If you've never done your own laundry before, the machines aren't the hard part - it's everything nobody tells you around them. Here's the actual beginner's version.
Sorting, Realistically
The traditional advice is to sort by color and fabric type. In practice, for most everyday clothes, a cold-water wash with a color-catcher sheet handles most loads safely without full sorting - the real exception is anything brand new and brightly colored, which should get washed alone the first time in case it bleeds.
How Much Detergent to Actually Use
If you're using pods, it's one pod per normal load - two only for a genuinely large or heavily soiled load. Liquid detergent is easy to overdo; check the cap's fill line rather than guessing, since too much detergent leaves residue rather than cleaning better.
Read the Tag Before the First Wash
Most clothes are fine on a normal cold cycle, but the care tag will tell you if something needs to skip the dryer - this is the single most common way new laundry-doers accidentally shrink a favorite piece of clothing.
Don't Let Wet Laundry Sit
Leaving a wet load in the washer for more than an hour or two, especially in a shared laundry room, causes a musty smell that's hard to fully get rid of and is also a common source of laundry-room friction with other students waiting for the machine.
Don't Overload the Dryer
Clothes need room to tumble to actually dry - an overstuffed dryer often means damp clothes at the end of a full cycle, not a faster load. If it's tightly packed, split it into two smaller loads instead.
Learn Your Building's Specific System
Most campus laundry rooms run on a card, app, or account balance rather than coins, and machine availability is usually visible through an app if your school has one. Figuring this out once, in your first week, saves a lot of wasted trips later.
A Realistic Frequency
Most students land somewhere around once a week or once every two weeks, depending on how much clothing they brought - there's no correct frequency, just whatever keeps you from running out of the specific things you actually wear regularly.
It takes most people two or three loads to stop feeling unsure about any of this. Nobody's grading you on it.