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| | What Not To Do, Say, or Bring Your Freshmen
Year of College
by Jenna Glatzer
(College Bound, 1999)
"I will look so pretty in my new school clothes," I thought as I
slid my perfect new floral dress over my hole-less pantyhose and platform shoes.
In 16 short hours, I would be a college woman. I was going to be all
kinds of sophisticated, worldly, and mature. I packed my new lace bedspread and
floated into the minivan my parents rented, prepared to begin my next life phase
with style.
Moments before our arrival, I made my dad pull into a rest area, where I
devirginized my travel iron, obsessively flattening all the wrinkles that had
grown on my perfect dress as I wrung my hands and anxiously shifted during the
road trip. I touched up my makeup, re-sprayed my expertly styled ‘do, and said
a final "farewell" to kid-hood. As we pulled through the gates and
into the parking lot, there they were. Hundreds of others, just like me.
Hundreds of sophisticated college students, all wearing perfect…sweatpants??
Learn from my mistakes, dear freshmen-to-be. I sacrificed my pride so that
you may learn what NOT to do in college! Within a week of arrival, I learned
several valuable lessons:
 | Wearing a dress, heels, and well-coifed hair on moving day is a really
dumb idea. You will sweat more on this day than on any other day of your
entire life. You will haul eighteen crates up twelve flights of stairs. You
will find out that your shampoo has leaked into your suitcase, which has
leaked onto the floor, which you will trip on as your perfect pantyhose get
a perfect run. |
| Lace comforters are only appropriate if you don’t plan on having any
friends. College friends sit on beds. There is nowhere else to sit. College
friends eat nachos on beds. There is nowhere else to eat. College friends do
laundry about twice a year, so if your bedspread is not nacho-camouflaged,
you will sleep on sophisticated lace stains all year long. |
| You can’t fit all the stuff you’ve accumulated in 18 years of life
into your 5’x5’ excuse for a dorm room. Homeless shelters are
extravagantly roomy compared to the space allocated to most freshmen. Also,
R.A.s (which technically stands for "Residence Assistants," but
may be confused with "Rancid Authoritarian") generally poo-poo
storing your overflow in the hallway and/or hall bathrooms. |
| Speaking of hall bathrooms… pretend you have now entered a third world
country and sanitation no longer has any tangible presence in your life.
There are germs in college bathrooms unknown to mankind. I mean, these germs
are visible. They are green and have beady eyes. Though I managed to
pack sixteen towel sets, complete with matching washcloths and fluffy hand
towels, I neglected to purchase a good pair of flip-flops -- necessary
attire if you actually plan on setting your piggies into a college shower. |
| Remember those little roommate-matching questionnaires you had to fill out
-- the ones where you pored over your taste in music, your cleanliness, your
intended major, hobbies, and blood type? Nobody actually read those. In
fact, someone in the housing department went in and crossed out all your
answers and wrote things like, "I like Barry Manilow and people who
smell like cheese doodles." Then the department got together over
cappuccinos and purposely stapled together the most inappropriate matches,
because this is how they get their jollies. |
| That said, your college roommate, most likely, won’t be your best friend
forever. In fact, it’s statistically probable that you will not even
vaguely enjoy your roommate’s presence. Believe it or not, this is
entirely inconsequential. Other people’s roommates are, without fail,
cooler than yours. You will meet these other people. You will like them. You
will hang out with them. You will snicker together about your roommate’s
mutated feet and tendency to talk in his/her sleep. All will be right with
the world. |
| Once your parents have helped you to haul all your junk up all those
flights of stairs, and they’re standing there all sappy-eyed, out of
breath, and appearing that they may break down and call you "Pookypie"
in front of your hallmates, it’s time to kick them out. Sure, you love
them, and you don’t want to hurt their feelings. Tough tooties. It’s
time for them to go home and cry over photos of you in the bathtub at age
three, and time for you to go find some orientation parties to crash. |
| No, yours will NOT be the exception to the "long distance
relationships don’t work" rule. Do you realize how many brave
soldiers have come before you and failed? Does their example mean nothing to
you? Well, if you’re like I was, you’re reading this all squint-eyed and
determined, saying, "Yeah, but you don’t know US." Wrong, bucko.
I do know you, and I’m only looking out for your best interest. It is
tempting to make hour-long phone calls every night, send goobery love notes
and packages… but this can only end in misery and despair. Get out now and
retain the fantasy that you’ll get back together when you graduate. |
| For the love of Pete, stay away from anything with Greek letters, at least
for the first semester. There are so many reasons for this. First, you need
to get used to the fantasmagorical academic workload before you can schedule
in daily drink-till-you-puke sessions. Second, why not see if you can
actually find friends on your own before paying a fee to force people to
acknowledge you’re cool enough to be seen in their sweatshirts? And
finally, if you MUST do it, at least take some time to step back and see
which groups have good reputations, or hang out with your kind of people, or
have the house with the best foosball table. Take your time and choose your
allegiances wisely. |
| You know that story about you and your best friend Wally dropping a fake
dead cat off the roof of Billy’s house? Quit telling it. You’re in
college now. You’ll get new stories. The friends-back-home tales, while
undoubtedly hysterical to you, quickly turn into "guess you had to be
there" yawners to people who don’t know Wally. Oh, and by the way, in
two years, you won’t know Wally either. |
May you go forth and have the kind of freshmen year in which you do not ever
have to look back and write up lists like this to help people avoid being like
you. Get out there and do me proud, courageous students!
Sidebar
"Don’t buy a fanny pack." – Craig, Boston U., MA
"Don’t commute with a lazy music student. You’ll end up hacky
sacking at the bagel store right through your morning classes." – Keith,
Suffolk Community College, NY
"I started dating a girl on the 3rd day of classes and didn’t
break up until yesterday." – Adam, William and Mary College, VA
"Don’t trade test booklets with your idiot dormmate so he can cheat
off the person next to him." – Ed, SUNY Geneseo, NY
"If you’re a guy, don’t ever tell your dormmates that you shave your
legs, even if you’re a cyclist." – Paul, University at Albany, NY
"Don’t wear a black trenchcoat and put up posters of an H-bomb
explosion or people will think you’re a scary freak and they won’t want to
be your friend." – Mike, Boston U., MA
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