FREE Advice For Freshmen

Do you get those emails whose main function is to remind you how old you’re getting – and how young the rest of the world is? The latest one, at least, had interesting information to process, assuming that any of us above the Age of Consent are still able to process information.

It was about Freshmen  —  the kids who are starting college this Fall.
That means they were born in 1992, and that means, among other things:

•They cannot imagine not having a remote control.
•Popcorn has always been made in the microwave.
•Jay Leno has always been on the Tonight Show.
•They don’t know who Mork was or where he was from. This explains why none of the kids at the family beach outing laughed when I said “Na-nu Na-Nu.” They looked at me as if I were from Ork or something.
•They’ve also never heard the saying “Where’s the beef,” which is a shame. And they totally wouldn’t get “I’d walk a mile for a Camel,” which is just as well. Luckily, Mad Men features Lucky Strikes.
•They don’t know who JR is, and therefore couldn’t care less who shot him.
And so it goes.

This list was put together by staff members of Benoit College in Wisconsin to “give the faculty a sense of the mindset of this year’s incoming freshmen.”

I’d like to add a little something to their impressionable young mindsets.

For starters, would any of you Freshmen have put quotes around the sentence about the faculty —let alone italicize it or attribute a source? Having always used the Internet for research (Library? What’s a library?) it’s natural to just paste and copy whole chunks of material into your work.

Note to the Benoit staff: add Plagiarism 101 to the curriculum.
Note to freshmen: sign up.

Other advice (both friendly and free) I’d like to give to Freshmen . . .

As alien as it may sound, it’s actually impolite to have a third-party conversation when you’re with someone else. Like, you know, texting or talking on your cell and stuff.

To help you get the hang of this, a course called Courtesy For Beginners should be offered during your first semester. It’s for your own good.

And while I’m being cranky (Moi? Cranky?), the word “stuff” should not be stuffed into every other sentence, nor should “like.” And furthermore! “Goes” is not a verb of speech. Like, you know, “She goes . . .” Freshmen of the world, please try using “said” instead once in while. And stuff the stuff.

A course in speeling, er, spelling, would be nice. Because (Fresh)man does not live by Spell-Check alone. There’s a difference between words like there and their, and computers mess up on this sort of thing here and their. And everyware.

Come to think of it, why are we still saying “Freshman.”
Shouldn’t it be “Freshwoman” for the girls and  “Freshperson” or “Freshpeople” for both sexes? Fresh”men” of the feminine persuasion might want to look into this.

I’m sure there’s lots more advice for the class of 2014, like don’t put red socks in with the white t-shirts unless you want a pink wardrobe, but it’s cocktail hour now, and consuming a martini sounds a lot more enlightening than continuing this list. Besides, all this whining makes me feel like a curmudgeon. And dammit, you have to be old to achieve that level of orneriness. No one wants to admit that. Hey, we were born before 1992, but we weren’t born yesterday.

                                  DO YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE FOR KIDS STARTING COLLEGE ????