Sunday Comix (tips for surviving at college)
2002-09-21 - 3:26 p.m.
"Jason, I hope you're learning something from us...you can get old, but don't ever grow up." -DonB (paraphrased)
I've been in college for a year now, and my high school for two years was college-like enough to almost count. This is not to suggest that I know anything about dorm life, and this is not to say that I am a paragon of dorm life survival. The following pointers on college are therefore meant as a source of entertainment only. Originally, I wanted to do 'the top ten tips for surviving college' and I suppose I could have...but the others would have been obvious things that pertain more to life choices and not to a person's adjustment to the college enviroment itself. Some of these things would have been about not stealing, realizing when people are uncomfortable (and when they're pist at you for leaving the light on while they're trying to sleep), realizing when someone is trying to sell you something or lying to you, and understanding why it doesn't make sense to tell the RAs that your roommate smokes weed. To reitterate (again), a lot of what you do at college invoves developing your ability to develop freindships and deal* with people; things that you will likely use just as often after college as in it.
1. One of the biggest complaints I've heard from incomming freshmen is that they can't seem to find anyone to hang out with. Of course, when they give a glance to what they do in a day, they realize that the majority of their not-sleeping-not-eating time is spent chatting online with their highschool buddies. Break this monotony early on, because later in the year people aren't going to be as open to meeting new people (and neither are you). 'See, you know that you're a cool person once people get to know you (ask anyone who's known you for a while if you need validation). So, all that remains is to meet people. And I've found that a good way to meet people, a little at a time, is to make a playlist on your local mp3-playing software, and include the song 'closing time' by Semisonic. Here's the kicker...when the song comes on, you go to some area frequented by other people...could be a computer lab, a lounge, the freakin' mailroom. And while there (or while tooling around town) make an honest attempt to meet someone (or a group of someones).'** Of course, if you're not into alternative, there's always other songs, other CDs. It's the promise to yourself that counts. If you're a commuter, you don't necesasrily have the ability to do this, but on the other hand you don't have the same type of attatchment to the campus that a dormie does. So instead, whenever you're on campus, make an effort to meet someone, just one person a day.
2. Don't be everyone's friend (making enemies can be fun too). This one should be self-explainitory, but I'll elaborate because of my particular audience. To put it another way, there are a lot of fish in the sea, and they don't all deserve your personal attention. I'm sure that many people in college would agree with me that it's more important, while at college, to find out who you are than to be popular...this is one of those important realizations on the cobblestone path of the-self-proclaimed-quality-called-'maturity'. If you try to be a freind with too many groups of people, they will likely have some sort of conflict that will put you in the middle of it and cause you to lose loose friends. In fact, although it seems silly, you'll start getting into conflicts with people that you don't even know, because they detest you for being friends with so-and-so AND such-and-such, and they'll be pist because of how close you are to enter-name-here and they'll be misserable becasue they think they'll never be able to have that type of relationship with repeat-name-here, and you'll be pist at yourself because you suddenly have no time for anything besides friends-and-enemies-and-friends games, and haven't studied for that big test. You clearly have the facillities to find out for yourself which groups of friends you like hanging around with most, and have the rationalization to realize what effect a certain type of group has on you (druggies for example), and it's more fun to have a few accomplices than a mob anyhow. Spread the love mann, but be careful about spreading it too thin.
3. Get your kicks. For many people, college is the end of the Crayon (TM) line and the begining of the assembly line (assuming they graduate). For the rest of your life, you'll be expected to wake up on time to get to work on time, and expected to pay your bills and go to war under the corrupt orders of a president you didn't vote for. That's just the way things are. But while you're in college, you have the freedom to do and be whatever you want, and may even be able to do some things on the excuse 'yeah, but I'm a poor crazy college student'. So use this window of time for what you can, and build yourself into someone/something worthwhile, someone that you can live with for the rest of your life. To illistrate: when someone asks what sort of music you listen to, don't just say 'all of it'. That's rude and doesn't answer the question they're really asking, which is 'what type of person are you, today?'. Tell them what you like, band for band for song, and what lego blocks (as a child, of course) you liked to use most to build castles in the plastic world of your mind. And listen to what they have to say. A very important part of seeing what you are involves observing other people (and if you don't listen to people they're not going to want to talk to you as much, but some very reputed trapped-in-their-personal-thinktank scholars believe this to be a technicality). So, specify yourself...and don't be offended when people give you a name like 'that guy with no eyeborws', because then you'll be put into the smaller pigeon-hole of 'that guy who has no eyebrows and can't take a joke'.
4. Find room to breathe. In and out. In. Out.Wake up early or go out late at least once a week to get some fresh air (sitting outside or running, whatever). Get some exersize...not because it'll make you look better and add to an already-dangerous level of anorexia, but because it'll make you feel better, psycho-chemically/biologically speaking. It'll be easier to learn the information required for all your classes and easier for you to utilize that fitness when the shuttle stops running at midnight and you need to walk back to campus. In, out. Relax. Chill. Find a place, a special place somewhere not too far away, where you can do nothing more than exist, and use it to think about things independantly of others (for most people their room will not work for this purpose because they are getting calls on their phone, and drunk people outside are making noise, and their roommate kicks them out to get it on with the girl of the hour). It may be particularly hard to breathe in your room if your best friend is also your roommate, as some inexperienced people are apt to arrange, because this person is not going to understand that sometimes people just need to be by themselves, for sanity's sake. While this situation (living with your best friend) does work out sometimes, it is thought (generally) to put undue stress on the freindship, and sometimes threatens the basic trust that one roommate should have with the other(s). To further clarify: a friend is a type of relationship, and a roommate is another. Friends are the people that you complain to about your roommate's activities, just to get it off your chest because you know it's not worth talking to your roommate about (or mentioning it will do no good).
5. Show a genuine interest(s). This is probably the most important of the five. By finding what stuff you like to learn, and at least getting a basic education in the others (enough so that you know you don't like to learn about it) you will notice yourself getting involved into things that you wouldn't have normally thought possible, or never would have thought of at all. Professors may ask you to come in for special projects in your field, techers may give you a little extra help/work to help you learn extra material. Peers will be delighted in your dedication to something that they are also dedicated to (i.e. sports, late-night running, shopping, role-playing, dancing, etc.) And it's almost too easy.
*Here, I intentionally refrained from saying 'get along with', because some people, as you will read, do not need to be gotten along with. Some people need a good ol' fashioded black eye.
*This quote was from an e-mail to Lucy, detailing my theory for the third time. (*This* is the fourth edition.)
