The Best Four Years

Adam Shepard

• Éditeur: HarperCollins e-books
• Année: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780062079275
• Sujet: Bildung
• Sous-sujet: Studentenleben

Adam Shepard boldly and ingeniously proved the viability of the American Dream in his first book, Scratch Beginnings. Now he tells us that the years we spend in college are The Best Four Years of our lives—and he offers a lively, entertaining, and eminently insightful guide on how to make the most of the college experience from orientation to graduation.

Eight
A Social Affair

Short (barely) of hearing about the birds and the bees, you’re probably going to get a serious talking-to from your parents about the ills and thrills of college’s social scene. And if you’re in for a sixteen-hour trip up the East Coast with Daddy, I hope you packed sleeping pills. After all, what do your parents know, right? They’re old and gray. They don’t have a clue! “Yeah yeah, Ma. I get it. ‘Don’t drink and drive.’ ‘Wear a condom.’ ‘And don’t accept candy from strangers.’ I’m all over it.”

Truth is that there’s a lot of merit to your parents’ advice—with the caveat that times are clearly different with every generation, and most notably, social networks on the Internet make this a completely different ballgame today than when your parents were young. Your parents know—and have probably seen firsthand—the repercussions of being irresponsible, and they don’t want to see you taint the masterpiece that they’ve spent the last eighteen years constructing. Your best interests are most certainly in the hearts of your parents, so heed their advice.

And also heed mine in these next few pages. Handling your academic life is cake compared with the challenge of meeting the right people and doing the right things in college. After all, the secret to academics is pretty cut-and-dried—get your nose in the books—but your social life is more learn-as-you-go, which is a lot scarier. That said, the best (and most successful) students are able to balance study time with party time, while those who lean heavily one way or the other rarely get the most out of college. Here—handling your social life with grace—is how you can look back years after graduation and proclaim, “I wouldn’t change a thing!”

Meeting People

If there’s one thing I did absolutely right in college, it was connecting with good people. Actually, looking back, it’s the lone skill that I’ve mastered over the years: surrounding myself with people who are going places. It’s not that I’m funnier or better looking or more sophisticated than the next person; I just have a knack for connecting with respectable folks. Really. I have some of the best friends around, and I foster those friendships because they are important to me. And if they aren’t, then I let them go. “Just saying no” is harder than it sounds, but I’ve had plenty of practice, and by the time I was through with college, I was a specialist at shedding the negative influences and people in my life and embracing the positive ones.

Make your friends a priority. No doubt about it. These are the people whom you’ll socialize with on the weekends, study with during the week, and lean on for sympathetic ears when times are tough. You need good friends, but more important, good friends help shape you into the person you’re destined to become. If your clique comprises assholes, then you’re more apt to become an asshole. If you’re clique comprises wholesome, good-natured characters, then you’ll be wholesome and good-natured yourself. It’s pretty simple, actually. But where do you go to meet these fantastic people whom you want to call your friends?

Meet Your RA First

If there’s one person who’s “been there, done that,” it’s your RA. Maybe they haven’t seen it all, but they were freshmen once, so their college experience trumps yours, and they want to help you have the best year of your life.

RAs range in personality and taste and wisdom, from one end of the spectrum to the other. Some are social and some are nerds; some are extroverts and some are introverts. They’re all different, which is how it should be. There’s no mold for an RA, and that will work to your advantage as you use them as one of your social resources. Connect with them to find out where to get involved on campus, where to sit in the cafeteria, where to party, and where to avoid. Even if they are the geekiest of the geeks, they have eyes and ears and they know what’s going on. When they have programs in your hall, go to them. You’ll put a smile on their face, you’ll have fun, and you’ll meet your neighbors (the important ones, rather than the slackers holed up in their rooms). Later, once you’ve developed a relationship with your RA, you can offer suggestions of your own for activities or off-campus outings. They generally have a budget to spend, so help them spend it.

Too many people see their RAs as the “bad guys,” and that just isn’t the case. Sure, they are there to enforce the rules—noise violations, vandalism, out-of-control alcohol abusers—but they don’t like writing people up any more than people like getting written up. It’s the tough part of the job, so be on your best behavior. Your RA might be your first friend and your inside connection to what’s hip around campus, so don’t compromise that relationship by acting foolish.

Get Involved and Meet Like-Minded People

As I discussed in more detail in chapter 6, getting involved in campus activities can make or break your college experience. Most assuredly, your involvement on campus can establish your reputation, but this is also where you can meet people with interests and attitudes similar to your own. Of course, you want to build a diverse circle of friends—a group of all the same personality can get old quick—but campus involvement provides an icebreaker whether you are outgoing or not. Begin your friend search in the Asian club or in a fraternity or at a meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Little People, and branch out from there. Read posters and attend every social function that looks appealing to you. Go to movies, concerts, or other shows on campus. And don’t be afraid to go by yourself. Cliques are established early in college (sad, but true), but solid friendships take time to cultivate, so don’t feel like you missed the boat just because you haven’t met the right people quite yet.

Surround Yourself With Positivity

Getting involved in campus activities also gives you a head start on surrounding yourself with positive people. This should be your top priority in college. Well, maybe second to your education, but it’s a close second. We’ll call it a tie. Listen—if you spend your time associating with people who inspire negativity or love drama, it’s going to usurp your already-limited supply of energy. Here you are, running all over campus with all these activities and studying for exams and writing papers, and now you have to deal with your friends complaining about the most ridiculous little issues you could possibly imagine? It could be your downfall. Really. High school drama has nothing on college drama. You’ll see.

Surrounding yourself with positivity can only help your achievement in and out of the classroom. If you’re associated with top performers, then you’re more likely to be a top performer yourself. If your friends have positive attitudes, then you’re more likely to carry forward that same spirit from one area of your life to another. You want optimum achievement, and the people you choose to have as your friends can make that difference. Cut the deadweight.

For me, it was never difficult to cut the deadweight. If someone had a negative influence on me, I dispatched them out from my life rather quickly. It’s not difficult. Talk about a socially capitalistic society: college is loaded with good people and bad, and the great thing for you is that you have plenty of people from whom to choose your friends. Foster healthy friendships and dispel the bad ones. If somebody has an adverse influence on you, move on to someone who will appreciate the positive aura that you bring to the world. And hold on to their friendship for dear life. It’s that easy.

Your Room, Your Residence Hall, Your Campus

Even the most introverted person can’t get through college without meeting people. They’re everywhere; your school is an open field, and you have the freedom to spread your seed wherever you’d like. Okay, that’s a pretty horrible metaphor, but you get the idea: there are lots of opportunity for you to meet people.

Beyond forming a friendship with your roommate (or at least a truce; my goodness, that’s one person with whom you do not want to bump heads), if you keep your door open, you’re setting off the vibe that you are open to making new friends. Someone may spot a movie poster on your wall or be intrigued by the way you have your room set up, and they’ll stop by just to say hi. Indeed, you’ll want to keep your door closed when you’re on the phone or doing schoolwork or making out with Betty Sue, but you don’t want to miss the opportunity to meet your neighbors passing by.

The halls beyond your hallway are grounds for meeting even more people. Whether it’s in the residence-hall lounge or game room (or if you want to be creepy, walk up to all the open doors and just start talking to people), there are plenty of opportunities to shake hands and exchange a laugh right there in your living quarters. The point is that the more you are out and about—even if you’re a nervous Nellie and you don’t like talking to people—the more chances you have to interact with your peers.

The further you cast your social net, the greater your odds are of accumulating a diverse set of interesting acquaintances. By broadening your search to the entire campus, you can meet upperclassmen and underclassmen alike, but you can also meet people with a wide range of interests. It’s amazing how many people you can meet in the weight room or the game room at the student center or at the snack bar next to the cafeteria. Ask to join someone for lunch. Hustle up a game of pool or Ping-Pong. Once you’ve broken the ice with someone, it makes it so much easier to flare up a conversation the next time you see them.

Go Out and Find Fun (or Boredom Will Find You)

You can’t just hang around and wait for good times to come. Sure, it’s college, but it isn’t that easy. You have to put in a little effort here.

The trick to good times is to never lose your sense of adventure. I say this isn’t easy, because, starting with your freshman year and continuing through your senior year, responsibilities and distractions will continue to mount. Freshman year, although challenging for sure, is easier because it’s all still fresh and new and you’re getting your land legs under you, discovering your surroundings. Then sophomore year hits, and it isn’t as easy as it once was. Now you have a tougher course load. And a boyfriend. And a job. And you are the vice president of The League of Women with Moles on the Lower Back. And . . . and . . . and . . . with all this new responsibility, you start to lose that sense of adventure that is so important.

Spontaneity is a virtue, and your master key to good times. Get out there! Dress up for a theme party or throw one of your own; hop in the car for a random weekend road trip; play tourist in your own town and visit those places that you swear you’ll get to “sooner or later”; ask Susie out to a play, even though your friends swear you don’t have a chance in hell. Take some risks here, babe. Balancing academics and social life becomes more of a challenge—and requires more creative thought on your part—as time passes, so start building that creative muscle right now.

It’s important, though, to understand that you’re not trying to create a string of morning-after what-an-idiot-I-am-for-doing-that-type stories (although one or two of those shouldn’t hurt too bad). On the contrary, you’re looking for a series of yeah-I-did-that accomplishments. Let loose, but don’t be irresponsible. Take a chance, but leave yourself an out. Have fun, not regret. Despite what you may have heard, fun and regret can act independently of each other, and you don’t want to find that out the hard way.

Friends Won’t Always Hang Around

College doesn’t bring anything new to the idea that the friends you have today might not be around tomorrow or next week or next semester. You already know about the possibility that friends—good friends, even—can grow apart. Which is cool. It happens. It’s not you. It just is. And that idea becomes even more pronounced in college, as you throw in other complexities: You lived next to Bart freshman year, but then he moved across campus sophomore year; you and Francesca were undeclared majors early on, but once she declared, she started hanging out with her fellow engineers; you thought you had a lot in common with Marjorie, but then she got fourteen piercings and started wearing black lipstick. And on and on. Dynamics change, and people change—sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Don’t get your drawers all bunched up about it.

There is one caveat that I’ve already mentioned briefly, and I’ll stress it here: foster the friendships that you consider important. It’s one thing for you to simply grow apart from someone you thought would turn out to be a good friend, but it’s completely different for you to neglect an otherwise-great friendship. Close friendships, just like any other worthy pursuit in life, require work. You can’t expect that just because you call someone your best friend and you have them as speed-dial number one on your phone (ahead of voice mail!), that they actually be your best friend. No way. It takes time and effort. They need a high five when they’re up, a helping hand when they’re down, and you by their side when things are normal. And it must be genuine. Close friends can read right through your BS when you lean in for a counterfeit hug and tell them, “Aw, everything’s gonna be okay, Sweetie.” Bring the same passion and authenticity to the table as you would with any other noble undertaking. They deserve it, and so do you.

I’m not trying to lay down the law about how you should make friends. That’s up to you, and everybody has their own personality. I’m just saying that, in the midst of gaining and losing friends throughout your college career, you should make friends with two or three really great people—people you’d do anything for—and do everything you can to hold onto those priceless friendships forever.

Find an Escape

If you’re paying attention at all to anything that I’m telling you and if you’re really putting forth some level of effort to make the most of your college experience, then you’re going to need some kind of release from th...