So without further ado, welcome back sophomores, juniors and seniors. Freshmen, welcome to college. I will trade places with you. Please, seek me out and we’ll change names and everything. I just want to have four more years of this. If there’s one piece of advice I’ll give you, it’s to not take advice from me. But if you choose to ignore that suggestion, take full advantage of everything. Say no to nothing. (Except drugs. Drugs are bad.)

That’s the best part about college. Every door is open, and your parents aren’t there to tell you to go to your room and do your chemistry homework (Pre-meds will soon find that they will be telling themselves to do that). As a freshman, you may not always feel like the coolest kid on the block because, well, you aren’t. But that’s OK. You have so much to look forward to, and as someone who’s nearing the end of his college career, I am supremely jealous.

In some ways I feel like a freshman this coming semester. I have not been at school since December, thanks to a lovely vacation in Florence. Oh, excuse me, I meant a lovely semester abroad. One more piece of advice: study abroad. The only negative is that I got so spoiled, I now have a really hard time eating Italian food. Otherwise, it feels fresh returning to St. Louis, taking in all it has to offer (BBQ and Budweiser), writing for Forum again, hanging out with friends I haven’t seen in almost a year, using my brain… It’s all very exciting.

What’s great is that a new year is also, in a way, a fresh start. A nice clean ball of Silly Putty that’s yours to mold, until you drop it in the puke in some corner of the first party you go to. What I like to do at the beginning of each year is set goals that I will ultimately fail to meet. So, in my wizened year as a senior, I decided to make my goals very, very achievable.

These are goals that we, as a collective student body, can be confident that we will reach together and can later celebrate accomplishing. This year, I pledge to do the following: eat (not in any specific manner, healthily, less, more, better food, nothing like that), just to eat. I pledge to try and sleep in my own bed, but I can’t make any promises. I will go to class at least once. And now for the shocker—I will brush my teeth EVERY (yes, you read that right, EVERY) night. Whoa. I just needed to gather myself after that shocker. Try the same. Make some goals (easy or otherwise), enjoy yourselves, and experience what you have.

So now, stop reading my article; you’re at college. Go do something fun.

Charlie Low is a senior in Arts & Sciences. Write to Charlie Low at chlow@wustl.edu