Love this thought. I’d also throw in that doing well in college can be as simple as trying tons of new experiences with the absurd low risk entailed with being a kid with almost total freedom and almost 0 real responsibility. Make friends, make memories, but most of all: make lots of mistakes!
Making mistakes is one of the most important parts of college, but sadly another one that's being torn down by over-zealous administration and campus policing.
My father went to a small, rural school whose local police force generally took the approach that as long as it didn't hurt anyone "At worst, a night in jail and no record of the arrest." Even for what would be considered distribution of hard drugs now.
When I went to school, students got a slap on the wrist for burning a hole in their dorm floor with thermite.
10 years after I went to school, a student was charged with a terrorism offense for making a dry ice pressure bottle and tossing it out of their dorm window as a joke.
And as near as I can tell, it's gotten stricter since. See: bitching about Harvard's dismantling of independent fun.
"Make lots of mistakes" isn't feasible if it ends up on a permanent record.
It’s a bummer cause it’s so short sighted in how it cripples creativity and open minded thinking. Fear has never been a motivator for almost anything good.
Dumb example I’ll share for a laugh is when I went to university (graduated 2013) they would put you on the sex offender registry for peeing outside and even for going in the wrong gendered restroom. One time I got obliterated and desperately needed to puke. But I was in a dorm where every other floor had your gender’s bathroom. Given my luck I was on the wrong floor. So my choice was potentially end up a sex offender for puking in a girl’s restroom stall or puke in the stairwell thus stinking it up for weeks. Guess which choice fear motivated me to make. Sorry about the stairwell, guys.
