I wrote this and mailed it to my little sister before she went away to college way back in August of 2000. I hear it's a good read and hope you enjoy it. I guess this whole thing is Copyright 2000 Matthew Cox. Sorry.
18 things about/to do at/to avoid at college (not an exhaustive list):
- Be Patient.
- Don't Smoke.
- Avoid Credit Cards.
- Avoid College Boys. Avoid them like the plague.
- Study or more so: don't let your friends get in the way of your studying.
- Practice Sexile
- Plan Escape Routes
- Learn About the Wonders of Techology
- Embrace Caffeine
- Beware Drunken college boys.
- Attend Evening mass.
- Avoid The Health Center
- Have Fun With Cabbies
- Screw up, frequently.
- Be nice to the 'rents.
- Be Nice To Family Members, too
- Don't become too cynical
- Have fun
Be patient. With yourself and most everyone you meet. Everyone will tell you "College is the most wonderful years BLAH BLAH BLAH", and "You'll meet the best people BLAH BLAH BLAH." Most of it is crap. Eventually you'll meet great people and eventually it'll turn out to be the best years, but it's not magic. You don't unpack and voila: wonderful time with great people. Most everyone you'll meet is in the same boat as you: nervous, confused, away from home and searching for those damned great people. The worst part is that no one knows where these people are hiding. Actually I'm pretty sure that these great people don't exist, but shit: it turns out that your friends (yes, the same fools who light the bar on fire trying to light a drunken cigarette) can turn into normal, well adjusted people. Who knew!?!
The most important part of this is to be patient with yourself too. You're not magically going to love college, be immediately comfortable, not miss home, and graduate with a 4.0 GPA: it just doesn't happen that way. So banish all of these thoughts form your head. Plan on spending lots of time with your roommate until you meet other people. You'll have some silly idea of trying to be great friends with your roommate. It starts out because the roommate will be the only person you know, and some twisted idea that because you have to live with them that they're required to like you, but it's all a farce. Of course this is a bit different with girls who have some sort of magical same sex bonding thing, but at some point you'll probably come to the conclusion that your roommate is a raving bitch and you'd rather be living with your friend XXX. And this is how you find the next year's roommate. Until the next year when you're living with XXX you find that it's even harder living with friends. And I could go on, but I'll stop.
Now this could turn into some high and mighty "save years at the end of your life" discussion, but it's quite simple: SMOKING IS TOO DAMNED EXPENSIVE!!! Amazingly, when ensconced at a University of Higher Education smoking becomes very cool or some shit. Which is amazing, because everyone knows how horrible it is for you. Seemingly the majority of University students were absent on that day of health class. The biggest rube is that Nursing students smoke like no others!
Smoking turns into this bonding thing between all smokers: "Hey, can I bum a smoke?", "Hey, you got a light?", etc. Realistically it's really just pan-handling for cancer: "Hey, you wanna reach into my lungs and rip out a few alveoli?" Gee thanks.
Besides all this, suddenly you're spending all your money on cigarettes. Borrowing money to buy cigarettes, because even when you're broke: you still have to smoke. So don't even start. Save yourself the jail time when they eventually make smoking illegal.
3) Avoid credit cards. (Not like you're actually going to, but hey it's worth a shot)
AVOID CREDIT CARDS!!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! No, not credit cards!
Ok, enough of being Mom. Credit cards are a part of life. People don't go to the bank anymore. Bank tellers are obsolete. Electronic transactions: that's where it's at. Unfortunately, this makes it even harder for college students. Now you can go to web sites where they'll happily store your credit information so at the click of a button: voila (and this *is* almost magic ;-) you've ordered a life sized replica of the Taj Mahal and you're wondering how you can get it home to give to the 'rents for Christmas, because this way you won't have to look at it everyday outside your dorm mocking you. Unless of course the University decides to make it part of campus and name it after you. Then congratulations: you've become the first person to become a philanthropist entirely on nonexistent money.
Credit cards are good. They're good for emergency use, etc. You'll find hundreds of wonderful applications for the little pieces of plastic. Here's the plan for not screwing up your ability to someday own property (besides the Taj Mahal thing, which turns out to be indestructible): sign up for one of the University credit cards. These cards suck. The percentage rate is computed by observing the trajectory of the phases of the moon, dividing by the rotational velocity of the earth and suddenly it's like 257,000%. This is all fine, because the plan is not to put anything on the card you can't pay for. Pay off your bill every month. Repeat: PAY OFF YOUR BILL EVERY MONTH. This way you never have a balance growing by 257,000% every month. Now, watch your mailbox for other credit card offers. Pick the best one. This normally means no annual fee, and a APR around 13-15% (unfortunately you'll have to read the 6pt size text on the *back* of the credit card application, those tricky credit card companies). Sign up for one of those, and cancel the other one. Repeat the same plan with this card. Eventually you'll end up with a Platinum Card with an $11,000 limit and an APR of 5%. Which of course means it's cheaper to charge 50% of your new car on your credit card than to get a car loan, but loans are a subject for another day.
4) Avoid college boys. Avoid them like the plague.
This one is really self explanatory. I'm your big brother damn it and I can make my way to visit you and break some legs. So if you like the guy: save him the hospital bill.
5) Study or more so: don't let your friends get in the way of your studying.
Now chances are that you'll most likely have a relatively normal roommate. When compared to my freshman year roommate: is almost everyone in the world. Which means you'll probably have someone who is actually interested in doing some real work and not just distracting you from doing yours. This is all well and good, but realistically there are going to be some times when there is a conflict for doing work. The key is very early on figuring out how you best get your work done. Whether at the library, in your room with head phones on, whatever. Once, you've figured this out: find a backup place where you can still do work your way. Be prepared to take refuge there to get things done. Don't let some "friend" get in the way of studying for your Physics final.
Well, this goes back to number 4, but find a friend or some place where you can go sleep when your roommate has her boy friend visiting whom she hasn't seen in X number of hours/days/weeks/months, whatever. This way you can be rested in the morning rather than having pretended to be sleeping all night. This of course works to your benefit too: you can always sexile your roommate if you've made the effort for her. Of course, since I would have to kill the guy anyway, you might want to have as many people there as possible to try and stop me.
When attending an underage drinking party: always case the joint before you are too drunk and find an escape route. This way if the cops bust up the party, you can be happily headed out the back ally rather than calling your roommate to bail you out of jail. Make sure to remind whomever is hosting the party that it is their duty to throw themselves at the mercy of the police so everyone else can escape.
8) Learn About the Wonders of Techology
Befriend someone with a computer and printer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, "XXX University has the most technologically advanced computer labs." Well that doesn't help you when the lab printer is broken the night before a paper is due or doesn't open until after your morning class where you have to print out the assignment given the previous day.
Carry a floppy and probably a zip disk. Keep them formatted for PCs. Remember: Macs can read PC disks, but PCs can't read Mac disks. This way you'll be able to use your disk on any machine.
If find yourself relying on floppies often: use a new one every couple of weeks. Floppies don't stand up to much abuse or even frequent use. When you've used one floppy for an entire semester and it suddenly loses your final paper: don't say I didn't warn you. Don't save things on the lab machine either. When it crashes and then removes all the files stored on the desktop as part of the lab computer maintenance, and that's where you saved your paper: I also warned you.
Even more important: befriend some computer geek. They'll be able to help you when you've royally screwed things up. As they're socially inept: they're likely to accept some caffeine as a reward for their services.
If you think you've got a caffeine thing now: ha, just wait. Caffeine is the nectar of the gods. When you notice that your heart has been palpitating and you've had the shakes for a couple of weeks: it's time to stop taking the little white caffeine pills.
10) Beware Drunken College Boys.
Ok, this one is even more important than the previous one: don't trust drunken college boys. They'll say most anything to convince a girl to do most anything, but doubly so when they're drunk. Don't trust them to take you home when you're drunk: that's the oldest trick in the book. Remember "cooler heads than your's have *not* prevailed." Common sense is not enough. Shit happens. Try not to be on the recieving end too frequently.
Be prepared to be doped at least once by a college boy. It happens. Just make sure that you don't screw up too royally. Try not to spend months obsessing about a one time thing, because chances are he's already forgotten.
The boon of a semi-religous college student is the late mass. There's no way you're getting up for 10:30 mass, when you were out partying until 2 am Saturday evening. Find out when the absolutely latest mass is and plan on attending after sleeping off your hangover...until you realize that you have a big paper due on Monday morning that you haven't started and then resign yourself to going the next week. When the cycle will repeat.
See how easy it is to fall out to a church-going routine? Scoff now, but it will happen and unfortunately no matter what your parent/grandparents think: there's always time to get back into church, but there is hardly ever time to finish your Calculus homework or to retake a class.
Avoid the University Health Center. Most campus based health centers have some atrocious, but unfortunately well deserved nickname along the lines of: "The Death Center", "The Spanish Inquisition that is Health Services", etc. You will probably be able to observe the following tried and true patterns of University health:
- Mis-diagnosis. It doesn't matter how many symptoms of some illness you have: you'll always get some antibiotics and a talk about how to avoid mononucleosis by not sharing drinks and/or cigarettes with your college buddies.
- Pregnancy. If you are a woman: you'll always be accused of wanting a pregnancy test. You could wear a chastity belt, but the health services worker will undoubtedly accuse you of handing out lots of spare keys and try to put you on the pill.
- Student staff. Health centers are seemingly staffed entirely by interns and co-op students. Plan on seeing lots of people you've spent time in class with. Practice not being embarrassed when you asked to disclose your symptoms to someone you sat next to in class last semester.
Of course, the health center is always a great source of free contraception. This is something that is good to know "just in case."
Memorize the numbers for various cab companies. This way you always can call and get yourself (or some drunken friend) a ride back to campus.
If you know several numbers: this allows you to participate in the oft envisioned, but scarcely mentioned "Survival of the Fittest" cab lottery. This is a basic tenet of evolutionary theory. Why not apply it to your daily life and make Mr. Geelan proud. Call all the cab companies you know. Tell them all you want a pick up and whichever cab shows up first wins the "right" of transporting you home. Of course you want the fool who managed to managed to drive fastest to your location without killing himself responsible for transporting you home. This can turn into a roller coaster ride for the inebriated.
The cab companies don't want you to know of this little excercise in evolution, because it means that there's a chance that their driver will show up and there will be no pickup. Realistically you're doing them a favor, because if you're leaving a big party and need a ride home: then most likely some other fool will need the same shortly and the cabby won't have to drive as far.
Ok this one is weird, but no matter how much information I pack into this "inspirational" message: you're going to tastefully ignore most of it. It's the nature of young and headstrong individuals. Nevertheless, I'm determined to have you look back at this when you're finishing college and say "Gee, if only I had listened to my wonderful older brother. He had it right all along." ;-) So screw up: it's the only way you're going to learn that I was right.
This is hard on them too, and it's not all about you. That's hard to realize now, but you'll become older and wiser and turn into one of those aforementioned "great" people and realize what a great job that they've done with you. And then before you know it, you'll be thinking about the insanely impossible task of having to be remotely as good with your own children, and realize what a mind fuck that is.
Of course this is really hard to think about when you want to stay out with your friends the first time you come home and they want you to sit at home, but indulge them some.
16) Be Nice To Family Members, too
Plan on being even more annoyed by the rest of the family and extended family the first time you come home. Concoct a message that covers all the bases: how are classes? the roommate? the food? the alcohol? Oops. No one will ask you that, but you'll wish they would: because you'll have lots to say about that.
No matter what, it'll be in your best interest to be patient. They just want to watch out for you and everyone will have advice. Listen or feign listening, because they know, just as I do, that you have actually no intention of taking any of the advice proffered. If people learned from the mistakes of the people who give them advice the world would not be in the state it is.
It's really easy to become cynical at college. Think about it: if these fools that you're drinking with, the ones with a final in the morning who are lighting the bar on fire, are the future of the free world then shit: you better avoid the rush and turn Commie.
Don't get too into history and become depressed by the fact that the world is repeating all the stupid shit that's happened previously. The rest of the world ignored the advice of their elders too.
Most importantly, be your own person and do the stuff that *you* want to do. Don't let someone else decide what you're going to do and enjoy, because college is the best blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Yatta yatta yatta yatta yatta yatta yatta yatta yatta yatta yatta yatta yatta yatta yatta yatta yatta. 100010010011001001001001001 00110011001001010011 0010 01010011001001010011 001001010011001001010 0110010010 100110010010 1001100100101 00110010010.