I'm a current freshman nursing major. My college has about a 10,000 person student body, and my major has about 160 freshmen.
The only club that I am really active and interested in is my school's student nurse organization. I signed up for other clubs, but their meetings are almost always when I am in late-night labs or times that are completely inconvenient for me.
I commute a half hour to and from school. I'm paying for my own education, and I did not want take out $12k in student loans to fund living in the dorms for one year (my tuition, including fees, books, and miscellaneous expenses for my major, is less than $15k) when I could stay at home for free. Quite frankly, my college is not commuter friendly, and it adds extra stress to my day (an hour each day is essentially wasted getting to and from school), but I love not having to deal with the dorm drama a lot of people in my major are having and being available for my family.
I really enjoy the extra freedom given with college. Professors do not care if you have to miss class -you're still paying their salaries through your tuition- or leave class early. Unlike at my former high school, nobody is going to care about where you are 24/7, or what you are eating, or whether you are studying or not.
Personally, I have a huge pet peeve about being uninformed at my university. I know a few professors in my major love giving vital information (such as addendums to a syllabus) to only one section of a specific course and not say anything to the other sections. The other sections soon hear of the information through word of mouth, and a boatload of confusion, cramming, and panic typically occurs. For instance, I need to complete a simulation lab for one of my nursing classes. There are two professors who teach different sections of the class. My major's department gives access to the simulation lab's appointment center to the other professor's students two weeks earlier than my professor's students. We don't find out about this error until a week later, when people in the other class are discussing their simulation lab times. By the time that we finally have access to the book our simulation lab times, all the good spots were taken, and many of us have to skip a class in order to fit in our simulation lab (when our department urges us to not skip class due to a simulation lab). Of course, it only gets worse when another class's professor changes the next exam date to the day some of my friends have to skip that class in order to attend the simulation lab.
Don't make the same mistake I did. When classes first start, it'll seem like you have a ton of free time on your hands. You should be using that time to study (readings are killer), or you're going to be frazzled beyond compare when you try to cram 15 weeks of material for five different classes two weeks before finals begin. Right now, I'm living purely on coffee and waiting until my finals are done (I will have two months off from classes after finals).