My best advice for a new college student... only one thing

I ran into an incoming student and his parents this weekend.  The mother recognized me from the First Step speech and came up to me to ask a few questions about living on campus. All of the questions were easy to answer and after I had responded I asked her son, Ryan, if he was looking forward to starting college. Ryan was quick to say yes and he was ready to move to Cape Girardeau, a city much larger than his hometown. Ryan then commented that he was most excited about moving away from home and “being on his own.”

Whenever I hear a student say, in front of their parents/guardians, they look forward to being on their own, I do two things. First, I watch the face of the parent/guardian to see if they either roll their eyes or make some other expression. Second, I remind the student that they are only sort of on their own and I follow that up with some questions that drive home this point. After I asked Ryan some of these questions about just how “on his own” he really was his mom asked me if I had any advice for Ryan to help him stay out of trouble. I said I did and went on to share what for me is among the best advice I ever received while in college.

Don’t do anything you would not want on the front page of your local newspaper or something you would be embarrassed to have to share as part of a job interview. I use this same advice as part of my role as a fraternity adviser. I am fortunate to be a product of the Greek Life system at Southeast (maybe I should blog about this sometime) and I am lucky to serve as the Alumni fraternity adviser, called the BB, for my home chapter. As part of this responsibility, I work with the chapter on a variety of issues. Among the most important is the issue of risk management. Each semester, I visit this issue with the men of the chapter and I use this example of the front page of the newspaper to drive home this point. College, especially attending college while living on campus, provides you with countless opportunities to make decisions. Sometimes these decisions involve selecting between choices that, if they go wrong, will potentially damage your academic career, your personal life, or both.

Being both a college student and being 18 years of age (or older) is in many ways an entire new life. Things that just months ago might have been minor issues (pun intended in terms of age) are now issues that can have lifelong impacts. Your decisions on what to do, what events/parties to lose control at, the comments you post on Twitter, and thousands of other decisions leave a trail. This trail tells people about the kind of person you are and the level of maturity and critical thinking/decision making skills you have. If you have any doubt about if something is a good decision or not, simply ask yourself: “If I do this or if something goes wrong and my mother had to read this on the front of the newspaper, would I be proud or humiliated?” If your mother would not be proud, then take that extra second and rethink your decision.