The old college try

Oct. 5, 2006

Dear Casey,

Ole Miss knows that freshmen start getting homesick at about this point in their college careers, so they asked your family and friends to send messages of encouragement. Lucky you. My university only asked my family for tuition.

Leaving home for the first time can be scary, but I hope your first month at college has been like riding a roller coaster, the exciting kind of scary.

College is so different now from when DC and I went, so I'm trying to relate to your experience. Males and females weren't trusted to live on the same floor of the dorm back then. No one had computers, and the Internet didn't exist.

I lived at home my freshman year, so you already get points for courage. DC was shy and didn't leave her dorm room during her first semester except to go to class. Be braver and go to coffeehouses with friends. You'll talk about things you've never talked about before.

One of the biggest adjustments of college is getting used to having roommates. DC's freshman roommate was an art student who ate salami, a food DC had never seen before except in Hickory Farms packages at Christmas. DC kept her distance from her salami-eating roommate. Your roommate may act in foreign ways, too. The better you get to know her, the less alien she'll seem.

Eventually DC and her roomie became friends, especially after the art student moved her huge sculpture of a banana split into their room. Now I know where DC's taste in art comes from.

At some point DC discovered the free Saturday morning movies in Kansas City and Bergman and Fellini. You probably don't know who they are yet, but most college freshmen suddenly discover that the best movies aren't shown at the cineplex.

Self-discipline will be one of your biggest challenges.

Nobody's going to make you study or go to class. I didn't like studying or going to class until I found professors whose mission was to inspire their students.

DC wishes she'd done more of everything while she was in college and paid more attention to making good grades. This comes from someone with a doctorate.

Both of us found a sanctuary in the library because that's where the information was. Today information is in the air. But try the library anyway, especially if you really want to study. It's guaranteed to be quieter than your dorm.

I know you like writing. You are living in the hometown of one of the greatest of American writers. Wandering around the Ole Miss library, you might see the display exhibiting William Faulkner's Nobel Prize for literature. Wandering through Oxford you could happen upon his estate, Rowan Oak.

If you get scared about being in college and being far from home, remember that when Faulkner accepted the Nobel Prize in 1949, it was the beginning of the nuclear age, and no one knew for sure if tomorrow would come. At the ceremony he said: "I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance."

Compared to nuclear annihilation, college is a picnic with lots of pizza.

Love, Uncle Sam

Sam Blackwell is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.