An open letter to all incoming first-year students

Congratulations on your acceptance to one of the best and most prestigious universities in the country! Now, go ahead and forget all that crap you've heard your whole life about how smart you are, what a hard worker you are, how you are better than the average Joe go-to-community-college-and-work-60- hours-a-week-for-the-rest-of-your-life-and- have-a-chevy-cavalier-and-a-nice-duplex-to-show-for-it. Why? Because none of it matters anymore. There are 38,000 people here and every single one of them is either smarter or harder working than the mean. You are in a big pond now and chances are you are no longer at the top of your intellectual food chain. Not special - merely average. Get used to it.

 

Branden Sanz Dropping the Hammer

Once you've gotten yourself into the proper mind set and learned a few of the ground rules, you will find college to be a great experience, one of the most interesting and exciting times of your life. So I have taken it upon myself to provide you with a little advance warning on some of the little quirks of life at the University which we battle-tested upperclassmen take for granted, but can be quite overwhelming for the uninitiated.

Classes. Aside from the few individuals who are only here because they couldn't get into Harvard like daddy and are sliding through college in an alcoholic/marijuana-induced haze listening to Phish and watching reruns of Survivor because their only goal in life is to graduate so they can receive their inheritance (I hate you), most of us are primarily here to get an education. Not just get a C- and move on, but to actually learn something.

At any university this large, you are going to have good professors as well as bad ones. Some of them are utterly (and in the case of English and Religion Prof. Ralph Williams and History Prof. Sydney Fine, painfully) brilliant. However, some of them just plain bad. Some have been tenured for decades and done nothing but lectured for so long that the only thing they want to hear is the sound of their own voice and could give two shits whether you actually learn anything as long as they continue to draw their paycheck. Many are research studs and techno geeks that have the communicative ability of a tree stump. Science and engineering classes are notorious for this, so be prepared.

The situation with your Graduate Student Instructors will be similar. While most GSIs are more zealous about you actually learning anything than your professors, you still have your good ones and bad ones. If your GSI actually speaks English, count your lucky stars, because you are already ahead of the curve. While this may not mean anything except the fact that you become intimately acquainted with phrases like "ad hoc," "a priori," and "paradigm," you will at least get something from the class.

Causes. Over the course of your college career, you will invariably be made aware of various causes people around here are crusading on behalf of. You might have someone try and convince you that communism is an ideal social system. Amnesty International may try and convince you that sleeping outside on the Diag for a night, wrapped up in a $300 Bivouac sleeping bag is the way to help someone being starved and tortured in Algeria. Preacher Bob could call on you to repent before your foul practice of masturbation and idolatry sends you to Hell. Most of us seniors already know we're doomed anyway and just ignore him, but first-year students tend to get caught up in his fervor. My whole point is that causes, in and of themselves, are not bad things. But don't throw out everything you have learned over 18 years just because someone seems to have all the answers. They don't. Just because something is shiny and new, doesn't make it necessarily better.

Alcohol. A good portion of being young, free and irresponsible is the consumption of alcohol in copious amounts. No, I am not championing binge-drinking, but I realize it is going to happen. However, as a first-year student (and thus underage) you have to be smart. Do not get drunk and wander aimlessly about campus on a Saturday night in packs of 10-15. You might as well just scream out: "Hey! I'm shitfaced! Give me an MIP!" You can drink at house parties, but with the AAPD having too much money, too many personnel, and too little respect for your constitutional rights, any serious rager of a house party has a good chance of being busted. You're better off sticking with frat parties. The Greek System on campus has an agreement with the AAPD, so it generally takes a Serious Incident (something along the lines of a reported felony or an accidental death) for the police to get involved. Oh and, for you female first-year students: My sincere advice is to attend as many parties and meet as many people as possible during your first term, before the Freshman Fifteen sets in.

Good luck and enjoy your stay here.

Next week: The comprehensive guide to Football Saturdays.

- Branden Sanz can be reached via e-mail at hamrhead@umich.edu.