We're getting down to the end of the year and, needless to say, I'm waxing philosophical. As spring flowers bloom and my college career comes to a close, it's natural to look back upon the past four years and consider everything that's happened, and then start screaming when I realize I don't have a job yet and I might have to stop drinking six nights out of every week.
And so I'm looking back, and I'm thinking, How can I help others?"" What single piece of advice would I give to those that are about to enter the collegiate world?
I guess college starts not on the first day that you arrive at the dorms, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but in high school, where you develop all of your preconceptions and expectations about college life. You watch movies and see frat parties filled with drunk men and easy women. You read about undergraduates making important scientific discoveries, and you watch news reports about Halloween riots in a little town called Madison.
Of course, when you step out of the car and into the dorm room, all of those notions become bunk. You're not going to cure cancer as a sophomore. You're not going to score with all of those chicks - even if you become a World Famous Humor Columnist. Instead, you're going to have a creepy roommate (mine was a senior and introduced himself as a huge fan of the book ""How to Win
Friends and Influence People"") and stumble around campus trying hard to fit in.
You know, just like high school.
Things settle down and no matter who you are, you start having some of the stereotypical experiences - but not all of them. Everyone ends up leaving with a list of things they wish they had done. I haven't had sex in the Memorial Library stacks. I haven't mapped the tunnels under Bascom. I haven't built my successor to the famed Octabong: the Dodecadecathabong (beer, platonic solids and athletics in one device - how could it go wrong?!).
There are experiences I did have. I made some wonderful friends and hilarity has, in fact, ensued.
Although I haven't cured cancer, I'm sure my work on the economics of World of Warcraft will be remembered as a seminal work in the American Journal of Useless Shit. And I managed to use my position as a World Famous Humor Columnist to meet a girl at a party - and demonstrate that I'm as awkward in person as I am in print.
Finally, however, there are experiences that I never wanted to have, but did. Some sad, like discovering you can't attend your grandfather's funeral thanks to three midterms and unkind professors, and some disturbing.
Let me set the scene. It's two in the morning. I'm returning home from a party, slightly tipsy, and I happen to see my roommate's door is hanging wide open. This means one of three things: he is sleeping and he left the door open and I should shut it, he is awake and I can chat with him for a bit or he's gone. I enter the room and see a leg. This does not surprise me - he sleeps in the buff and I'm used to the sight. I see another leg, and then two more. And some chains. And some whipped cream. And some Beanie Babies.
I blink, bleary eyed. Am I seeing double? No. I'm seeing two people. Intertwined. Exploring the detailed nuances of the word ""intercourse."" I back out, scarred for life.
My point is that everyone gets a unique set of experiences. Sure, you'll have a grab-bag of the stereotypes. But you'll also get a bunch of things that you can call uniquely your own. So my advice - no matter how insightful for my OWN life - can't ever be that helpful to anyone else.
But I won't give up. There is one thing that will always be constant - a piece of advice given to me by my friend Sam, which has served me time and again:
Never, NEVER go ass-to-mouth.
Keaton believes that the first page of ""How to Win Friends and Influence People"" should have a large warning. It's OK to read the book. Just don't tell everyone you meet that you have done so. Send him some senior love at keatonmiller@wisc.edu.
