Dear Those of You Lucky Enough to Still be in College,

The next (insert number of years here) is going to be one of the greatest times of your life. You’ll get to experience the freedom you’ve longed for, stay up for the late nights you didn’t expect, and find the greatest friends you never even knew existed.

You will fight with you roommate, multiple times. And it will be okay; nothing a small talk and a few bars of chocolate can’t fix. Remember, sometimes your mom can help. Call her, ask her what to do, involve her in your life. You are the one who needs to set the boundaries on when and how many times she can call. So talk to her.

It’s okay to fail. It’s okay to fail a lot, make mistakes, take stupid chances. There won’t be another time in your life when you can try this many things. So test out the waters, see what you like, find out what really makes you happy.

Sometimes it’s okay to skip your study sesh. You’re going to remember the night you stayed up playing Apples to Apples with your best friends, not what you got on a quiz that counts for 10% of your grade. Which brings me to…make memories! Yes, you go to college to get an education. But you’re only getting half of what you pay for if you only learn from books. So put off that paper one more day and go out with your friends.

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I lived with five other people my sophomore year of college. Three boys and three girls. We were all great friends when we moved in, but soon we cordoned off, built alliances and ended the year in veritable silence. It started when two of my roommates who were dating when we signed the lease broke up just before we moved in.

It continued when the boys never locked the door, and one girl was really obnoxious. It also didn’t help that we were politically divided in an election year. I’m surprised no one got stabbed.

But what really drove us apart were the notes. The little post-its I’d find stuck on filthy coffee tables, or the threatening comments on the dry-erase board. Everyday there was an annoying message reminding what I should or shouldn’t do in my own home.

Now there’s a place to laugh at all of those passive-aggressive notes, a great blog aptly-titled passiveaggressivenotes.com. Readers send in notes they find at work, at home or even signs on the street. Some are covered in unnecessary clip-art and capital letters, some are rude, and some can only be described as aggressive. But because they’re no longer littering my home, all of them are hilarious. Read More »

Three students at Bard College were arrested earlier this month for toting around a portable drug den.

Apparently, 2 freshmen, along with a sophomore buddy, were moving a bunch of drug paraphernalia in suitcases across campus when they were “spooked” by campus police and freaked out, one of them evidently diving into a bunch of bushes.

After the students were expelled from school, police searched their room and found quite a stash. “Nearly a pound of marijuana, half a kilogram of a partially refined but yet-unidentified hallucinogenic drug, hashish, hashish oil” and the remnants of “a portable drug-processing lab” were confiscated at the scene, causing all three students to rack up felony drug charges. Read More »

Days as a Freshman: 17

Current Mood: Tired

“So she just said she was a lesbian? Right there?” Crystal sliced a piece of tofu up and shoved it into her mouth. “Stacey must have flipped her shit.”

“I’ve never seen her that silent for that long.” I tried to keep my eyes off the white, shimmying blobs on Crystal’s plate and took a bite of my own dinner. Crystal was fantastic, but her vegan diet was often cringe-worthy.

One of the first friends I had made at school besides my roommates, Crystal and I met in Statistics when she leaned over and asked if I had a calculator. I told her no, and that I hadn’t understood a damn thing the teacher had said for the last hour.

She vigorously agreed, asked me if I wanted a piece of gum, and a friendship was born. Read More »