Recently I got into college. And through discussion with my colleagues and business associates, I have discovered that there are a lot of misconceptions regarding the college experience. Therefore, as a public service, I have compiled a sort of FAQ: College Edition, consisting of commonly held beliefs about college, followed by the word TRUE, if the statement is true, or FALSE, if the statement is not true. Or if the statement is false. That really means the same thing. Why did I even bother making that clarification. There then follows a brief explanation of why the answer is TRUE or FALSE. You could treat it as a little game too, by trying to guess whether the answer is TRUE or FALSE. Well, except the answers are right there. That probably wouldn’t be that fun of a game. Unless you like instant gratification. Well, enough delay, let’s (as they say on the Vault commercials) get to it!

“I will gain ‘the Freshman 15.’” TRUE. Presented with an astounding variety of easy-to-access food sources, most freshman tend to lose control and eat more than they should. In addition, the presence of the mandatory “Gain 15 Pounds” course that is required of freshman at all accredited universities certainly doesn’t help.

“College costs a lot of money.” TRUE. Unfortunately, the cost of college has spiraled upwards in recent years. Why, in the good old days you could take an entire semester of classes for a nickel and still have change for the dining hall. These days, the average cost of a college education is $150,000 (absolutely fact-checked) and rising. Then you have to pay $400,000 to buy the books you’ll need for one class, and another $2 million to stay in a dorm room every night. Your professors charge you $4 trillion just to enter their classrooms, and to even look at your final exam, you have to pay more than the GNP of most countries. The only way most people are able to pay for their college educations is by taking out student loans, which they spend the rest of their lives paying off, and in fact the debt often passes to their children when they die.

“Everybody at college is a bunch of jerks.” TRUE. You will be alone and depressed in your dorm room during your entire four years. Nobody will want to talk to you because they will already have friends, and you’re not that interesting of a person anyway.

“I will get a great job after attending college.” TRUE. If by “get a great job” you mean “move back in with your parents”! Ha! Seriously, in today’s job market it’s not even worth the money to go to college. You should just become a plumber or something. There’s an exciting life! You get to travel, meet people, fix their toilets… something you’ll never get to do at college.

“College will be the best four years of my life.” TR- FA- well, it depends. No, I’m sorry, I can’t give a one word answer for this question. Well, I don’t care if it messes up the format. I’m not changing it just because of editorial pressure. What? You can’t fire me! I fire you! You’re fired! Get out of my office! I’m calling the police! BANG

“The response to this statement is FALSE.” FALSE. AAAAAAHHHHHHH PARADOX YOU SHOULDN’T GO TO COLLEGE

“College is a non-stop orgy of pleasure and hedonism.” TRUE. If you’re not achieving orgasm during every moment of your four years at college, you’re not doing it right.

“I’m allowed to be unhygienic at college.” RESPONSE HAZY, TRY AGAIN LATER.

“Can I borrow one hundred fifty thousand dollars?” FALSE. No, you can’t. I barely even know you.

“Wait a second, how can a question be true or false? That doesn’t make sense.” FALSE. Look, I make the rules around here, and I say it was FALSE. Hey, get away from there! Stop that! Let go! Ow! What the- gih- juh- ARGH! Oh, that’s it! If you don’t stop, I’m not answering your questions anymore. Okay. Glad we could come to an agreement. Jerk. Yeah, you heard me. “I am a jerk.” TRUE. Yeah, well you would’ve said it if you were being honest.

“College will bring me lots of knowledge.” FALSE. While a cursory glance in my rhyming dictionary indicates that the words “college” and “knowledge” do indeed rhyme, I’m not sure that they have any association beyond that. I don’t know, I could be wrong here. You might want to make up your own mind on this one.

“College takes place several hundred feet above the ground.” FALSE. What? I don’t know where you got that idea. That doesn’t even make any sense. It’s false.

“College was invented in 1782 by the Montgolfier brothers.” FALSE. The collegiate system as we know it was developed during the Middle Ages, and certainly not by a single person or persons.

“College is powered by a temperature difference between the air on the inside and the air on the outside that generates lift.” FALSE. Oh, I think I see what happened. You’re confusing college with a hot air balloon.

“Oh, you’re right. I thought this was FAQ: Hot Air Balloon Edition.” FALSE. No, you didn’t. You were asking college-related questions a second ago!

“Yeah, you’re right. My friend put me up to this. Great, now I’m not gonna get the ten bucks.” FALSE. You can still get it. I’ll tell him that you satisfied the conditions of the bet, just as long as you start asking me questions about college again.

“I’m allowed to be unhygienic at college.” TRUE. But I mean, you’re allowed to be unhygienic any time you want. It’s just at college no one will know the difference.

“It is better to give than to receive.” FALSE. What the hell. It is so much better to receive. Unless you’re giving it to yourself, or you’re giving like a bomb or something, or someone else is giving something to you, it’s definitely better to receive.

“A lot more of these statements were false than true.” TRUE. Hey, maybe if you didn’t have such stupid opinions! Geez, it’s not my fault you’re wrong all the time.

“You actually know anything about college.” FALSE. Yes, it’s false: I actually know anything about college. Or, to put it another way, yes, it’s true: I don’t actually know anything about college. Maybe you should’ve asked somebody who’s actually been to college. I’m certainly not qualified to be answering these questions.

Well, that concludes this FAQ. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you’d like to see more, then vote with your wallets! Actually, if you could just send me some money, that would be good. I have to go to college somehow. “This article is over.” TRUE.

It begins on a typical Thursday afternoon. You’re sitting at your desk, staring blankly in the direction of your computer screen. “I don’t want to do any work,” your brains tells you. You nod in agreement.

Unfortunately, the situation is getting desperate. This late into the summer, you’ve already seen all the internet has to offer. You can’t talk to your coworkers because, well… you can’t talk to your coworkers (Trust me, you’re better off this way. signed, unexplained-narrator-telling-you-about your-own-life). You can’t even listen to music, as you finished your iTaco for lunch (and accidently lost half your music collection in the process) over an hour ago. In desperation, you turn to the thing that has helped you out of countless tough spots and dire situations in the past. From helping with homework to finding your way in an unfamiliar town to teaching you to love again after your heart was broken back in the 8th grade, it has always been there for you. You turn, of course, to Google (and, more specifically, to gmail chat).

Scanning your contacts list with increasing dismay, you realize that none of your friends are online. In fact, the only person who is online is that weird kid from your math class the year before. You don’t know much about him, because he only ever talked to ask for help on whatever assignment you had for the day. And even those conversations were brief because, more often than not, you were asleep or ignoring the work completely in some other way. Just as you move to close the browser in disgust and actually do your work, you notice his status change.

“this computer doesn’t even have JAVA?!??!?!?!?!”
The interrobangs catch your eye and the sheer ridiculousness of the question hooks you in. He seems to be lost in his own world of strange priorities (Java on the computers) and stranger expectations (Java on the computers). His gmail status, you soon realize, is a window into this world, and you, voyeur that you are, can’t resist peeking in.

Over the next few days, you share in his experiences. You laugh as he celebrates beating what you assume is some computer game (“OH MY GOD, I BEAT 5X5!!!!” he raves). You gasp in concern as he defies his mentor and stands up for his principles (“screw it, I’m right. my mentor’s wrong,” he declares, steeling himself for the clash of wills ahead, “x.x”) and then chuckle as he learns the hard way to trust in experience (“x.x”). You sit puzzled as he boldly speaks his mind (declaring “The bathroom smells like popcorn; it smells delicious”). You’re shocked as, one, day, the tone of the status changes dramatically. “Waldman…” he warns ominously and a million questions race through your head. Who is Waldman? What could he have done to evoke such ire? Okay… two questions race through your head. But they’re big questions. Slightly worried for your little friend, you realize that you can’t really do anything but wait.

Luckily, things are back to normal by the next day. He frantically scrambles to do his work (“OMG, where’s the integral sign in Matlab!?!??”). Evidently he’s found it by the end of the day, though, because he has time to ponder politics. As he wonders “Why is Obama so popular?” you can tell he has no idea who Obama is. You imagine him wonder to himself “Obama… Obama… why does that sound so familiar… was he in my Spanish class last year?” The next day brings another shock with a gmail status of “gay, so gay.” Who is he calling gay? Could it be Waldman? What is going on between those two? But again, you are forced to wait and worry.

The next few days find the subject of your study uncharacteristically happy, full of Disney songs and similar lyrics such as “Oh baby, baby this is not a lie Let’s stop this tonight.” You wonder for the thousandth time whether he realizes that anyone could read his gmail status, but just smile and continue with your day.

And then, one day, the pieces finally start to fit together. The morning starts with “Waldman, omg I’m gonna get you.” You spend the better part of the morning puzzling over this not-so-new development. You finally get your answer that afternoon, when his status changes to “SO GAY SO GAY SO GAY.” You gasp in epiphany as you realize that he’s not insulting anyone, or directing that at anyone else. All this time, he’s been talking about himself, revealing his inner thoughts and feelings. You realize that all along, he hasn’t been angry at Waldman. Those seemingly ominous status messages are not the angry warnings of a spited coworker, rather they tell a tale of a young man declaring his love to the world. Your heart aches as you discover that you’ve come to understand this strange boy, watching his trials and tribulations, his soaring victories and crushing defeats. A single tear rolls down your cheek for the love that you now know can never be.