This entry is inspired by an e-mail sent to OCU upperclassmen by our academic adviser. She asked us to explain, in a short 15-20 sec video response form, what we wish we had known as freshmen, so she can, in turn, show the responses to the incoming music students at their freshman orientation.
Great idea, Rachel. I applaud this endeavor toward helping the freshmen get the most from their college experience. I think it's plainly optimistic, but I'd be a plain hypocrite to label it futile.
Getting back to the question...
I haven't made my video yet because I'm still formulating a compelling response in my head.
"What do I know now that I would have wanted to know as a freshman?"
Well I'm only a junior. In fact, I haven't even got through my first full day as a junior yet. I'd say I'm more of a recovering sophomore. Still, my first two years of college taught me MANY things about myself, about others, and more importantly, about life.
Hindsight's 20/20, no doubt. Anyone can tell a freshman that. I could talk for days about what I wish I had known beforehand or what I wish someone would've told me. I could try and draw inspiration from all my past mistakes--my broken promises, drunken hookups, wasted time, wasted money, wasted behavior, failed endeavors, general pissed-off-edness, shallow relationships, and overall not-so-smart life choices, but that would be pointless.
I think back to high school, before I had ever touched a drop of alcohol, before the thought of smoking anything had ever crossed my mind, sitting next to my best friend in a dark auditorium full of half-asleep teenagers watching a 15-minute tearjerker about the dangers of drunk driving, and I can remember how surprisingly unaffected I was.
Out of fear, authority figures invest so much time and energy into warning their future leaders of America that they hardly give them time to experience life in all its terrifying glory. No parent wants to see their child ruin his/her life because of one bad decision. I get that. But doesn't it stand to reason that, no matter how difficult this may be for a parent (or any other authority figure) to accept, the most effective way for an individual to learn is through trial and error? Let's be honest, 99% of the time, kids are going to do what they want regardless of what their parents tell them. The same is true for freshmen in college. It's like we're all born with this inner antagonistic drive to behave completely opposite of how we're told we should. We're all rebels at heart.
The most valuable piece of advice I may have received to-date was from a girl named Katie, who was a senior musical theater major when I was a freshman. I accompanied a couple of her senior recital rehearsals, and as a thank-you for my piano playing, she gave me a handwritten card with a beautiful nugget of wisdom inside:
"Cherish your time in college, because it will fly by before you know it."
I'm paraphrasing, but you get the gist. This simple adage applies to more than just college. Sometimes I feel like replacing "in college" with "on Earth" just to better integrate the idea into my daily thinking. Because it's true. While I've made some fantastic discoveries in the past two years, like how to shower in a space the size of a coffin or how to make lifelong friends, I've also wasted fantastic amounts of time engaging myself in dead-end experiments, one after another.
So if I could tell my freshman self one thing, it would be this (The final quote of this blog entry, I promise!):
"Find out what makes you the happiest and pursue it with a vengeance."
No person has tangible control over another person's actions, thoughts, or opinions. All anyone can ever do is offer their words, be they harsh or harmless, and wait. Humans are notoriously strong-willed; we do what we want to do when we want to do it. And that is what the freshman experience is all about--finding out what works and what doesn't.
They don't call it experimenting for nothing.
p.s. About that final quote statement I made earlier... I lied. Here's the actual clincher, from the mouth of Therese Hofferber, my AP Literature teacher in high school, when I tried to argue the value of naps.
"There's always something to do."
