Advice for College Freshmen

In my last column of May, as the school year wrapped up and I prepared to take a writing break, I shared my thoughts about the Class of 2023, a group I sincerely think of as “just really good kids.” This week, as summer vacation fades in the rearview mirror, and my wife and I prepare to send our second child off to college, I want to share some thoughts for those young people with their lives out in front of them.

In many high school graduation speeches, there is always a message about college being the time of freedom to explore and figure out who you are. A few years ago, Austin Kleon, artist and author of the cleverly titled Steal Like an Artist, wrote a message to graduates, reminding them that college is filled with that freedom and opportunity, but it comes with a caveat. “The classroom,” he wisely observed, “is a wonderful, but also fairly artificial, place: Your professor gets paid to pay attention to your ideas, and your classmates are paying to pay attention to your ideas.” Never again in your life will you have such a captive audience.

The college years are wonderfully rich times of learning and development. And it’s important to understand that not all of it, or even most of it, happens in the classroom. Additionally, college is not simply an internship or job training. In fact, for most students, a bachelor degree is decidedly not job training. Trust me, few companies are out there anxiously waiting for a twenty-two-year-old college graduate to come in and let them know how the work is done. Instead, employers want to know you earned a degree and have a credential that verifies you have the ability to do the work, whatever they assign you.

Shortly after you start working, you will discover the difference between the classroom and the workplace. Kleon goes on to remind students that “Soon after you leave college, you learn that most of the world doesn’t necessarily care about what you think. It sounds harsh, but it’s true.” As the writer Steven Pressfield says, “It’s not that people are mean or cruel, they’re just busy.” So, while in college, embrace the freedom, stretch your mind, and step outside of your comfort zone.

In a final bit of advice from Kleon, “Enjoy your obscurity while it lasts,” and embrace all the experiences available. Participate in theater if you never stepped on stage in high school, or enroll in intramural sports of some kind if you didn’t play before. Stay active, and make sure you eat some vegetables regularly. Spend time on the quad, playing frisbee and hacky sack. Learn to juggle or paint or sing. If your university is large enough, unofficially audit a class or two in something you’d never study or do. By that I mean, just sit in on a class lecture and learn something new.

By all means go to your college football and basketball games if they have teams and you enjoy sports, or even if you don’t. But also consider losing your voice cheering on the swim team. Take the time to go crazy with friends cheering on athletes in a tennis match or a gymnastics meet. In fact, try to see every team once. Live on campus, and get a part time job while you’re in school. Find your spot to study on campus, and build a routine around that important part of the college experience. Whether it’s a coffee shop, some back corner of the library, or an academic building’s common room. Visit your professors during office hours. And try to do it before you need last minute help. And, if possible, study abroad for a semester. I have expressed this idea to my students for years – get out of your comfort zone, and by that I mean the country you call home.

Finally, remember that while these years are a time of freedom and opportunity, your time in college is not “the best days of your life.”

I don’t share the ridiculous belief that college is the peak – what a depressing message for an eighteen-year-old. That said, it is a new beginning. Appreciate all the moments, including the stress of classes, the solitude of being on your own, the uncertainty of new friends.

Oh, and call your parents every once in a while. Not when you need something. Just because.

Michael P. Mazenko is a writer, educator, & school administrator in Greenwood Village. He blogs at A Teacher’s View and can be found on Twitter @mmazenko. You can email him at mmazenko @gmail.com about Indian encounters that made the editions of July 16, 1873, and Aug.1, 1873. I reprint these here:

Arapahoe County encourages everyone to join in this observance and to recognize the important roles that parents, employers and community members play in ensuring that all children have the financial support they need to thrive. Learn more at arapahoegov.com/ humanservices.

I’ve been reading the “Looking Back” history columns for five decades, exchanging newspapers with The Weekly-Register Call, the oldest historic newspaper in Colorado started in 1862. We purchased this Gilpin County newspaper on Sept. 1, 2021, with offices in Central City. This newspaper joins the Villager Media Group.

BY BOB SWEENEY

To this day, I don’t think the news has been better than what current “Looking Back” scribe Gary King has been compiling. The history contained in the WR-C binderies is one of the best and one of the only sources of early factual gold mining history.

Many books about early-day gold mining have information taken from newspaper records. The newspaper roots began three years after gold was discovered in Gregory Gulch in what became Central City which was part of the Kansas Territory in 1859. Colorado didn’t become a state until 1876. I’m told that portions of the Colorado Constitution were written in the newspaper front office. Indians burned a wagon train carrying newsprint, so publishers printed on wallpaper until a new supply of paper could arrive. WR-C occupies the original office space on the second floor of the Masonic Lodge in Central City, the building constructed by the newspaper pioneer owner.

I’ve also been a longtime reader of the Meeker Herald-Times. My grandparents were married in Meeker in 1885, and their marriage is recorded on the pages of the Herald. They then homesteaded in the Axial Basin west of Craig in Moffat County, where I was raised.

Last week’s Weekly -Register-Call carried two stories

“Mr. Otis Standish, late clerk of the Black Hawk post office, made a quick ride during the week from Middle Park to this city, coming by way of Hot Sulphur Springs. He had swapped his horse for a fine animal with a band of Ute Indians, who afterward chased him for 14 miles to try and catch him and take the animal away from him, but they didn’t succeed as his horse outdistanced them.”

(I could ride very fast, too, if I had a band of Indians chasing me!)

The second story appeared in the WR-C edition of Aug 1, 1873, in a concise but meaningful paragraph reprinted here:

“ Jack,” the Chief of the Ute Indians, and a party of his fellow countrymen, passed through Central on Monday on their way to the White River agency.”

I guess that the Indians didn’t want trouble with the miners, who were heavily armed. We might wonder where Chief Jack and his braves had been a long way from the Meeker reservation.

But, over the past few weeks, The Meeker Herald-Times has printed fascinating historical letters from the White River Museum written by the White River Indian agency. The first was written by Hon. H.M. Teller, who described the agency’s location as poor and requested a move to Powell Valley, 15 miles away along the White River. He writes that the move was granted to the 3,500 acres of excellent land:

“At first, the Indians were decidedly opposed to the oc- cupancy of Powell Valley for the agency because they had always used it for their winter encampment, particularly for pasturing their horses, since snow seldom lies there more than a few days, while here it lies for five months, and they were perfectly willing to come up to this location once a week to draw rations when they would immediately return. Their only idea of an agency is that it shall be a place where they get supplies since no crops had ever been grown here and only a sprinkle of vegetables, watered from pails, and they had only a vague idea of what it is to engage in farming, in short, they protested against any change.”

Followed by another Herald account is a letter written by Indian Agent Nathan C. Meeker, whom Indians killed in the massacre on Sept. 29, 1879. Here in Meeker’s letter to Hon E.A. Hayt, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Washington, D.C., written Dec. 9, 1878, he outlines the need to have a store at the Agency and writes about the Indians purchasing ammunition. Meeker was named an Indian agent in the summer of 1878. I believe that Hon. Teller was of Gilpin County repute and then. a U.S. Senator.

The Teller House is located next to the Central City Opera House in Central City. Meeker explained that the Indians could leave the reservation and travel to Bear River 45 miles and 90 miles to Snake River stores, where they could trade goods and purchase ammunition.

Nathan continued: “This seems to be a vexatious question because to suppress the sale of ammunition is to forbid the Indians from pursuing the only industry that they can now engage in, and even this would be the case if these outside stores were shut up and a store open