Dear LEAP Freshmen of 2016,

First off, congratulations on getting accepted to the best university in all of PA. Here in the Happy Valley we are exactly that, happy.  I want to tell you guys that your summer will be awesome, you will make a ton of great friends, and learn a ton of new things. You’re going to experience what it’s like to actually live and survive on your own. LEAP will help make these adjustments a lot easier. Through LEAP I’ve developed a solid group of friends and met some other great people. You’ll experience what it is like to meet all new people and how to develop your relationships with those people.

College is nothing like high school I can assure you that. Okay now stop jumping around from excitement from me saying that. College is honestly a blast, you finally get to take classes that you find interesting and take classes that you want to take. How exciting is that? Not only do you get to take all those awesome classes that you find interesting, but with LEAP you get to have your classes with the same people and further develop your relationship with them. Another thing that is vastly different from high school is the workload. Work in high school was mainly work that you did just because the teacher told you to. Go ahead and say yes to that, I know it’s true you can’t lie to me. In college though, this work is actually interesting. You’ll be tasked with researching a certain topic and writing an analysis on your research, or you’ll be going out interviewing people about some really interesting topics.

Finally, going from living at home with your parents to living on your own is a big change. Trust me. You’re going to miss your friends, your family, your pet, your going to miss everything about summer, but hey coming to Summer Session is totally worth it. The biggest thing you need to know coming in though is that you need to work ahead and budget your time. Please don’t wait till the night before to write a paper, it doesn’t work. Working ahead will make your life so much easier I promise. While everyone else is stressing out about how much they have due the next day you can be stress free and have the freedom to do what you want that night. Just please remember that before you think about not starting a paper.

So, congratulations on getting into Penn State, this will be the best summer of your life so far so go out and enjoy yourself. But, remember that you are a student here first, that means that you are working toward your future and you determine how that starts and ends.

Best of luck! We are…

Andrew Ramirez