Natalia Castillo | 34 pieces of advice from a 34th Street Magazine editor-in-chief

1. Hand out issues of 34th Street Magazine on Locust Walk. (Rejection therapy is good for the soul.)
2. Befriend your classmates. The girl you share your writing seminar with and struggle through Intro to Calculus with could remain a great friend of yours. The spirit runs on the joy brought from class friends!
3. Always wear shower shoes in the communal Quad showers. 
4. Join a club sport or play an intramural sports tournament. 
5. Go for a run down Locust Walk and onto the Schuylkill Banks. If you’re lucky, you might snag an invite to the Kelly Writers House run club. 
6. Take a creative writing class. 
7. Make use of the Marks Family Writing Center! It’s the best free resource on campus. 
8. Take handwritten notes in at least one of your classes. 
9. Nap on the Moelis Family Grand Reading Room’s blue recliner chairs with the afternoon sunlight streaming in through the trees and big windows onto your face. 
10. Mispronounce the Moelis Family Grand Reading Room as “Mo-ellis.” Humbly let your Wharton School roommate finally correct you, two years into mispronouncing it. 
11. Go to Lyn’s food truck (outside the Lower Quad gates). Get a bacon, egg, and cheese on an everything bagel. When the bagel is hot and ready and she beckons you to the window, asking you what seasonings you want, go all in — “salt and pepper, hot sauce, and ketchup please!” She’ll bundle up your treasure in a perfect wrap-job and send you on your way with a sweet smile. Eat your bagel outside, embrace the beautiful mess, and make liberal use of the napkins.
12. Speak personally about your life experiences in class at least once. 
13. Stop making sense! #modpo
14. Attend a Kelly Writers House event. Spend an hour or two on the green couch or in the garden contemplating life. 
15. Drink as many iced dirty chais from Williams Cafe as you can. 
16. Run up the “Rocky” steps in dramatic fashion, at least once.
17. Go past 40th Street! If you don’t, you’re missing out on some other worldly Ethiopian food, hot apple cider donuts in Clark Park, and some of the best iced coffee from Alif Brew & Mini Mart or Knockbox Cafe. 
18. Attempt the 20-taco challenge at Loco Pez on dollar-taco night. Fail at taco 12. Laugh all the way home with your friends. 
19. Make the L (formally, the Market-Frankford Line) your bitch. Pennsylvania has been cutting lines (transit lines, that is) more than a fraternity boy at a boiler room party. It’s your civic duty as a part-time Philadelphian to remind the state of how important public transportation is. TL;DR: Hot girls ride SEPTA. 
20. Go to your professors’ and teaching assistants’ office hours. Befriend your TAs — they are wise, trust their advice. 
21. Be strong but stay soft. The times of college will weather you, most certainly. But remain hopeful and tender, taking care of your little community that surrounds you — it will be your lifeline when you need it most. 
22. Find a way to travel through a Penn program, be it a Penn Global Seminar, the Global Research & Internship Program, a semester abroad, or travel for research. Your education doesn’t have to be contained within the square footage of Penn’s campus. 
23. Make up a new dialect with your friends. Speak it often. Laugh until it sounds like you’re crying.  
24. Speaking of crying, a good cry on Locust Walk never hurt anyone. It cleanses the soul.  
25. Even when your Google Calendar is booked from wall to wall, don’t just try to pencil your friends in between meetings and classes. Live life alongside them, study with them, and eat dinner with them. 
26. Write home. Send postcards. Your parents will cherish them, as will those long-distance friends. 
27. Learn how to cartwheel. Do it frequently. 
28. Write a thesis, even if your major doesn’t require it. 
29. Be sincere, but don’t take yourself too seriously. Whimsy is the greatest antidote for life’s ailments.  
30. Take an Academically Based Community Service course. West Philadelphia was here long before this University was. This education we’re so lucky to receive can benefit so many more than just Ivy League students if we just look beyond Locust Walk.  
31. Walk far; walk everywhere. Philadelphia’s urban design makes it one of the most walkable cities in the United States. The best way to find a city’s hidden gems is to walk its streets. Plus, before you know it, you’ll be able to make it from 40th and Locust streets down to 34th Street in less than 10 minutes. On your last day of college you’ll find yourself surprisingly early to class and you’ll realize that in four short years, the misshapen soles of your beat-up Adidas shoes have traversed this brick-laid path hundreds of times. You know this ground, and it knows you. 
32. Listen to Elton John’s “Philadelphia Freedom” every time your plane touches down in Philadelphia (and always sit on the right-side window seat when flying back from the West Coast; you’ll get an unbeatable view of the Philadelphia skyline).
33. Avidly defend Philadelphia to all ill-informed haters. 
34. And remember: “The longest way is the most efficient way.” 

As always, 

SSSF 

NATALIA CASTILLO is a College senior from San Francisco studying philosophy, politics, and economics. She previously served as the editor-in-chief of 34th Street Magazine on the 140th Board of The Daily Pennsylvanian, Inc. Her email is nhc@sas.upenn.edu.