Wear Sunscreen, Etcetera Etcetera.

This is my welcome letter/advice to this year's incoming freshmen. It'll be showing up the freshmen issue of The New Hampshire on Friday. I promise I'll get back to real blogging soon, shit's been crazy.

Welcome to UNH. I’m sometimes envious of you—my classmates and I are staring down the barrel of a job market that’s so spectacularly bad for new college grads it would be almost funny if we didn’t have to graduate into it in a matter of months. By the time you graduate, maybe things will be better, or maybe we’ll all be scrambling to learn Chinese. I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m not really envious of you. Because I’ve learned a lot since I first lay in the top bunk in a sweltering room in Stoke during freshman orientation, unable to fall asleep because I was so excited to begin, to start what you’re starting this week, this big adventure called college. Here’s what I’ve learned since then.

Work hard, but don’t work too hard. Take a late-night walk in the snow, have long talks, hang out with friends at HoCo until it’s time for the next meal, lie on Thompson Hall lawn in the springtime…take time to notice that this is a nice place. Don’t miss it because you’re holed up in the library.

This seems like a big place to you now, but it will start to feel small. Explore everything—internships, study abroad, alternative spring break. Durham will always be here, and it’s a big world out there. And you’ll appreciate our sleepy little town even more if you’ve been away.

The people who are worth your romantic attention aren’t the ones texting you at 1 a.m. asking you to come over and “watch a movie.” Know what you want, know what you deserve, and stick to your guns. And, when you inevitably ignore that hard-won little chestnut from a wizened senior, just remember that every person you date/hook up with/have a weird undefined thing with is part of your story and part of the hopefully functional adult you’re going to become. Don’t disavow that. It’s college. We’ve all been there. (Just use a condom).

Fight for your friends. From this year onward, and progressively for the rest of your life, your friends are going to be increasingly scattered across the country and the world. The friends who were two doors down last semester might be in Kenya or London or New Zealand next semester. Your friends from home may not come back for the summer—they might take on internships in California or summer classes in Cambridge. Make the effort to hang onto the people you care about. It’s worth it.

Finally, don’t get locked into a five-year plan or fixated on a dream career. The jobs I’m looking at now are in fields I didn’t even know existed when I was a freshman. Things happen. You learn new things—about yourself and about the world—and you change your mind. That’s okay (and you’re not even remotely alone). Whatever you think you want now might not make you half as happy as something you haven’t even discovered yet. Yes, have goals—just stay awake to the rest of the world, too. And don't take it too seriously. You're gonna be great.

In Which We Can Be Anything But Mostly We Are Broke

Remember when you were a little kid and they told you could be anything you want when you grow up? That was so nice. "They" of course is Sesame Street, or whatever show those of you who grew up with cable were watching. No, I will not catch most of your references to "Hey Arnold." Sad, I know. But Sesame Street had Spanish lessons and I speak Spanish now, so really, who wins? (The Hey Arnold kids totally win).

Anyway. It was such a lovely idea that you could be anything. A ballerina, an astronaut, a doctor...really anything with a recognizable outfit and an explanation five year olds can grasp. They keep up this farce right through high school and even into college. Remember those motivational posters stuck on the walls of the gym? If you can dream it, you can do it! Really, the idea that you can become anything you want runs deep in American culture. All it takes to achieve the American dream is some elbow grease, bootstraps, grindstones and some other metaphors I'm sure Sarah Palin would be happy to provide. If you can dream it, you can do it.

The worst part, to my mind, is that once you go to college and declare a liberal arts major they keep going with this notion that you can be anything. A liberal arts education prepares you for a huge number of professions, they love telling you. Here, you will learn to write, research, argue, think critically, and here you will become an Educated Person. Well, great. There was a time when that was all you needed to get a job, but it's not anymore--and no one ever sits you down and says, "Okay, let's talk about how you're going to take this degree in philosophy and turn it into something that will eventually cut you a paycheck."

For the record, I believe a liberal arts education is a really valuable thing. The world needs people like us, because otherwise all we'd have is numbers and data and brushed stainless steel. (I guess my world without the liberal arts looks like "I, Robot" with Will Smith? I don't know.) I don't disavow my decision to major in English. I feel like an educated person. But, in one area, I feel like my education has already failed me in a big way. Writing is what I'm good at, but I'm staring down the barrel of the gun that is the real world and nobody's offered me even an inkling of how I'm supposed to take what I'm good at and turn it into a job.

Now, I'm figuring it out on my own, and I've got my fingers crossed that everything will look better in a year. But does UNH actually think that my courses in the Post Colonial Novel and Shakespeare and drawing and art history have actually made me a competitive candidate for a real job? (Technically I'll have a degree in journalism and be qualified to write for newspapers, but these days that's like majoring in physics and banking on becoming an astronaut.) Are the university bigwigs so out of touch that they don't realize that in today's market their students aren't qualified for anything, or do they not care?

Salon recently ran an article called "Is is time to kill the liberal arts degree?." Now, I'm resoundingly against killing the liberal arts degree, but I do wish somebody would recognize that liberal arts students need a little more of a plan than engineers, and that it might be nice if our university could throw us a little guidance. Some personal finance, some computer skills, some basic understanding of business, a little career counseling. Hell, it could be a whole class. No, it's not romantic. It's not living on coffee and cigarettes and scribbling the great American novel in your vermin-infested apartment. It's not grappling with philosophical conundrums. But it's goddamn common sense. Until academia realizes that liberal arts majors need to live and work in today's crazy-ass job market the same as everybody else, all we're going to have is a lot of Latin-speaking bag boys and dishwashers quoting Kafka.

The Worst Girls

They think they're hotter than everyone else (but they like talking about how they just like wearing jeans and t-shirts) they like sports (but not as much as they like telling guys how much they like sports) and they just don't get why they don't have any female friends (although what they really love is saying that girls are bitches and they don't want to be friends with them anyway). They're not just girls who are friends with guys, they're girls who proclaim that they can't stand other girls, only want to have guy friends and simply will not shut the fuck up about it.

They are the worst girls.

The worst girls shine in their Facebook pages; where they post statuses about how glad they are that all their friends are guys because girls are awful, and tons of boozy photo albums called things like "my boys <3." Don't get me wrong, it's great that you have boys. I believe that guys and girls can be platonic friends, sometimes. But sorry, if you're a girl who hangs out solely with guys, probably about 50% of them harbor feelings for you or at least a vague sense that they might want to make out with you sometime when everyone's drunk, 45% of them want to sleep with your roommate/sister/mom, and maybe 5% of them want to actually be your friend.

A lot of actresses also suck in this regard. (Megan Fox, I'm looking at you). They're champs at saying things like "Women are just so jealous, I really just prefer guy friends" and "I'm really just a guy's girl, I love football!" (I'm sure you do, January Jones). These factoids--especially the sports (because imagine! A woman who likes to watch sports!)--are constantly trotted out in profiles of actresses like they somehow make them more interesting. So, ladies of Hollywood (because I know you're reading this) it's quite possible that the reason you don't have girlfriends isn't because they're all jealous of your hotness--it might be because you're just really annoying.

Now, I shave my legs and everything but what the hell ever happened to sisterhood? This is simply not cool. If you do this, you are not fooling anyone. We all know that "girls are so jealous" means "I think I'm hot shit, you should too," and that "I just get along better with guys" means "I think all girls except me are bitches." We all get it. But if girls don't like you, you need to a.) take a look at the girls you're hanging out with and b.) take a long, hard look at yourself. Because somebody's acting like an asshole and it might be you.

So ladies, here's the takeaway: stop trashing other girls as a way to inflate your ego, because it sucks. It does not make you remotely interesting or unique that you like football. It just makes you one of millions of other people who like football. (And dudes: I know a girl who can hold her liquor and talk intelligently about sports is hot--not that I can speak from experience--but think twice about dating a chick with no girlfriends. Just...think twice). Most people couldn't care less if you want to have friends of the opposite sex and watch sports and drink whiskey and do whatever other crap "guys girls" supposedly do, so you can stop talking about it now. Sorry, but those are just things that people do sometimes. You're going to need a new schtick, cupcake.

Choose Your Own Adventure

So I've pretty much sucked at blogging this past month. I'd like to be better about at least jotting things down as they happen, because I know I'm going to forget things in a year, two years, ten years. But fact is when the coolest stuff is happening you're living it, not writing about it. And I refuse to be one of those douchebag writers with a fifteen dollar Moleskin notebook in my pocket all the time, I'm sorry.

There's just about two months left in my time abroad, and I'm constantly vacillating between wanting it to slow down and speed up. On the one hand, I'd happily live in Europe and see the world one 8 euro Ryanair flight at a time. (Although if and when I'm ever making real money I will never fly Ryanair again. That shitshow is basically the Fung Wah bus of the skies.) On the other, I miss home. I miss my boyfriend, and my family, and my friends from home and from school. I feel like the world's biggest whiner--partying until 5 a.m., swimming in the Mediterranean...and here I am talking about how homesick I am?

But this was what I wanted all along, I think. To feel homesick, and even at times a little lost. Because every time that I beat down a purse snatcher on a bike--yeah that happened, long story--or share a joke with somebody from Morocco, or Mali, or Cuba, or stand in front of Las Meninas or inside the Alhambra, I am constantly bowled over that this is actually my life. My life is drinking sangria with the Sierra Nevada on my right and the Mediterranean at my left. My life is having breakfast with my boyfriend on the terrace of our rental apartment and looking at the Alhambra. It's crazy, and it used to all be out of my comfort zone, and it's all pretty amazing.

Whenever we're traveling as a group, everyone is constantly taking pictures of groups of people, and the sights, obviously. But once in awhile, somebody hands their camera to a friend and, almost a little sheepishly, asks if the friend will take a picture of just him or her--standing in front of whatever important, beautiful or famous thing we happen to be visiting. Because even though we share so much of this trip, we're all writing our own version of the story. We all want a little piece that says "I was here."

The thing about going abroad as a student is that even though you're in a large group that gets close very quickly, you're also you. You're a college student who's choosing to ditch the library and the dining hall and the warm Keystone for something totally new and unknown. You've got the balls to do that--and while it might not feel like a lot sometimes, it sets you apart a little. I think it's something very personal, choosing to push yourself like this. Everybody is looking for something slightly different, but we all wanted this challenge. We're looking to learn, and make friends, and travel, but for me at least there's also something bigger, something more inward. I don't know what to call it, really, but I feel it sometimes when I fall into bed at the end of the day just totally exhausted from speaking, reading and writing Spanish all day, not to mention absorbing the culture shock (which gets better but it doesn't go away). It's like going to bed after a serious workout, with all your muscles aching. They hurt because you broke them down and now they're slowly rebuilding themselves into something stronger.

I've Seen the Future and All I Can Say Is Go Back

I was never one of those kids who didn't want to grow up. I couldn't wait to grow up. The first specific age I wanted to reach was eleven. That was how old you had to be to hang out in the library by yourself. I was really cool. Then I started counting down to freshman year of high school, because really, middle school is just the Pit of Despair with more magazine subscription fundraisers and discussion of body odor. Then, obviously, the countdown to 16 began. 16 is when you get your driver's license in New Hampshire...you pretty much show up and show them you know how to turn on a car and move it forward and backwards and they give you a license. Where we're going, we don't need parallel parking, Marty!

Next up was eighteen, which meant I could vote. Which, yeah, I'll admit, I thought was freaking awesome. Pretty much I was Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club. (If you have a problem with me describing my youth in terms of eighties movies you can just gtfo, this is my blog.) Then I just wanted to go to college and ditch my small town high school. I was your typical Diane Court. And now here I am waiting around for the next big birthday--twenty-one. The age when apparently our brains become mature overnight and we magically all start drinking 1.5 glasses of Chardonnay and nibbling on cheese and crackers and all develop a distaste for infernal shit like Four Loko and Jaegermeister. Okay.

Now, I've matured. I've learned some stuff. Like always date a Wesley over a Jake Ryan, but definitely go with a Ferris Bueller over a Bender and a Lloyd Dobler over pretty much anyone. Except a Cameron Frye. That guy was basically the stealth hottie of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. He wins.

But man, junior year is getting me down. I'm living in a dorm, which makes me feel like a kid--an angry, sleep deprived kid-- and I'm also trying to figure out what the hell I'm doing with my life, which is making me feel really old. I'm going to Spain for the semester in less than two months. That's freaking me out, in all honesty. I can't even decide if I want time to speed up or slow down. And I fucking hate it. I hate wallowing. Nobody puts me in a goddamn corner.

And yeah, I know I should chill out and be Zen about this situation called my life. I'm looking for a dare to be great situation when I all I need to do is relax and be the ball. And I am trying--I swear--to be the ball. After all, life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop to look around, you might miss it. I'm working on that one.

Ten Commandments for Facebook, According to Me.

1. Thou shalt not air your dirty laundry on Facebook
You are not Taylor Swift. You should not be naming names. There are two couples having giant, ugly, nasty-ass breakups on my Facebook feed right now, and it's gross. Stop it. Have some class. Or at least get more creative about your revenge.

2. Thou shalt not post incessant pictures of what you ate all the time.
a.) no one cares, b.) now I'm hungry, c.) when I realize I'm actually spending time looking at the half-eaten fish and chips you ate this summer I feel bad about my life.

3. Thou shalt not make your default a picture of your kids without you in it.
Come on, people. Think about this one for a second.

4. Thou shalt not invite me to get free stuff.
Uggs, iPads, laptops...if you think you're seeing any of it I have this friend who's a Nigerian prince who would LOVE to chat with you. Aaand by now some Slovakian teenager has your credit card number, so that's good.

5. Thou shalt not post pictures of thy friends in compromising positions.
Solo cups and shot glasses are one thing, your friend puking while she still has forties taped to her hands and a guy in a flatbrim and two polo shirts is licking her face is another. Come on. Be nice. Actually, all I have to say on this subject is: New Year's Eve 2009. Thanks a heap, bitch.

6. Thou shalt edit.
"breakfast, chemistry from 9-12, then homework." Fascinating. "watching the office and having a sandwich" Scintillating. A picture of your leg after you had a cast on it for three months, or of a boil you got lanced on your back. Delightful. A lot of people don't understand that the Internet is this magical place where you can be whoever you want--you can project exactly the image you want. I'm not saying lie, but before you hit "share," ask yourself: Does anyone care? Does this have to do with my bodily functions? Should I perhaps reevaluate my life if I'm telling Facebook how gassy I am?

7. Thou shalt not confuse Facebook for Twitter.
If you must live-blog a sporting event/television finale/your trip to the dentist, get a Twitter account. That's where that kind of thing belongs. If you blow up my feed with fifteen updates about the One Tree Hill finale, you're probably getting defriended. (Isn't it fun to think about how ten years ago no one would have any idea what that sentence means?)

8. Thou shalt not confuse Facebook for Livejournal.
If you must tell the Internet about your feelings, get a Livejournal. Or if possible some friends/a therapist/a goldfish. "Joe Schmoe is bummed" is ok, "I'm such a terrible person but i have so much love to give, why doesn't anyone love meeee" is just awkward. Come on.

9. Thou shalt remember that it's just software.
Some things don't belong on Facebook. If you're offering your sympathy, send a card. If you're dumping somebody, do it in person. If you're Facebook chatting with someone down the hall, walk down the hall and talk to her. If you're still playing Farmville...maybe go outside and see some real plants. Get a little vitamin D. You're looking kind of peaked.

10. Thou shalt not be that dude who never checks Facebook.
If you're going to have one, use it at least once in awhile. People actually do a fair amount of their social planning/scheduling on Facebook now, and it's just obnoxious if people think they can reach you but you don't go on for weeks. It's Zuckerberg's world, we just live in it.

You Meddling Kids

I think I'm officially way too old to live in a dorm. I have a prime room by UNH standards--an air-conditioned single in Congreve, newly renovated, perfectly located etc. But aside from a few upperclassmen, the floor is almost entirely made up of freshmen. (And since when do freshmen get to live in Congreve? I earned this, goddamnit. I lived in a built up triple on Stoke 8 freshman year. Big, bad, vomity, pissy, smelly, Keystone-soaked Stoke: that's where freshmen belong. It builds character. )

But freshmen. Oh, freshmen. They slam the doors. They still think it's awesome that there are no parents around to tell them to turn down the music. (They have two songs: "Fire Burning" by Sean Kingston and"Airplanes" by B.o.B.) They think they're the shit because they got into a frat. They puke in the bathrooms and wear their IDs around their necks and rather adorably ask you for directions to the MUB. And it wasn't even that long ago that I was one of them.

I feel like I'm caught at a weird age. Going to the same party over and over (beer, Beirut, Axe) has gotten kind of boring at this point, but I can't go to the bars and...well, let's be honest, Durham does not offer that much of a chem-free nightlife unless you're really into comedian Bob Marley. I'm old enough to be cranky about asshole freshmen waking me up with slamming doors at 6 a.m.. but obviously, I'm still a 20-year-old. I like to go out and have fun... it's just that lately "fun" doesn't necessarily mean pregaming in somebody's dorm room and then going to some dumpy apartment in the Greens and drinking warm beer. That was awesome when we were freshmen, because we were freshmen. So I don't begrudge the class of 2014 a proper freshman experience--the globe would probably tilt off its axis if freshman girls were mature, sensible creatures.

For me, though, there's something new this year; and I think that it's the very fact that it's not new. I know where everything is. I don't (often) get locked out of my room. I'm not scared of my professors, and I don't get surprised when one of them says "fuck". The dining hall food has long since lost its novelty. Don't get me wrong, I love it here. And I know how fortunate I am to be here and not yet in the working world. But as junior year began yesterday morning, it struck me that this college business is feeling less like an Asher Roth video, and more like...well, I don't know what. Maybe it's only that mysterious "real world" starting to seep in at the edges, just a bit.

Important Thing of the Day

This Scottish PSA (down at the bottom because I'm terrible at formatting) showed up on Broadsheet today, and although I know I've got approximately 3 people who read this blog I wanted to share it because I think it's really pertinent for college students. Something that really, really bugs me-- and not the way American Apparel or even Sarah Palin bugs me--is the attitude that college students, male and female, have towards rape. Because the fact is that even girls have an insanely blase attitude about it. Sure, not about armed, violent, To Catch a Predator stuff--everybody knows that's wrong. But--and this is just my perception as a college-age woman--there's a disgustingly passive feeling about date rape.

I'm not going to lay into fraternities...we all know that they're not exactly the safest place in the world for a drunk girl. The group I want to address is my peers: the nice girls. We are nice. We come from nice families, nice neighborhoods, nice high schools. We have nice friends and maybe nice boyfriends. And some of us are the worst rape apologists since everyone who signed that bullshit Roman Polanski petition. It has to stop. Here's the way the thinking goes. Those girls who get raped get too wasted, dress too slutty, do stupid things, get themselves into bad situations and probably deserve it. If they let themselves get too drunk to say no, they probably deserve it. If they walk home alone, they probably deserve it. We are nice girls, so we're smart. We walk in groups, don't get too drunk, don't dress too slutty. So that could never happen to us.

Yeah, right.

It can happen to anyone, chickadees. Sure, don't be a moron. But don't go around saying that a woman who's gone through one of the most traumatic things the human psyche can experience was asking for it. Have a little goddamn empathy. I mean, whatever happened to sisterhood? The idea that anyone "deserves" or is "asking for" rape is so disgusting, so morally out-of-whack that I have a hard time even writing something coherent about it--and the notion that women are talking this way about other women is even worse. The idea that women have to dress a behave a certain way in order to avoid rape basically excuses all the dudes who are actually, uh, going around raping people. This nice girl is calling bullshit.

In the Loop

My younger brother told me this week that when he has dreams about our whole family, I’m no longer in the dream. I’m choosing not to consult Freud on this one and hoping this is only because I don’t live at home anymore, but it still stings. Coming home from college and being surrounded by family again is a scary thing. I used to see these people every single day, be completely privy to their comings and goings, to say nothing of bowel movements and menstrual cycles. College, however, has taken me completely out of the loop. And if this isn’t my loop anymore, where is my loop?

My sister is suddenly driving, my brother is graduating high school, my younger brother is heading to middle school and my dad can’t keep up with me on skis anymore—and it’s all happening without me around. Somehow their milestones make me feel older than my own. Seeing a girl whose diapers I changed get behind the wheel of a car (my car) packs way more punch than my own birthday. Worse, it’s all happening without me. Half the time nobody even bothers to tell me these things. It took them three days to tell me that my dog died, for Christ’s sake.

I realized today that I don’t even remember what I got on the SATs. That might not seem like a big deal, but I was one of those kids--there was a period of about three months where that number seemed like everything. You can’t imagine that you’re ever going to forget that number, because you write it on college applications and tell it to guidance counselors and more grudgingly to the nosy girls with nice straight hair and Tory Burch flats. These girls have middle-tier brand-name business college written all over them. You, with your Wilco T-shirt and viola case and haircut that makes you look like Barbara Streisand in The Way We Were, are rather obviously destined for the liberal arts.

You’re going to go off to that liberal arts program and promptly forget about those girls. You’ve got down-to-earth people here. People who get you. There are people who read books here, and even boys who don’t think you’re a freak for reading books. Even kind of like you for it. These are people who care about what is going on the world, and want to write and talk and sing about it. You find your tribe.

You keep an ear and an eye to your old tribe, but one day you realize that this where you really belong. The old loop is still going on and changing and shifting without you. You can make guest appearances, but you’ll never quite slip back into your old place. Deep down, your allegiances can stay the same, but there’s no dual citizenship allowed.

It’s all as it should be, of course. It’s a story as old as time itself. We go out and take on things we never thought we could, find ourselves a new tribe, build ourselves a new loop. We forget numbers that used to mean everything.

I'm Officially a Fish With a Bicycle

I’m a college student. I’m also a feminist, and not shy about the label. I’m also in what is pretty much my first adult relationship. (the kind where you don’t end the evening making out in a Civic while your parents watch from the upstairs window.) I was grossly under-prepared me for what a minefield this is, and for what it means. Because what it means—having a relationship that isn’t about “parking” (yes, where I’m from we still go parking) and making out in front of your locker and “you hang up first, no, you hang up first”—is that I’m really fucking old.

First of all, most college students don’t really have relationships anymore. I’ve done the booty-call thing and the random hookup thing and the you-have-a-girlfriend-why-are-you-touching-my-boobs thing, but in my two years of college I haven’t tackled the relationship thing. I like having fun, and I really like being independent. A boyfriend never really fit into my life, or anyway I couldn’t imagine how one would. Then, when I was busy living my life, working hard, playing hard, doing my thing…a guy who fit came along. Just like that. I live in a Cameron Diaz movie. It’s fine.

But after those few weeks of off-the-radar 24/7 coupledom were over, it was time to tackle some tough stuff. I still wanted to go out with my girlfriends. I still wanted to slob around my dorm with pore-refining mud on my face while eating cookie dough. (There’s a place on campus that sells individual cups of cookie dough, spoon included. There is no way to eat that alluringly, I’m sorry.) Plus, I’m a writer. I need time to think. I need time to be down in the dumps, because I just get like that sometimes. It’s usually followed by the most bearable writing I’ve done in months. So where do you draw the line? How do you say, I love you, but please leave me alone? Where is the instruction manual for this rig?

Those questions we’ve handled, so far. We’re getting the time management stuff down. But what about when I’m at a party without him? This is college—everybody is all up on everybody. There’s a lot of sweat and Keystone and other fluids all over everything, and there’s just generally a lot of mingling of fluids. It’s fucking disgusting, I won’t lie, but what are you going to do? Now, obviously I’m not letting anyone near my fluids. But what if I’m dancing with someone else? Or if I kiss my best friend in exchange for a six-pack? Nobody tells you. Not health class, not your mom, not your human sexuality class, not Cosmopolitan (otherwise known as “Twenty-seven ‘Sexy’ Things to Do With a Scrunchie”).

Answer: We have to talk. We’re a couple now, and we have to straighten this out. Almost like…grown-ups. Damn.