Being a freshman in college is a lot like being one of those rhesus monkeys with their fists caught in the sugar traps: You voluntarily got into it; You're staying for an indefinite period of time and occasionally you consider gnawing off your wrist. However with a little luck, you will eventually emerge unscathed, having learned several very important life lessons. In fact, the only notable difference between a college freshman and a rhesus monkey is that the college freshman usually goes longer between showers.

This brings me to my first point: Please wear shower shoes in the dorm showers. I chose to ignore this advice throughout my freshman year and as a result I now suffer from a combination of athlete's foot, herpes, smallpox, chicken pox, cow pox, jaundice, hepatitis G, a heightened sense of smell and an intolerance for after-dinner mints. Moreover, my academics were greatly inhibited by constant lobbying on the part of the CDC. Coincidentally, those were the same three letters that appeared on my report card that semester. In fact now that I think about it, you might just want to stay away from the dorm showers— and me— altogether.

Also, if you live in a dorm with communal kitchens, you will be surprised to find that the three-panel, illustrated instructions on most microwavable food items are often too complex for your fellow students of higher education. At least a few times during the year, you will be woken up at 4:00am by the deafening fire alarm. Then you will be forced to evacuate the building and wait outside in your skivvies as you and the other residents groggily wish death upon the jerk who decided to put a bowl of Ramen Noodles in the microwave for 75 minutes. Unless you've attended hate rallies in the past, you probably have not witnessed death threats of this magnitude. One in particular detailed the demise of the responsible party's grandmother via a staple gun. Another one, a glue gun. In college dorms, the "fire alarm" actually serves only as a "drunk moron doesn't know how popcorn works" alarm.

Move-in day is another memorable experience for you and your hallmates. I'm sure you will have an experience similar to mine because there are three types of hallmates who are on virtually every hall of every college campus in the country. You will probably have the pleasure of meeting one or all of the following types:
1.) The party animal. The party animal will be pretty easy to pick out because several seconds after his parents leave, he'll be boisterously slurring "I AM A PARTY ANIMAL", leaving you all to wonder how he managed to get drunk that quickly and why all your mouthwash bottles are empty. Later on in the year, he will also be the guy who swears "to God man" that shotgunning a beer before you study will boost your mid-term grades by 50 points. He'll back this up with some bogus story about how he aced a test in a class he was failing because he studied while drinking. The truth about this story is that the "test he aced" was actually a credit card application and that the "class he was failing" was actually life.
2.) The hall dork. The second breed of hallmate you will encounter is the "helpful dork with the vacuum". He'll be easy to identify because when you arrive on move-in day, he will already have been living in the dorms for a week and a half for reasons unknown (perhaps trumpet camp). He will be eager to help you assemble your loft and, in a matter of minutes, he and your parents will have become best pals. Eventually, you will realize that his willingness to help is actually a very pathetic desperation. You will also come to realize that his breath smells like vinegar and that his real name is something like Joshua, but he nicknamed himself something cooler like 'J.P.' shortly before coming to college. He will be the only one on the hall who had the foresight to bring a vacuum and it is because of this one appliance that anybody still talks to him.
3.) The Goth kid. The third breed of hallmate you will encounter is the stereotypical "goth kid" that I'm sure you've all heard stories of. He dresses in black, is rarely seen in well-lit areas, and doesn't show up on film. His favorite band's name is usually some combination of the following words: death, kill, blood, dead, killed, bleed, stain, stained and brood. When I was a freshman, my goth kid's favorite band was called Deathkill Blood Stain Brood. I believe they played mostly classical music. In summary, goth kid will probably keep quiet most of the time although every once in a while you might still find yourself poking your head in his door to politely remind him, "Shh. Ritual chant with your inside voice, could you?"
Your next freshman experience after moving in will be enrollment. You will find that because freshmen are given the last enrollment dates, the classes with any real world application have long been filled. I believe every morning of my first semester began with GHIST290: The Influence of Early Tae Kwon Do on 17th Century Russian Architecture, and ended with me banging my head against a desk. Then my afternoons began with GETCH210: Great Works of Etch-A-Sketch, and concluded with me slamming myself in the forehead with a binder. However, regardless of which endlessly irrelevant classes you take in your first semester, you will surely learn a good deal about how to bore a pencil-sized hole in your desk.
Even if you do end up with one or two meaningful classes, you will not learn anything, despite every effort to do otherwise. For even if you do manage to somehow evade the many temptations at college, there will be one demon that lingers still. It lurks in your hard drive and looms over you at your desk like some diabolic overlord of procrastination. Regardless of how determined you are to get work done, his sinister invitation will echo in your ear, "dance with me." This whisper comes from an entity I now refer to as Lucifer, but that pre-college students probably know only as Instant Messenger. Even if there is nobody online worth talking to, you will end up checking people's away messages for a solid hour and a half. Every college student falls into this great, pitiful hole of fruitlessness no less than three times a month. The greeting when you sign on AOL might as well just be changed to "Welcome! You've got" no chance of finishing that by tomorrow." And when you sign off it should say "Goodbye, GPA!"
For the most part, that is all the advice you will need for your freshman year. However for your convenience, I've also included a list of things you probably forgot to bring. At any point throughout the following list, feel free to stop reading and kick yourself in a shin: laundry quarters, batteries, a stapler, a staple gun, staples, tape for your posters, underwear, tape for your underwear, a number two pencil, Color Me Bad's Greatest Hits Volume 2, the new self-titled album from Deathkill Blood Stain Brood.


If you've got questions, responses, or you'd like to comment on my driving, please feel free to email me at comeydean@yahoo.com