Advice for our new friends

Starting college is only daunting because of the expectations attached to it.

Incoming students are arriving at one of the most prominent party schools in the United States.

Students, whether they admit it or not, are enveloped in a coercive culture urging them to drink, to have sex and to treat college as though it were not “real life.”

Hear me now, incoming freshman: Do not get pulled into the undertow.

College is real life. It does matter.

You do not come to IU to put personal development and self-knowledge on hold. Rather, your years at IU afford a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to immerse yourselves in the values IU is founded upon: light and truth.

Your professors are not your only teachers. So, don’t ignore voices from the past or voices of your peers.

IU has one of the best music schools in the world. There are literally hundreds of free performances a year for students. Go to them.

Learn what Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Copland have to tell you. Attend an opera each semester. Most likely, you will never have easy access to our caliber of opera once you leave IU.

The Lilly Library has rare copies of Kierkegaard, Shakespeare and a Gutenberg Bible. Have you ever held a 500-year-old book? You can now.

Take time to talk with your friends. Argue, debate, agree, persuade, fume and conclude.

Talk about something besides how lame your professor is being. Look for contradictions in what people say, and hold them to their beliefs.

Talk about what is true. Try to find it. Then, live consistently with it. After all, our motto is “light and truth.”

Read books besides textbooks. Go to the bookstores in downtown Bloomington. Read poetry in the spring and in the fall. In the winter, read novels that you may never have the time to read later in life.

Read Wendell Berry, Sophocles, G.K. Chesterton, Flannery O’Connor, Graham Greene and T.S. Eliot.

Memorize a poem your first semester. Recite it for your friends. Write down passages you like from books so that you can read them later.

Don’t walk to class with headphones over your ears. The best armor against thinking, meeting new people and spending time with old friends is noise.

Walk and listen. Don’t restrict yourself merely to observing while listening to your own personal soundtrack to life. Attempt to actively participate in your day.

Finally, don’t lose who you were back home. College is certainly a time for self-examination and exciting experiences.

This does not necessitate the utter abandonment of the ideals and beliefs you learned from your parents and from your communities.

Bloomington has places of worship for Christians, Muslims and Jews. Remember who you really are.

Welcome to IU, and leave here more yourself.

­— Mthomas5@indiana.edu