vibrant community.

Jodi is a psychotherapist and holistic health coach with a private practice at The Center for Health and Healing in Mt. Kisco. She runs a variety of mindfulness workshops and small groups. Jodi helps “stressed out” adults manage the challenges of daily life and build harmonious relationships with their kids, spouses, bodies and themselves, so they live with more joy, peace and fulfillment.

From Cabin Fever to Spring Fever

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Woman Discovers What Kind of Chair She is

By Janine Crowley Haynes

Ah…spring is finally here, but there’s no denying it was one heck of a cold and lonely winter. However, with the help of social media, I survived. Uploading TGIF photos of my dog wearing a Hawaiian lei propped up by a pink mai tai helped to temper my cabin fever. Also, I took up coloring again…as in…coloring in a coloring book. It’s only the first paragraph, so please don’t judge me quite yet.

I know I was not alone in my innocuous endeavors to maintain sanity. Last winter, I noticed a strong uptick of social media postings of crazy cat videos and unlikely interspecies alliances. The Youtube video of the cockatoo feeding individual strands of spaghetti to his canine companion is, not only adorbs, but a metaphorical template for ending world hunger. Also, tagging and sharing anything wine-related was considered a lifesaving ritual that friends did for one another. You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy wine was more than just a platitude; it was a public service announcement for the online adult community. I discovered that the Roman god of wine, Bacchus, is alive, well, and on the internet engineering kitchen faucets flowing with fruity, full-bodied pinot noirs. Now there’s a jobs program. We can build it. We have the technology. Let’s get to work, America.

But nothing kept away my winter blues quite like sipping and clicking. That is, sipping hot cocoa and clicking on the latest online quiz. My index finger robotically clicked on teasers like Let’s Play! and Take this Quiz!.…I mean, come on, who doesn’t want to know what kind of dog they’d be? Most of my friends are golden retrievers and German shepherds. I happen to be a husky, playful but tends to disappear for days at a time. Days is an understatement–I disappeared for an entire winter. I burrowed beneath the frozen layers of snow and nestled warmly in the cyber bosom of self-discovery. I suckled on the teet of BuzzFeed and PlayBuzz quizzes till my belly was full and my mind ripe with fantastical notions of who I really am.

Who knew the definition of an alternative lifestyle could be extended to life as an inanimate object? Isn’t everyone just the slightest bit curious about what piece of furniture they’d be? I’m an upholstered wingback armchair. Translation: I’m comfortably sophisticated and often found next to fireplaces. This is how I project myself in the world. It pleases me to know I’m not a beer-stained barcalounger with mystery meat rotting beneath my cushions, begging the question, “Dude, what’s that smell?” Ahem…FYI, I’ve been tested and actually smell like lavender which makes people feel relaxed in my presence. This is consistent with my purple aura results. Defining myself by my hue is not shallow–it’s cool and pairs nicely with my hippie name, Blossom, and my musical note, G.

Interestingly, from the countless hours of quiz taking, a pattern definitely emerged. A pattern of relaxed 
sophistication, and I’m comfortable with that label. Speaking of labels, PlayBuzz told me if I were a suit, I’d be Jennifer Aniston’s Gucci scarlet red tuxedo–shirt optional. This is serendipitous because I also got Rachel in Which Friends Character Are You? quiz…and…and…I scored Bradley Cooper as a celebrity husband, who was Jen’s onscreen hubby in the movie He’s Just Not That Into You….Crazy, right? Not me, silly, my results. Coincidence? I think not. Jen and I are practically twins.

Sure, I could’ve spent the winter baking decadent red velvet cupcakes, which PlayBuzz reveals is my confectionery makeup, but nothing fed my soul quite like esteem-building scrumptious morsels of self-discovery. The brilliance of these quizzes is that you can never really be wrong, only alike or unalike from your friends’ results. For example, invisibility and flying–both awesome superpowers, just different. Cinderella and Elsa–equally respectable Disney princesses, just different journeys.

So, I’d say this winter, albeit long, was kind of a productive cerebral season for me. I’ve come away with plenty of insights, at least, enough to write this bizarro essay. Now that it’s spring, I can head back into the woods for my daily walks fully aware of what kind of woodland creature I’d be. After reading this, you might be thinking I’m a real piece of work, and you’d be correct. I happen to be the famous painting At the Moulin Rouge because, like Toulouse-Lautrec, I seek out alternative crowds and, apparently, alternative thinking. What piece of work are you? Go to PlayBuzz and take the quiz!  

Janine Crowley Haynes is the author of My Kind of Crazy–Living in a Bipolar World.

Latch-Key Love (Thanks, Mom!)

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hand-key-pixBy Dan Levitz

When I was in first grade, my Mom went back to work and informed me that I would be coming home to an empty house two days a week. She assured me that she’d be 20 minutes away by car and would come home immediately if I ever needed her. She gave me a house-key tied to a shoe-string and put it around my neck. She told me that if I didn’t lose it she’d upgrade the string to a silver chain before long. The only time she ever actually had to come home was when I fell off my bike, and, by then, the string had progressed to a gold-filled chain. Years later, a father to small children myself, I asked her if she was out of her mind having a six-year-old come home to an empty house. She replied with absolute certainty, “I knew you could handle it.” She was right, and I believe that experience nudged me in the direction of being an independent person.

In 6th Grade, our teacher assigned a 50-page term report about a specific country. This was way beyond anything I felt I could ever accomplish. 
I knew I’d have to write a lot of words about Japan but, beyond that, I had no clue. We had almost the whole year to work on it and, literally the night before it was due, I approached my Mom, handed her my wildly chaotic and disorganized notes and asked her to turn them into at least 50 typed pages, single-spaced please. At the time, I couldn’t really understand the pained expression on her face, but I clung to the fact that months earlier she’d said she’d type it. It never occurred to me that she might have needed more notice. My grade wasn’t great, but 
I’ll never forget that she stayed up most of the night typing for her 
screw-up son.

Just as high school began, along with all new freshmen, I was evaluated by the school speech therapist who quickly determined that I needed to come see him three times a week to work on my serious speech impediment. Throughout my entire education this had never come up. Terrible penmanship? Sure. Sloppy work-habits? Absolutely. However, I had always thought that my ability to enunciate was one of my few natural gifts. That this professional, who, I might add, happened to lisp himself, so fervently believed that I needed to work with him was horribly upsetting. As I was self-conscious to begin with, and now terrified, I told my Mother about the situation and she said quite calmly, “He’s out of his mind; you have my permission to not go at all.” That was enough for me. I never went to see him, and, although he did become something of a nemesis, the welcome support from my Mom enabled me to defy that particular authority figure (which was not a natural thing for me to do back then).

In college, I was amazed at how some of my peers were just going berserk with new-found freedom–crazy over-indulgent behavior that sometimes evolved into self-destruction. 
I was having a great time, but didn’t feel drunk with freedom because I had actually been afforded a lot of independence while in high school. No hard curfew and a general policy that, as long as I was responsible, I could pretty much do my own thing. I had friends whose parents would flip out if they weren’t home by midnight. I remember my Mom’s explanation about why she didn’t worry if I was out late, “If something happens to you I’ll hear about.” This was a simple and coolly logical approach; it’s one I may have trouble replicating as a parent, but it worked for her and ultimately was a gift to me.

My Mom was an entrepreneur. She went into business with her kid sister, which is why I sometimes came home to an empty house as a kid. The business lasted for 35 years and, besides my Father, it was clearly the passion of her life. She traveled all over the world in connection with the business, met a myriad of interesting people and forged her own path; this after her previous life of being a doctor’s wife which she found unfulfilling until she went off to work. She’s retired now but she keeps busy wheeling and dealing, happily selling the art, books, jewelry and other collections that she’s so happily accumulated over the years.

I can’t say that my Mom always knew exactly what she was doing as a parent, but I now understand that no parent ever really does. I do know that she’s always seen the best in me no matter what, and that’s not a bad place to start.

Dan Levitz has been a Chappaqua resident for 11 years. Lorraine Levitz, at 88, can most likely be found in Lower Manhattan on her daily two-hour walk.

When it’s Time to Let Go

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On top of the world and it shows!
On top of the world and it shows!

By Benna Strober, Psy.D.

Wikipedia defines a Helicopter Parent as “a parent who pays extremely close attention to a child’s or children’s experiences and problems, particularly at educational institutions. Helicopter parents are so named because, like helicopters, they hover overhead.”

In March 2014, when Ally Dinhofer, my 15-year-old daughter informed me she didn’t want to go back to sleepaway camp, we sat down to devise another plan for her summer. Around the same time, her father was asked to join friends on a trip to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. We discussed it and a decision was made for my firstborn to join her father and a group of 16 other adults on the trip of a lifetime. She was to be the youngest (by seven years) in the group. Who was I to say no to this opportunity for Ally to bond with her dad, experience an awesome climb and, I must admit, create an amazing topic for her college essay? I was very excited for her until her father arrived at my house with an oxygen deprivation tent that would go over Ally’s bed and gradually reduce her oxygen intake while she slept so she could acclimate to the thin mountain air. Panic set it. How could I let her fly halfway across the world to climb 19,341 feet and be deprived of oxygen? I started getting my own shortness of breath. Could my baby, the one who had sleep apnea as a toddler, actually survive? What if she got hurt? Or sick?

Ally and her dad Scott share a moment and a picture they will never forget.
Ally and her dad Scott share a moment and a picture they will never forget.

I overcame my anxiety, somewhat, over the next few months because I knew she would be with her dad and a well-trained staff. When my ex told me he would have a special phone that would allow me to speak with my daughter from the mountain every day I breathed even easier. I was so grateful to hear her voice. I needed to let go.

When your child is heading out the door–whether to sleepaway camp this summer, college come fall or any other “first” without you–it is time to start letting go of the cockpit controls. Realize your role as a parent is to raise your children to become independent people who can navigate their world without you, which also means they make their own mistakes and then actually, hopefully, learn something from them. At what age did/do you stop contacting teachers when they get a bad grade, checking parent portals to then question every missing assignment? What would happen if you actually let them handle some of these experiences, fail and then learn from that failure? I promise they will still love you if you let them do the things they can do for themselves.

When children are younger, parents need to make decisions about what is best for them. For helicopter parents, over time, “best for them” becomes more about what parents think is best and less about what the child wants. Doing everything for your children teaches them to be dependent and have limited internal resources to trust their own instincts and opinions. Yes, teens make mistakes, and some can be quite scary, considering their frontal lobes (the site for the continuing development of decision making skills, impulsivity level, ability to organize and problem solving skills) are still developing. That is where the parenting you did when they were younger hopefully helps them make smart choices. I’m not saying you should just walk away and let them navigate their lives alone. Instead, continue to guide them without hovering overhead 
to swoop in at the first sign of a 
potential problem.

I frequently explain to parents that the teenage years are a time of letting go from both sides. Parents are learning how to let their children become their own individual selves and teens are learning to let go, make their own mistakes but know their parents are there if they need them. Teen rebellion is normal and should be expected to some degree. Depending on how we, as parents, manage the rebellion, can make all the difference.

A teenage girl who comes to my office shared her feelings about her mother’s helicopter parenting. “I know my mom is concerned about me, but when she’s in a bad mood because she’s worried about me it’s time to cut the cord. All it does is stress me out even more!” Listen to these words and remember that while your kids need you and your guidance they also need their space to grow and learn from their own mistakes.

Dr. Benna Strober is a psychologist in private practice in Mt. Kisco, specializing in individual and family therapy with children, adolescents and their parents. She is also the mother of three amazing teenage daughters who make her proud every day. For more information and helpful articles, please visit Dr. Strober’s website at www.Bennastrober.com