Steve Schirra | Forum editor

Credit: Beth Rankin

I hate to tell you this, and I might make some of you cry in doing so, but I feel it is necessary.

College isn’t high school.

Calm down. Take a few deep breaths. Put your yearbook down. Step away. It’ll be okay.

Oftentimes, I see flocks of freshmen girls parading around with the name of their high school on their asses, a T-shirt emblazoned with “Seniors 2003 (insert sexual innuendo here)” and a prom queen crown resting on top of their meticulously groomed heads.

They don’t get it, and they probably never will. It is all too common to run into people in their 30s who still haven’t moved past high school. These are the ones who still work at Wal-Mart or Subway and live their lives vicariously though their 17-year-old co-workers.

This is the one opportunity you have in your life to change everything. We sometimes feel the need to perpetuate an image of ourselves, even if we aren’t necessarily happy with it.

Guess what? You don’t have to.

Were you sheepish and shy in high school? Be a slut.

Were you friendless and lonely? Go out and meet people. They’ll never know were the one that never spoke up in Mr. Noblet’s honors history class.

Be whoever you want to be. No one will know how you acted before you came to college.

I know I was never Mr. Popular in high school — in fact, I basically hated everyone I ever came in contact with during my high school years. When I came to Kent State, I was afraid everyone would be ignorant assholes.

They weren’t.

Years after I left high school, people whom I hadn’t spoken with in years would approach me and pine for my attention — people who spent the majority of their four years of high school making fun of me.

And I didn’t have to talk to them anymore. There are so many people on this campus that I can pick and choose who I see.

That’s the beauty of college.

Steve Schirra is a junior English major and the forum editor for the Summer Kent Stater. Contact him at [email protected].