Anywhere University, USA

Remember the first semester away from home? This time of year parents who watched their children cross the stage three short months ago are loading pick-up trucks and hauling freshmen off to college.

With that in mind, here's a tool that can help even the shyest new student make a quick transition to college life.

It can be used as a game for clubs or organizations. Or your student can challenge a friend to do it. As a prize, the winner gets to create a silly forfeit for the other person, perhaps something like singing the school fight song at the top of his lungs in the center of the campus.

Anywhere University, USA

1st 2-Weeks Scavenger Hunt

The rules are simple: five points for each item that you accomplish in the first two weeks on campus. Fifty points makes you Campus Champ. If you lose, you get to do something silly which, ironically, is exactly where you began at task #1.

1) Make someone laugh and relax a little by doing something goofy.

2) Bless a professor with an encouraging word. After all, profs have stressful jobs, family responsibilities, and new relationships, too.

3) Find and explore a new building that will be useful to you.

4) Introduce yourself to your advisor now before you need to. Bring that person a pre-thank you gift even before he helps you, just because you know he will help you a lot sometime in the next four years.

5) Tell someone a truth about God that will encourage them.

6) Read the local paper in your school's common area and comment on an article to someone sitting nearby.

7) Ask someone for their perspective on a current event and then just listen.

8) Join a club. Better yet, start a new club.

9) Invite a foreign exchange student out for coffee.

10) Email your mom and tell her she's great and you miss her. (Okay, I confess, this is my favorite thing on the whole list.)

11) Bonus Points: Smile for no reason, like you have a special secret, because if you get the other ten things on this list done then you've already blessed a lot of people and you've only been on campus two weeks, making you a Campus Champion.

All parents plan on extra telephone time that first semester their child is away from home. When a child goes off to college, parents have their own adjusting to do. At the same time, there is something to be said for having the nest all to yourselves again. So parents make their own transition while the freshman adjusts to his new independence.

Give this scavenger hunt to a freshman you know and give an excuse to make new friends. It is sure take a freshman's mind off himself and the adjustment. It allows him to focus his creative energy on others.

By the time a student has made it to the bottom of this list, chances are good that he will have discovered a bunch of interesting people on campus, even after only two weeks. Who knows, maybe he will also know the words to the fight song because he had to sing it in center of campus. Best of all, it will probably lead to some lasting friendships.

Which leads to some other really good advice for freshmen: Don't forget to study!

Cathy Primer Krafve, aka Checklist Charlie, lives with her family in East Texas, except when some of her children go off to college every semester and live on their own. She can be reached at CaeKrafve2@aol.com and welcomes all comments or lists.