TDI delivers a foolproof guide to succeeding at freshmanhood

Hi. You’re probably pretty excited right now. You’re, like, in college! I’ll bet you’re really busy shaking President Wright’s hand or going to a pottery workshop or something, but hold on a minute… stop calling your grandma, or peeing your pants, or evolving from a zygote into an embryo, or whatever it is you freshmen do, and hear me out. As TDI’s Associate Editor of Campus Affairs Emeritus, I know things about Dartmouth like it’s my job, which it was, along with sleeping until sunset (my day job). I could boot on you (“alcohol-induced vomiting”), or punch you in the face like most upperclassmen will, but instead I’ve decided to charitably impart on you helpful tips for working hard, playing hard, and keeping those pounds off (not even!) from my vast repository of expertise on being a freshman, all conveniently organized for you in an easy-to-use collection of words and sentences… and numbers.

1) You aren’t that not sweet.

It’s bound to happen to you very soon, and, very likely, many times: that moment when somebody makes you publicly and acutely aware of your abysmal social gravitas. Maybe you deserve it. You were the ones who were born in the year Three Men and a Baby came out. You were the ones who went back to Hogwarts despite Dobby’s exhortations not to, and now the Chamber of Secrets is open again. You brought this upon yourselves. But it’s never fun (and, from your greenhorn perspective, probably seems pretty gratuitous) to get knocked down a peg.

If you’re a guy, it’s probably a belligerent exhortation: “Drink your beer, FRESHMAN!” It’s every single registered frat party, where you watch as that sloppy girl down your hall in the River gets a beer at the keg, glugs it, and gets another as you look forlornly at the emptying keg, arm tiring from being extended for fifteen minutes, dutifully waiting for your half-cup of foamy Bud Light. Maybe it’s just some older dude being a douchebag to you for no other reason than that his mom got knocked up first. Take heart, though. Soon enough, you’ll be a sophomore, but that kid will still be a douchebag, and everyone will hate him, except hot girls. You won’t have to worry about them anyway though -- you’re a freshman guy.

2) That kid isn’t actually an alcoholic.

Chances are, the only time you “raged” in high school was that time when you got carried away at Passover and had an extra cup of Manischewitz during the part where everyone sings the songs. You will feel very liberated in college, because anyone can drink any time he or she wants! It’s like breathing, or getting frostbite, or the opposite of riding a unicorn.

As such, many of your classmates will be suddenly and unexpectedly self-diagnosed with the chronic psychosomatic disease of alcoholism. I’m telling you now: don’t be that kid who tells everyone he’s an alcoholic. That kid is not an alcoholic. An alcoholic is someone who is addicted to alcohol and cannot stop drinking. Symptoms include lying on sewer grates surrounded by empty Colt 45’s, destroying your all your relationships with friends and family, dying of cirrhosis at 37, and writing the Great American Novel. Symptoms do not include playing pong twice a week and yelling “RAGEEE!!” a lot.

3) Don’t be so eager to give up the ‘shmob.

As you may or may not know, “’shmob” is Dartmouth vernacular for “roving band of bewildered freshmen.” Like most prey, freshmen travel in packs to fend off predators and look stupid and uninitiated in large, attention-attracting groups instead of by themselves. Most freshmen will be told that ‘shmobs are a key indicator of lameness, and should be avoided. I say, “fellas, ‘shmobs are an efficient, non-sketchy way to follow freshman girls around before they break free from their cocoons of giggly insecurity and take flight like beautiful, skanky butterflies into the world of older, fraternity-affiliated men.”

And for the ladies, ‘shmobs are an excellent way to get your ’09 guy friends into crowded frat parties. In fact, I would begin the tradition of the “‘sphmob” this year, except that I don’t have fifty lame friends.

4) Whatever, whatever you do, don’t pretend to be S&S when knocking on someone’s door to get into a room party.

This is the most important one. Somewhere along the line, some student in the illustrious procession of Men and Women of Dartmouth decided that it would be funny to pose as campus secret police, Safety and Security, whilst attempting to gain admission to some event of a pregaming nature. Apparently this genius thought that by pretending to be someone totally unwanted, he would be welcomed as a bearer of pranks and hilarity. This is not so. Maybe it’s a little funny the first time someone fools your innocent freshman sensibilities. It is never funny again, not even the 57th time.

I have an idea, though. Why not pretend to be some whom your host would like to invite into the room? Let’s compare:

Asshole: Knock, knock!
Aspiring Sweet Dude (ASD): Who is it?
Asshole: S&S! *snicker, because I think that is funny and I am an asshole*
ASD: Oh no! S&S! Hide the girly fruit-flavored vodka!
Girl: Not rad!

Not Asshole: Knock, knock!
ASD: Yo, who is it?
Not Asshole: Dude, it’s [Angelina Jolie, Bob Saget, Pope Benedict XVI, Natalie Holloway, 19th-century Norwegian poet/playwright Bjornstjerne Bjornson]!
ASD: Dude, holy shit guys, f’ing 19th-century Norwegian poet/playwright Bjornstjerne Bjornson is here!
Girl: The Bjornstjerne Bjornson? Winner of the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature? Motherf’ing author of the epic cycle Arnljot Gelline? Are you for reals?
Not Asshole: Nah, dudes, it’s just Bob!
ASD: Oh snap! Come in and drink all my booze!
Girl: This Bob is very much the type of person I would give serious consideration to “hooking up” with later in this night!

Thank me later.

5) Join a club sport.

Here’s the thing: most of your friends will be either a) people who live in rooms close enough to you that you can communicate through yelling or b) people who pursue the same extracurricular activities as you. Since you have no control over a, let’s examine b. First of all, would you really want to be friends with the Dartmouth Union of Bogglers, or the “Dartmouth Outing Club” (whatever that is), or Women in Business? Now that you’ve answered that, you obviously need to play a sport, since varsity sports are top dollar in Dartmouth social currency, and club sports are like the Canadian dollar (also called a “loon”), currently at an exchange rate of 0.81 to 1 American dollar. Finally, in selecting your sport, rule out crew. Think of those movies where there are a bunch of slaves being forced to row on a Viking longship. That’s crew. Except that Viking slaves didn’t have dry season.

6) Maybe go to class or something.

Why? I could give you two answers. 1) Your education at Dartmouth is quite likely costing your parents 120 G’s. Think of all that money in a big iron pot at the end of a rainbow, and then a leprechaun stealing it and dumping it into the River Liffey, and then also blighting the potato, the only sustenance of millions of now-starving Irish people. You are that leprechaun if you don’t go to class. And those are my people you killed. The Irish in me hates you. 2) Class is one of the most underrated venues for playing Flip-Cup.

Also, while I’m on the subject, try this on for size: participate in class discussion at the obvious expense of ever getting laid. May sound crazy, but if you’re that kid who sits in the back of the class and never says anything, you’re not fooling anyone; you were obviously smart enough to get into Dartmouth just like everyone else, and you obviously care enough to come to class. Grow some balls and tell that know-it-all kid why Theseus wasn’t a more ideal mythological hero than Hercules. Then say “Boo-Yeah!” in your mind.

7) Come up with a signature Class of 2009 drunken stunt.

It’s like in “high school” when your class president (i.e. you) mobilized your rebellious cohorts to play a hilarious and totally not allowed senior prank on your school—except more “edgy” and “xtreme” and “likely to cause significant head and body trauma.” For the ‘08s, it was jumping out of windows, so that’s out. You might instead try hanging out at lame frats, talking about how much your first-year seminar sucks, awkwardly fumbling through intra-floor hookups, calling your parents every night, or telling everyone what a huge alcoholic you are. These shouldn’t be too hard for you!

Or you could steal the zamboni from Thompson Arena and driving it into the Connecticut River (but make sure you do it from the Vermont side). Rage!

8) Watch for the shrimp stir-fry and tuna skewers at Homeplate. The Blues Burger is also delicious, if messy. The Hop’s Big Bad Burrito may be the best digestible non-chemical substance on campus, though.

I don’t really have any snide hauteur or bitter sarcasm to add here, you should just take my advice. I mean, um, finish your beer, you stupid freshman.

9) Join thefacebook.com. Everybody’s doing it.

Don’t be that one kid who is too cool and detached for facebook. Everyone knows that Dartmouth gives out scholarships to students with the most facebook friends, so you should “friend” (it’s a verb now) and “poke” as many people as you can. Oh, you already did that? Wow, I guess I had thought you were actual BFFA with 259 people at Dartmouth before you had even gone on your DOC Trip.

But are you, new-profile man, intimidated by the endless clickable flurry of pictures of really hard dudes rockin’ a cold brewsky in one hand and throwin’ up the Shocker with the other? Well, allow me to help with a few simple profile-making guidelines! For interests, whatever else you may say, always, always include an overt reference to your love of binge drinking. Heck, you can list “knitting earmuffs for my grandma’s cat”, “eating only vegetables”, or even “caring about things”, so long as you follow those up with “RAGING HARD ON NIGHTS THAT AREN’T EVEN FRIDAY AND SATURDAY WOOO CRUUUNK YEEEAH RAGE” right after it. That’s pretty much the hard part, after that just remember to like Jack Johnson, DMB, Luda, and 2pac, chick flicks that are hilariously incongruous to your actual personality, and “anything by Dan Brown,” because there’s a man who knows how to write a good book—or better yet, like no books at all! Literacy is mad weak!

Noted orator and Hennessey advocate TI once rapped about “juggl[ing] anything...weed, blow, real estate, liquor store, wit no trouble,” empathetically capturing the hazards faced by Type-A, Ivy League types ready to embark on an exciting yet difficult new journey. As the newest members of Dartmouth, you’ll want to try everything there is available to you—and that’s quite a bit! Keeping in mind that most scholars concur on the fact that TI’s cryptic verse, when divested of its abstruse metaphors and allusions, should read “jugg[ling] anything...extracurriculars, social life, academics, living alone for the first time,” and “wit some trouble,” we would all do well to heed TI’s warning and not get too stressed out early on. College will be the best twelve years of your life, and by the time you get that degree in maxillofacial surgery in its shiny frame and decide you wanted to tour with Skynyrd after all, well, you’ll wish you hadn’t gotten all stressed and failed to play pong with your friends that one time.

In all seriousness, though, you ‘09s are the immediate future of Dartmouth. Maybe you’ll slip up and look like a stupid freshman a few times early on—we all did. I accidentally shotgunned a, uh, soda out the front end of the can and spilled it all over my shirt during Orientation because I didn’t know any better. You may not even know what “shotgun” means. But don’t let that prevent you from taking that advanced Continental Philosphy class with all the Phil majors and their wacky postmodern hats. Don’t be intimidated to ask that super-cool ’07 or ’08 at The Dartmouth Independent Activities Fair booth why his awesome publication is the best-written, best-informed and most shamelessly self-promotional publication on campus, bar none. For God’s sake remember that 90% of your education here will be outside the classroom, and your very roommate may be the smartest, most interesting kid you’ve ever met. Or he may pee in his clothes drawer at night and not remember it. It’s all part of what I can assure you will be a pretty wild ride.

Now get out there and start asking people where they’re from, and when they say “New Jersey,” responding that, cool, you know some people who live in New Jersey too.

What, you’ve already done that as well? You guys may do alright after all, I think.