Jealousy, nostalgia, pride ­— all adjectives you’ll be experiencing in four years, when you begin your senior year at Syracuse University.  

They’re among the adjectives you will think of as you watch the incoming class move in and stumble around campus like lost little puppy dogs. Sure, you’ll laugh at them, harass them a little bit, maybe give them the wrong directions. But you’ll do it out of love because once upon a time you were in their shoes and you would give anything to go back to that first day of college.

Before you discover your passion for dancing on elevated surfaces, take a few moments to consider the following advice. 

Get your language requirement over with ­— now. Seriously, I can’t stress this enough. Trust the bitter senior who pretended like she didn’t have this graduation requirement to fulfill. Now, I get to spend four days a week with a group of you in language 101.  It’s not personal, but let me just say I sincerely do not look forward to spending my semester with you.

Go hang out in your lounge. Having a family on your floor will make your freshman year a million times better. There’s nothing I miss quite as much as my freshman floor. And if you’re lucky enough to be living on the fourth floor of Sadler this year, please behave as badly as we did. And say hi to Irene for me.

Don’t let people use your printer. Make excuses; say you haven’t set it up yet. Once you let one person use it, you become the designated printer person, and that’s not a title you want to establish for yourself. You’ll be getting harried, sleep-deprived procrastinators knocking at your door at all hours. So hoard your printer, unless they pay you. If they pay you, then print away.

That orange lanyard should never touch your neck. Put it in your bag or leave it in your room.

Give Gertis ­— yes, you should know his name — some spare change every once in a while. He’s as much a part of our campus as Otto the Orange.

Those fun little orange plastic bottles you got in your mailbox when you arrive — yeah, don’t throw those at people. This may seem obvious, and I know how harmless they appear, but I’ve seen the battle scars.

Do not get so blacked out that you pee the bed. That’s no fun for anyone. You’d be surprised at how cavalier your bladder can become once your brain has shut itself down.

I’ve been far too generous, so you figure out the rest. And when you’re a senior, you can pull this crinkled column out of an old freshman-year notebook and fill in what’s missing.

But I’m not kidding about the language requirement. Seriously. Get on that.

Lauren Tousignant is a senior communications and rhetorical studies and writing major. Her column appears every other Wednesday. She can be reached at letousig@syr.edu. 

Published on August 23, 2011 at 12:00 pm