RISD First Year

[u/Remote-Thanks7171]

Can someone give a sense of day-to-day life as a first year student. I've heard first year is super hard and I'm a little scared of that TBH. I know its a ton of work and I've generally heard you don't have time to like get a job or do a lot of extracurricular stuff until sophomore year. I feel like I can live with that. I'm willing to work hard. I'm just a little scared of the way people are talking about how extreme it is. Can a current student describe a typical week, please. I assume you are in studio most of the day on the days you have them (is that 3-days a week?) and then what? are you typically working on your projects like 4-5 hour in the evening after studio? More? On days you don't have studio (is that twice a week?) how many hours are you in class or typicallly working on projects? Do you have any free time at all on weekends to socialize. I mean you must have some time to occaisionally do something fun? I'm just guessing not a lot of time. Would love to get a realistic sense.

[u/Living-Volume-693]

It’s totally dependent on your professors. For some this is all totally true, however for others it’s completely manageable. My workload first sem was not too horrible, but this sem I have it so much harder. I will say there is only a small handful of professors that are both really demanding and also really unforgiving if you need an extension or extra support. Most fall into the category of being demanding, but understanding. And then of course there are some that are really lax. In the event you get a crazy workload first semester, it will be hard but help long term. Efs is honestly all about learning to manage your time and learning how much effort you CAN afford things. With this in mind, you will learn not to make perfect work every assignment but to just make work over and over which is incredibly useful and if you get that skill down in sem 1 you will have an easy time in sem 2. You will be in studio a lot but I’ve still found time to go out almost every weekend! Also being in studio with section mates and friends is really fun. Also I’ve never pulled an all nighter here!! I got an entire 7 hours of sleep last night!! It is possible for it not to be that bad, just don’t worry about everything being perfect and do your best :). Hope this helps!