- It can be hard to adjust to living away from home, so there’s no shame in crying. All the time. In the shower. In class. While eating cereal at breakfast. There’s no shame in your tears and mucus running down your face and mixing with the milk in your bowl. We can’t stress this enough.
- It’s a waste of money to buy toothpaste or shampoo. Your roommate presumably has his own, and what’s he going to do if you just decide to use his? Call the cops? Fight you? Please. Fucker can’t do a thing.
- Boat shoes are a must. Yale has an extremely nautical campus, and you never know when you might find yourself on a boat. If you don’t believe us, just check out what your better-informed suitemates have on their feet.
- At Yale, you’re no longer “the smart one,” so you’ll need to find another trait upon which to build your identity. For instance, maybe you can be “the sad one,” or “the one nobody likes.”
- Yale doesn’t actually have a computer science department. We’re sorry if they told you that on the tour.
- Your orientation packet includes George W. Bush’s personal cell number. He’s always happy to shoot the shit or throw a few job offers your way, but make sure he never gets ahold of your personal number. I went my entire freshman year with hardly a decent night’s sleep thanks to the former president’s 4am calls. Sample greeting: “Yo Gar Gar Finks, I just painted the shit out of this hay bale!”
- Everyone in college has a bunch of sex. But we probably don’t need to tell you this. Chances are, you’re having sex right now! (We apologize if we’re being intrusive.)
- If you say the word “Nagak” three times to popular philosophy professor Shelly Kagan, he turns into a goblin. The goblin, as an illiterate, is a much easier grader. We can’t tell you how many times this trick has saved us right before a big paper is due.
- Timothy Dwight College exists. Unfortunately, we can offer you no additional information on this matter.
- The Record is the best. You will be sad if you don’t join the Record. You will be happy if you do (Mondays at 9 in LC 209). And if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that being happy is better than being sad.
—B. Garfinkel
