There aren't a lot of transitions in your life like the one you're currently going through.
You're no longer a kid. At no other point in your life will you go from one extreme to another like you are this summer. In May you were a high school teenager, with barely any responsibilities. Now you're in college and your adult life is just starting.
While that may seem slightly unappealing, buckle your seatbelt, because the next four or five years are likely going to be the best ones of your life.
Above all else, college serves as an arena to figure out exactly who you are and it helps craft the template for who you want to be. Sure, your parents and the way they raised you will always be the foundation of who you are, but it's the next four years that will really help you figure everything out.
Being the EIC of The Spectrum, I would be remised if I didn't urge you to stay up on current events at UB. Read the paper, read Generation, attend Student Association events, because the college experience is what you make of it.
My goal when I was elected was to provide the most complete, interesting, and thought-provoking newspaper I can for the entire UB community. But The Spectrum needs your help.
We're all college students as well, and as hard as everyone at both publications works throughout the semester, we don't know every great story at UB. If you know somebody or about somebody with an amazing story, please call or email us. The ability we have to share that story with the entire UB world is so cool, and that person or group deserves to have their story told.
Sample everything. If there's a dance, go to it. If there's a game, go to it. Whatever is going on at UB, as a new student, you should be front and center taking it all in.
My background is obviously in sports and not so surprisingly I have to make an attempt to get you to go out to the sporting events at UB. I talk to students all the time who have absolutely no idea how great of an athletic program UB has built. The football team is on the upswing and the men's basketball team is going to be extremely fun to watch next season.
Get to know the faces behind the jerseys, because the student athletes at UB are some of the nicest people you'll come across here at UB. Getting to know them makes it that much more fun rooting for the Bulls in all the sports.
SA controls about $4 million of your tuition and it controls who comes to fall and spring fest. SA hosts hundreds of events, clubs, and other great activities with the sole purpose of getting students to interact.
There is one catch; you can't do many of these things from your dorm room. Get out there and be a part of the UB community and share your interests and talents with the university.
If you do just a little bit of what I've been talking about here during the next four years, I guarantee you will leave UB having had a little fun and be confident in the person you've become.
Email: matthew.parrino@ubspectrum.com
