Dear American University Freshmen,
Welcome to AU. Over the next four years you spend at AU or, perhaps, another institution, you will have the opportunity to truly grow into the person you wish to be. If you grow correctly, you will be well prepared to enter the world and contribute. If you grow wrong, you will have wasted time and money. The choice is yours alone. Professors, parents and guidance counselors cannot make you work harder, attend classes, do your reading or study for your tests. They cannot make you get internships or jobs in the city, and they cannot make jungle juice-induced hangovers disappear on Wednesday morning.
Welcome to college. There are opportunities here that you have never had before: opportunities to meet important people, volunteer for various causes and do interesting things.
Welcome to a world where there are people much smarter and more informed than you. Do yourself a favor and listen to them, be they your roommate or your professor. Do yourself another favor and check any fishy-sounding facts. There are lies, damned lies, statistics and uniformed idiots who make things up. Don’t listen to that person - definitely don’t be that person.
Allow your ideologies to float free for a bit. If you leave college without seriously changing your mind at least three times (changing back counts), then you didn’t really attend college. Whether Republican, Democrat or anything else, you still have much to learn. Allow your new-found knowledge to add nuances to your arguments or radically alter them. If you just want to learn how to better enunciate talking points, why are you here?
Be smart - and that means enjoying your weekends. Sitting in the library all day is worse than partying all day. Books don’t talk back, people do. Term papers won’t write themselves, though.
Be a good person, and the world will open. It’s really that simple. The Eagle will be there to help you along.
Sincerely, Charlie Szold Editor in Chief The Eagle
