Column: What they won't tell you at Summer Welcome

By Dieter Kurtenbach
June 4, 2008

Freshmen, you’ve got some things to learn you will never find in a textbook or in the binder your Summer Welcome leader carries. Most of the things you will learn in college life will be acquired through trial and error. Some things you will not learn until it’s too late. Other times, you’ll miss the meaning of things entirely. There is no right or wrong on this journey in which you are about to embark. To each his (or her) own.

But without further Freddy Adu, here’s my advice to the new Tigers:

First, I don’t care where you are from. If your favorite baseball team is not germane to the region, don’t wear their full regalia anywhere you go. Everyone on campus knows there are more Cardinals and Cubs fans than you can count at MU. You are a total D-Bag if you think that wearing your NL Central Champions T-Shirt with your fitted, or worse, discolored and pre-frayed, team cap somehow makes you a better fan than the other thousands on campus. Those teams aren’t hurting for representation, and you are only hurting yourself, not the fans of the rival team.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s move on to more practical tips.

Join an organization. For many of you, that will be a fraternity or sorority, and that’s all fine and dandy. But remember this isn’t high school, and you can’t be the president of 15 clubs while being all-state in tennis. Pick one and rock it. The idea is to work hard your first year and put as much time into one organization as you can. You might be a gopher now, but if you work hard enough, you will be bossing people around sooner rather than later.

I know it’s scary moving into a 13-by-13 cube with all your stuff and someone else’s. A good tip: be nice to your roommate. If you don’t like your roommate, suck it up or get a new one. Dorms (forget that Residence Hall crap) can be awfully similar to prisons. People don’t like each other in prison. You are not going to get along with your roommate all the time. That’s just a fact. My only advice is to move off campus after your freshman year, whether into a fraternity or sorority house or just a duplex with the dudes. Dorms will eat at your will to live. You’ll be stronger after a year; chalk it up as an experience and get the hell out.

Be prepared to love Saturdays in the fall. I have seen the maturation of Missouri football over the last few years, and the game is great and all, but the real fun is the celebration occurring before and after, win or lose. College football is an excuse to act like a fool a dozen times a year. Embrace the experience.

Don’t worry, you will make friends. What your Mom said was true: everyone is in the same boat as you. You’ll latch on to people for reasons you can’t explain. And if the people you choose to hang around are Bad News Bears, drop them like an 8 a.m. class.

Welcome to your new home, freshmen. This is a place I have grown to love. The first year you’ll be dipping your feet in the pool. Next fall, you’ll swim on the shallow side and by the fourth semester you’ll be in the deep end. You’re about to spend nine months of the year in Columbia, Mo. Before you know it, you’ll be living here full time.

You’ll mature more than you can imagine in your time at MU, and in one way or another, you will all be the better for it. These are supposed to be the best four (or five or six) years of your life.

Embrace the experience.

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Column: What they won't tell you at Summer Welcome

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