Anti-advice from a tiny, grizzled veteran of the college experience

It’s easy to tell other people what to do. This edition of The Pitt News is supposed to be a… It’s easy to tell other people what to do. This edition of The Pitt News is supposed to be a guide for new students — New Student Guide, duh — something that’ll give y’all the lowdown on Pitt and Pittsburgh. Most of the advice is strictly practical: Call it Pitt, not UPitt; use your student ID for free things; don’t believe anyone who tries to direct you to the intersection of Forbes and Fifth; etc.

This is the kind of advice that’s easy to give and receive. It deals with minutiae, and tells you how not to look like an idiot.

But a lot of advice is easy to give and hard to take. Be yourself. Find passionate people. Pursue your interests. Well, like communism, those things are all nice in theory but hard to apply.

So I have some advice for you: Don’t take any advice.

But, Sydney, isn’t taking that advice going directly against your advice? Won’t I be stuck in an endless cognitive cycle trying to ponder that? Kid, that’s between your Intro to Logic class and you.

Who am I that I’m qualified to make such sweeping statements? I’ve been here awhile, seen the joys and horrors of four years of higher education, and after four years at Pitt, I’m leaving to study abroad.

Besides the serenity that escape brings, I have a somewhat personal interest in making sure the froshes get good advice. Just as I’m leaving, my sister will be arriving as a freshman.

So my advice is that whatever’s worth learning in college, you have to learn for yourself. I don’t want to offer the same tepid advice — follow your dreams, take the road less traveled and, oh yeah, save your quarters — that gets offered every year.

I can’t grow up for anyone reading this, nor would I have wanted anyone to grow up for me. We all came to college for the same reasons: to get an education, have some fun and to escape the locker-lined prison of high school.

So do those things and try not to screw up too badly. All throughout high school, my teachers droned about how college would be different, that no one would be around to hold my hand and there would be no safety nets on which to fall.

They were partially right. No one at Pitt specializes in handholding — well, I’m not quite sure what the Office of Experiential Learning does, but I’m pretty sure it’s not that. But there are plenty of safety nets and maybe even an ejector seat if things get too bad.

No one expects you to come to school and adjust immediately. Your classes will be different; you’ll be living with a stranger in a room shaped like a pie wedge; and Oakland will seem like this alien land of parties and beer and fun new terms like “ho-train” and “case race.”

If I were a better person, I’d try to shelter all of you, especially my sister. I could assuage some of your greenhorn fears with the hard-earned advice of a grizzled veteran, the sort of advice the gruff-but-kind sergeant gives to the baby-faced private in war movies. In the end, though, the sergeant gets shot or the private ignores the advice and has to have an amputation, neither of which I consider a good outcome.

In the past four years, I’ve learned important life lessons about school and love being independent and being a good friend and all that other rot you’re supposed to do after the hormone hurricane of teen-ager-dom ends.

And of course I don’t want my sister to get into trouble. Of course I want her to date only nice boys, take fun classes and never get anything pierced. Of course. But no amount of words can change the fact she might date dumb loser-jerks, take the Economics of Worker Exploitation 101 or end up with a hole through her right eyebrow.

No number of words could have kept me from doing those things when I was but a girl of 18, and my sister’s taller, smarter and cuter than I am — well, two out of three, anyway.

Be forewarned — if high school is a thorny path, then college is a minefield. The important thing, then, is that you make your own decisions. None of you are ingenues waiting to be victimized by this cruel, meat-grinder world — after all, you’ve already taken the SATs, proving that a little of your once-immaculate souls now belongs to the College Board.

So tread carefully. Bushwhack your own way through this mess and don’t be afraid to slip once in awhile. You’ll be fine, I promise.

All you need for college is duct tape, a sense of humor and a well-stocked library. E-mail Sydney Bergman at sbergman@pittnews.com.