Having played millions of hands online, I was a bit tepid about playing live. I am primarily a tourney player online, so being the lucky guy I am, I decided on a tourney for my most recent foray into live play. I had played ring poker before, like way before, in the 70's,80's, and 90's, In total only a few hundred hands live before 2010.
Those millions of hands online helped me understand a lot about the game, and only a little (relatively) about the players.
There will be the mechanics of the game, aka etiquette, that will stump you for a while, maybe a few hours. While you will see way fewer hands per hour, you will pacify what you think will be boring with the intense people watching, so hands per hour is not such a good comparison.
Being a college student, you will probably be familiar with people watching. However, typical people watching with friends, where you pin this person one way, and that person another, based mostly on your personal biases, will not serve you well at the poker table. During the rest of the month try people watching alone, aiming at figuring out what that person is into today, right now. It will likely include that the person is just trying to get from point A to point B, but the tricky thing is that word 'just'. You don't just move from A to B, you think along the way. You think about all sorts of things, MOST of those things do not include the travel from A to B. You (and thus they) think about sex, eating, sex, friends, partying, studying, sex, avoiding this guy or gal, and catching a better view of this or that, then more sex, more food, how you feel, should you sleep more, sex......etc...etc.
Instead, focus on figuring out if the folks you are watching are comfortable at the moment. << Is a valuable component of people watching that can transfer to live poker tables.
The lucky guy part of the above is that I live in L.A. with 5 or 6 cardrooms within a short drive (20 miles or less), and multiple tourneys to choose from every day of the week.