College In A Nutshell

Chuck Klosterman's review of another silly "real college" book in the New York Times is a much better (and shorter! and cheaper!) guide to college. Here's a sampler:

ACADEMICS: Your academic adviser will probably tell you to take at least a year to figure out what you want to do with your life, and there is no rush to pick a major. This advice is why everyone now goes to college for six years. Pick a major immediately. If you have no idea what you want to do, major in English; there are no wrong answers, and you can always change the totality of your life next semester. If nothing else, you'll get some reading done.

. . .

IDENTITY: If you are female and have a one-time sexual experience with another woman, you are probably exploring your physicality, expanding your morality, gaining an understanding of what you will (and will not) desire within the context of a mature, ideologically consensual relationship. If you are male and have a one-time sexual experience with another man, you are probably gay.

. . .

SEX: It will happen a lot, yet not enough. And it will happen to other people more.

His conclusion:

High school is hard. Life is hard. College is easy. Can you hang out and smoke cigarettes you hate for six hours a day? Can you advocate political movements you'd never possibly join? Can you hold polarizing opinions about books you haven't read and can you memorize things you never needed to know in the first place? Of course you can. And you'll be perfect.