We, at The Daily Cardinal Arts Desk, realize that adjusting to any new experience is hard. As a public service to our readership we asked rockstars ranging from Fountains of Wayne to The Decemberests to Ben Kweller to offer their advice. Each was asked the question \How can college freshmen be cool?""
Stay away from the D & D.
Get started on a good T-shirt collection. Get serious with it- whatever it takes. Do not go to Urban Outfitters. Urban Outfitters is where people like me who are 40, go to get cool T-shirts because we don't have time to seek them out. If you are 18, you have plenty of time to seek out cool T-shirts, and you can afford them. You can come up with a good shirt collection for less than 20 bucks.
Drag It Up.
""Trying to be cool is so high school. You'll save yourself a lot of time and anguish if you stop caring what other people think about you and concentrate on what you think about yourself. College is definitely the best place to accomplish this.""
Together We're Heavy
John Linnell: They should not go to us for advice
John Flansberg: Listen to Slipknot. Just think to yourself ""What would Slipknot do?""
If I was a first year college student I suppose I would want to get involved in helping out the local radio station, donate time and services to volunteer groups helping others in need, and scour the thrift shops for the best vintage clothes I could find. I would try new foods, meet new people, hang with professors I liked after class, try learning a new language, go to yoga and check out the short wave radio station samples on www.archive.org, which sound like alien spy language. Beautifully haunting, perfect sonics to study by.
If you have the time and resources, definitely take a semester or year of study abroad, this is the biggest thing one could do to find out about life from a bigger picture. Good luck and safe travels.
Feast of Wire
Freshmen, one can be cool by dealing drugs. While technically ""illegal,"" being a drug dealer makes you instantly in demand, and also provides an entry into some of your school's most elite social circles. Plus, not being broke is part of being cool, and you'll make a lot more money dealing drugs than delivering pizza.
Welcome Interstate Managers
Just be yourself - and don't cut your hair.
""The only way to be cool is by not trying to be cool. Don't think about it-just be yourself. Don't look over your shoulder to see what others are doing. Be nice to people. Talk to anyone. Be curious about the world. Don't give in to stereotypes, find out for yourself and always give everything and everyone an honest chance before you form an opinion. Everyone around us is more interesting and complex than we think. You can learn something from everyone. Don't ever feel embarrassed. Don't ever let anyone make you feel embarrassed for being, feeling or acting a certain way. The coolest people I know are one-of-a-kinders. There's no one else like them. Cool people aren't afraid of being themselves at all times. You are who you are, and you're cool as hell!""
On My Way.
Thinking back to my own freshman year (pre-Bronze Age, fending off dinosaur attack, watching Reagan fumble his way through presidential conferences like a drunk uncle), I realize I'm in no position to say. Short answer: to not be me as a freshman (freshperson?).
Maybe, to be more practical, probably carefully reconsider any plans to pledge and live on frat row. Does anyone even do that any more? (I'm sure I've just infuriated someone).
Believe it or not, I spent a lot of time in Madison 10 to 15 years ago, read the Cardinal (no, really), read the Onion when it was still a print-only local, and although I haven't been there in a long time, Madison is still one of my favorite cities that I've been in. So if the goal for incoming students is to be cool, you're pretty much halfway there. Just relax, make some friends, date some, go to class, get some oldie to tell you why the newer buildings were designed to be riot-proof, read some, see some bands at Okayz Corral (is that place still there?), go to a taping of Whaddya Know (wait, is that still on the air?), drink good beer (Leinienkugel, presumably) and better coffee (crucial)... and you'll be fine. I mean cool. Or something.
Poop, I'm old.
The Meadowlands
I was never very cool growing up. In grade school, high school, college... throughout my life, there have always been the kids who had it going on. Always with the hot girls, playing sports and facial hair-I was never one of them. But please, no pity party for me. Save your streamers and cake for those who were considered even dorkier than myself. Sure, I listened to Rush while playing Dungeons and Dragons in Adam Shaye's basement. Sure, I spent entire school dances sitting on the rolled up wrestling mats in the corner of the gym, talking with the two other kids who were afraid of girls. But there was always someone who was a step or two higher than me on the dork ladder. Danny Anderson (name changed for dork protection), for example, ate paste. I never ate paste. Never even thought about it.
To this day, Danny walks the streets of my hometown with a beard and belly talking to himself.
So, I was never cool. And because of this fact, I always wrote off being cool as a terrible way to go. I definitely missed out, because I'm sure being cool was kick-ass. Fleeting, but kick-ass. But I'm undercutting my own story here. So, by the time I got to college, my slate was clean. I could start again, and do all the things right that I did wrong when I went to high school. Plus, I was moving from the East Coast to the West Coast and my mullet had grown out, just in time for the whole 'Seattle' thing. All was good.
Well, long story longer... it didn't really work. I was still pretty much not cool in college. I won't bore you with that story, but what I'm getting at is, I'm not really the guy to give tips on how to be a cool freshman. But, in the interest of time and for the purpose of this article, I'm going to outline four key things you should most definitely NOT do if you want to be considered cool. Some of these are timeless. Some might shift with fashion. Some are from personal experience, while others are from witnessing my dork peers in action.
Number 1: Do not stalk someone you think is hot. No matter how you slice it, stalking is not and never will be cool. This kid on my hall might have kind of stalked this one girl that was in his Spanish class. I think he meant well, but he kind of just stared at her a bunch, and made her uncomfortable enough to call security on him.
Ouch.
Number 2: And this is from personal experience, if you are a guy do not, I repeat do not wear long, tapestry hippie skirts to class. Men in hippie skirts are not anywhere on the road to cool. For serious, no matter how nice it feels to wear said skirt with no underwear in 100 degree, southern California heat, resist this desire at all costs.
Number 3: If you go to your dad's house for break, and your dad works everyday with children who might possibly have lice, make sure you don't have lice before coming back to school. No matter what people tell you, those little bastards move fast and quite possibly will infect everyone on your hall before you know it and make them hate you.
Number 4: Man clogs, no matter what the shoe salesman tells you, are not cool. Birkenstocks look like Adidas next to the dreadful man clogs. Stay away!
For those of you feeling lost and hopeless, like you will never claw your way out of dorkdom here's where it gets good. Kids who were dorks, excluding poor Danny Anderson, end up ruling the world. That's right, sweet redemption! The kids who peak early on all end up in A.A. or pumping gas or sitting with their buddy on a Jeep seat on the front lawn of their parents' house, drinking forties and reminiscing about the time they made the touchdown that led their high school team to victory. Dorks, on the other hand, have a much longer arc. Look at Matt Groening... ""The Simpsons"" rule and he is a total dork. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of ""South Park""... dorks. Dave Chapelle, stoner dork. Fiona Apple, dork. Bono, dork. Uma Thurman, Meryl Streep, Natalie Portman. dork, dork, dork. Bill Gates is a total dork and he's wiping himself with $100 bills.
So, to wrap it up, if you want to be considered cool, you can follow those who blazed the trail before you. In John Hughes movies (""Breakfast Club,"" ""16 Candles,"") that means wearing pastel colored Izods, driving expensive sports cars and being a dick to the artsy kids. These days, slap a 'the' in front of your bands stupid-ass name, instant cool. Also, I bet if you asked Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson, they would totally give you advice on how to be cool in college. Yuck. But I, for one, think that you should focus your energy on more substantial stuff. College is the beginning, a new start. Cool is detatched and out of touch. Cool is self-conscious. Cool is overrated.
It's up to you to be more than that. Be present, be aware, be unhip, be daring and confident and alive. I think that's the better way to spend your time. For real. Just please, keep those man clogs in your closet!
Beneath these Fireworks.
First of all, pick up an instrument-basically anything but a fl??gelhorn. Then, play it all the time in your dorm room so all the other students can hear you (hopefully you sound great.) Then, get into a cool band and then the people will start flocking to you.
Ruckus.
Be yourself and have fun.
Kiss &Tell
Well, I guess if somebody wants to be popular they should try to have sex with as many people as they can. And certainly a person's studies should not be very important if they are wanting to be popular. They should just try to map out all the parties and stuff like that. And you have to manipulate people a little bit, I think, to be really successful in that department, so maybe tell little white lies that no one could really know about, like if you were in a certain situation and it would have been cool if in your history you listened to a certain band that you didn't really listen to but a friend of yours did, but you know the songs pretty well, you could pretend like you were a really big fan of them to like get in with some other cool people who have other networking connections and stuff.
I think that you should try to appear sincere, always. Especially if you are talking about the college window, you could probably maintain something like that for the course of four years-especially with the transient population of school. And certainly with the sex thing-you don't want people to feel like they are being exploited but that you're being sincere and just sort of free or whatever. That would be my best advice.
Achilles Heel
Show up with crutches, and a sling and hella bandages on your head and face. Over the semester start ""healing,"" and slowly removing your get-up.
Fabulous Muscles
To be cool go to the library a lot. Check a book out every day. Whoever has the most late fees is the coolest person.
The Blueberry Boat
Velvet capes... out. No velvet capes. Disaffected wall-leaning...totally out. Hipsterism... gone. Just start something. Start something people want to do. Remembering the people who were cool in college, it was always the people who put the party together.
.
Firstly, try and be sure that there is a purpose to one's stay at said academy. It is hard to be cool with no purpose. Of course, if you have no purpose or reason to be studying at said academy, be a pro at bullshitting, as in, ""Yeah... I was thinking about African studies but there's just something about microbiology that really speaks to me.""
When going to keggers, try not to be the most wasted guy/girl at the party...unless you can really pull it off in some kind of suave way I could never figure out.
Do your best to try and avoid any sort of group freshman activities that might make you look ""uncool."" Besides, aren't those ""Hey! We're all in this together"" kind of activities that are supposed to bond us just a little square? Point: be an individual.... unless you're really lonely (and it's ok to be lonely). And perhaps you can commiserate with some other lonely soul who isn't really into said activity, but is just going with the flow because it beats crying in their dorm about the love they left behind in South Dakota.
If you plan on wrecking things-i.e., vandalism, arson, etc.-be smart and don't get caught. And please, don't brag about said activity; the walls have ears.
If your parents are paying for your education at the academy, don't forget to drop them a line every now and then and say thanks for supporting your desires, or theirs.
In regards to any sort of meal plan, learn early on ways to get a little more than you pay for. Now I'm not saying steal, but try and be creative about the whole affair and make sure you don't go hungry or broke.
Remember: friends who have the best drugs aren't always the best friends... but it's nice to know they are there when you need them. Just make sure they don't need you too much.
Good luck freshmen/people... or as we say in Canada, ""Bon chance, you lowly frosh scum!""
And practice safe sex... but you knew that.
Bee Hives
Don't rush. Volunteer at your college radio station Start a dorm movie night. Be community minded. Listen to music in the dorm- even Incubus, to get other people to listen with you.
