COLUMN: Very deep thoughts

From Binyamin Appelbaum's, "Carving Marble", Fall '99 From Binyamin Appelbaum's, "Carving Marble", Fall '99Welcome to the best, no? shortest? no, no? just: Welcome to the next four years of your life. Of course, not even that is quite true. For at least a few of you, it will be five years, or three. To graduate, you'll have to spend at least two years here -- except I have a friend who only spent one and a half. Whatever you now think of home cooking, you will like it more in November. There are students who will smoke marijuana here for the first time and those who smoked it for the last time the day before they arrived on campus. Some will wake up in another's bed for the first time, and some already have. And lest I forget, there are more than a few students here who will graduate without ever having smoked up or fooled around. You can buy anything at the Bookstore and have it charged to your bursar's bill. It doesn't matter how many notes you've taken, how many classes you've attended or how well you think you know the material -- you will be up very late the night before your first midterm, and you will do better on your second. Some of you will fall in love with a department, a professor or an amazing class. Some of you will sit through four lectures first semester and despair of ever finding a major. All of you will be up very late during reading week. Two a.m. is too early for bed, 9 a.m. is too early for class. You will make choices you regret and miss opportunities you will wish you had seized. Alcohol may be involved. At some point, you may not be able to remember the previous evening or find yourself blushing because you do. Alcohol will most likely be involved. Of course, lots of students graduate without ever drinking to excess. Bring an egg crate mattress. Don't wander about campus wondering where all the smart people are -- somewhere on this campus is someone who is better than you at something. Don't sit in stunned silence at the back of your freshman seminar wondering how you got into Penn -- you're either good or lucky and neither quality should be underestimated. Leave campus at least once a month. Ignore those who say Philadelphia doesn't compare with New York. They're missing the point. Some of you will make friends immediately, fall in love or discover your extracurricular passion. Some of you will sit in your rooms while the walls shake because they're blasting music next door and contemplate how the 2,000 people you like least all ended up in the same small part of Philadelphia. And some of you will wonder what all the fuss is about. Pick classes based on the professor. Not the subject matter, the professor. You may find yourself sitting in a friend's room at 3 a.m. discussing the implications of the theory of relativity for the Hegelian view of history. And you may find yourself sitting in the bathroom at 3 a.m. contemplating the wretchedness of existence while vomiting into the toilet. You may do both of these things and you may do neither. Only this is certain: The time you spend here will change you, partly in ways you control and partly in ways you do not and cannot. Don't be afraid, don't be overeager and, oh, remember to bring sunscreen.