Freshman survival guide
Use with: build-website. Resume line when done: Wrote and published an insider's guide site for incoming students — live at {url}
Brief
Everything you wish someone had told you about your school before your first day: which stairwell beats the crowd, which lunch line moves, which teachers assign homework on Fridays, where you can be at lunch. All of it from experience, none of it from the official handbook, which is exactly why an incoming student would read it. Be honest without being cruel; the goal is a guide, and named teachers are people.
Personalize
- Your school. The one you attend, with its specific geography and unwritten rules. A generic guide is worthless.
- What cost you. List the five things you learned the hard way in your first term. Those are the anchor entries.
- Your fact-checkers. Two classmates read the draft: one your year, to catch errors, and ideally one younger, to catch what you forgot needed explaining.
Milestones
- Five tips live at a URL, day one, unpolished.
- Full brain dump written, then sorted into sections that match how a new student's day goes: getting around, food, classes, people.
- A pass for fairness: anything about a named person rewritten to be true and kind, or cut.
- Classmate reviews done; corrections and additions folded in.
- Phone styling, since it will be read in a hallway.
- Shared where incoming students will find it, within whatever rules your school has. Final README.
Done means
- Live URL responding; readable on a phone
- Every tip from your firsthand experience at this school
- Fairness pass done; nothing you would be ashamed to be shown
- Two classmate reviews recorded in the README
- At least 8 commits across at least 5 distinct days, authored by you
- SESSIONS.md has an entry per session, written by you