There is one major thing that happens between the day incoming freshmen get accepted and when they decide that the business school may in fact be a better option than trying to be pre-med (which will happen to approximately 50 percent of pre-med freshmen by Oct. 1. That isn’t clinically proven, but I like to think I know everything). Yeah, picking dorms and classes is important and all, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Right when freshmen get their email addresses, they go on the Facebook, sign up and prepare to stalk and be stalked. And that, my freshman peers, is what should not happen. Don’t sign up for the Facebook.

The natural assumption here is that I am not on the Facebook, which, of course, is not true. When I first got my email address, I decided I would be cool, and not join. This lasted about two weeks, until I was cajoled into signing up (my coolness, on the other hand, has never left me. Or has never existed. Either one). And my life has been more complicated ever since.

Even back when there were like 15 schools on the Facebook, it had a way of wielding undue influence on my life and the lives of countless others too. Real friendships were ended after those friendships were ended on the Facebook. Real friendships were saved by Facebook friendships being kept alive. Birthdays were never forgotten.

Now that every school from Harvard to the Milstein School of Bad Jokes is on the Facebook, it has gotten even worse. Even as I write this, my girlfriend, who goes to a state school, and I are fighting through Facebook messages, and I stay in touch with friends from home more through poking wars than actually talking to them (the pokes letting the other party know that the poker is alive, well, and has the ability to click a mouse).

Whenever I meet someone new, I immediately Facebook them and find out everything I need to know about him or her without actually taking to the person, and he or she does the same. And there’s also all the stories about how some people, with the intelligence of about a rock, lost jobs because employers saw pictures of them snorting a line of coke off a stripper’s ass that were posted on the Facebook, or something similarly outrageous that made the employer question the prospective employee’s judgment. If you don’t sign up for the Facebook, this stalking and idiocy can all be avoided.

Further, it’s a chance for your class to be known for something big. My class was known for bringing the word “defecate” back into the Wash. U. lexicon. Last year’s freshmen class was known for, well, pretty much nothing (how lame). But your class can be known for something good. You can be the ones who took down the dominance of the Facebook, who faced Goliath, and with one small pebble, finished my biblical metaphor. I can spew more inspirational bullshit about how students are the ones to bring about change also, but I pretty much just said that, so I won’t bore you (even more than I already have).

I expect about zero people to actually heed my advice, but I had to write a column. It’s decent advice too, and something I wish I thought of more when I was a freshman (or a sophomore or rising junior for that matter). Don’t let the Facebook mean too much to you. Treat it for what it is: just another stupid social networking website that means nothing (unless you’re dumb enough to post or not de-tag embarrassing pictures of yourself in a public arena). Not something that can replace human contact.

Daniel is a junior Arts & Sciences and the Senior Forum Editor.

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