ARCHIVES :: SEPTEMBER 2002 :: ON CAMPUS

The Reality College Tour
Meet Your Guide Through This New World of Freedom

By Harlan Cohen
Special to The Wall Street Journal

On college campuses across the country, a new day is dawning. Freshmen are setting up their dorm rooms. Professors are busy preparing course materials. Fraternities and sororities are opening their doors. The campus bookstore is stocking the shelves. The stadium is getting a final coat of paint. The financial-aid office is printing out the checks. The counselors at the counseling center are getting ready to counsel. The health-center doctors are practicing writing prescriptions for penicillin. The cafeteria workers are trying on their new hairnets. The campus police are watching one last summer action movie. The curtain on a new college year is about to rise.

On Campus Harlan Cohen

I'm Harlan. I'll be your host during the next nine months on campus and around campus. Think of me as your eyes, your ears and your link to college life. Over the coming months, I'll go deep into the trenches of college life and explore the world of students across the country. I'll peel back the layers and expose the real, raw and gritty truth. I'll get beyond the high-gloss college brochures and way beyond the Web sites. This is the uncensored, candid and mostly unedited college experience. Think of this column as reality television, only this isn't TV. It's a newspaper. I'll dispel the myths, uncover new truths and give you a never-before-seen look into a world you'll soon be entering. A world that, for many of you, is less than a year away.

Wild World

College is a place like none other. It's a world where hundreds or thousands of people in their teens and 20s converge to live together, work together, play together and love together. It's a colony of unbridled freedoms that runs wild, kind of like a freshman running through campus during the Naked Mile (a tradition on select college campuses that originated at the University of Michigan -- no, it's not legal).

The college experience is more than just classes, parties and sporting events. It's a new sphere of freedom void of the daily parental supervision you're used to. It's the freedom to make friends, or to make make new enemies. It's the freedom to go to classes, or to sleep through classes. It's the freedom to stay sober, or to party until you puke. It's the freedom to date whomever you want, or to reject whomever you want.

It's the freedom to earn extra money to help with expenses, or to spend extra money and accumulate massive credit-card debt. It's the freedom to let your parents dictate your future, or to listen to your heart and go wherever it may lead you. It's the freedom to look deep within yourself and get comfortable in your skin, or to avoid reality and brush aside all the things that make you uncomfortable with yourself. It's the freedom to take risks to discover your passion, or to play it safe and let life pass you by. It's the freedom to graduate with great memories, or to leave full of regrets.

It's your choice. It's your life. It's all up to you. You get to make the decisions, and you have to live with the consequences.

You're Never Alone

Along with these new freedoms come unforeseen twists, surprising turns and unexpected confusion. Don't be afraid of this. The most comforting part of the college experience is that if you stumble, there are always people there to help pick you up. There are literally people down the hall and outside your front door. As you'll see throughout the year in this column, no matter what you encounter along the way -- there will always be someone on campus to help you. You might be on your own and far away from friends and family, but you are NEVER ever alone.

Each month, I'll explore a new topic. Rather than just talking about it, I'll get deep inside the issues and share the honest emotions and experiences of people like you. Most importantly, I want to hear about the issues you want explored. E-mail me what you want to see in this column month-to-month. I will then find the people who have lived it, breathed it, tasted it, smelled it, and tasted it again.

And let me know what you think of these columns. I look at this whole exchange as one long conversation with you, the reader. Please, talk back to this column, just as I talk to you. Don't actually talk to the newspaper. Just write me at harlan@helpmeharlan.com.

Now, please, turn the page.

Send your comments to harlan@helpmeharlan.com