LIVING INDEPENDENTLY: College life is what you make of it. It is a way to find who you are and see if you are able to survive independently without parentals. You decide what you will become.
Welcome Freshmeat … er … freshmen.
As a long, long time student allow me to impart some things that I have learned that might help you as you become accustomed to your new settings here at the University.
First, while getting your four- year degree in four years is a worthy goal, don’t be disappointed if it takes, let’s say seven and a half years to graduate. If a lengthly stay in college starts to depress you, keep this in mind, each passing year you get older and wiser, but the freshman girls don’t.
Secondly, on any road that comes anywhere near campus, apparently pedestrians have the right of way.
If you look up and see a car coming and slow your pace or even watch the oncoming car as you cross the street to make sure it slows down, everyone will instantly know you’re a freshman.
The correct method, as demonstrated by the rest of the student body, is to maintain present speed and course and lower your head so that you cannot see an oncoming motor vehicle. We do this because when we have the right of way, even if a car’s brakes were to fail or a driver was distracted by a cell phone conversation, and the car were to hit us, the large metal car would easily crumple under the mighty weight of our body endowed with the mighty powers of the right of way.
Finally, the thing that I have learned in college that I wish I knew when I came here was that the typical incoming freshman is a complete and total idiot. The best way to tell if you’re that typical incoming freshman is if you immediately assumed that you weren’t a typical freshman. If you think you aren’t, then you are. If you think you are, then you aren’t.
For the typical freshman, this is your first time away from home on your own without mommy and daddy there to hold your hand and make sure that you do your homework, go to class or any of the other crap you take for granted.
So you don’t do that stuff , you don’t do class work, you don’t go to class … and suddenly wham bam thank you Sam, you have no one to blame but yourself.
Almost everyone I knew as a freshman did it and so will you. Not that I’m preaching the “after school special” mantra here. I actually think its good thing for you to skip class. Go ahead fail tests. Go ahead and be a complete and total idiot. It’s a good thing!
All you Freshmeat have spent the past 12 years doing homework, studying and other such nonsense because it was all going to pay off some day. Guess what? That day is still far, far away!
It is, however, close enough that it’s time to undo the years of “because you have to” brainwashing that parents and teachers have force fed you. Take a semester and do it your way. Skip class, don’t study, go to class drunk, fill your Aquafina bottle with Vodka and drink in class, or whatever silly rebellious thing you feel like doing. Go ahead get it out (or in) your system.
At the end of the semester, all of the sudden there are consequences and everything you used to “because you have to” suddenly has a real tangible meaning to it.
Granted, for some of you it may wind up being “If I get kicked out school, then I have to live with my parents again and they always check to see if I put vodka in my Aquafina bottle.”
Do whatever it takes to make that transition from abstract goal, to real goal with real consequences.
So to recap my advice to you, freshmen girls are good. Also, playing in traffic is good. Drinking in class also can be good. But don’t combine the last two. That would be bad.
