• Wear jeans/pants that “breathe” and bring a sweater, even if it’s scorching hot out, until you know which building blasts the AC to 60 degrees F and which feels like a sauna
• Backpacks with thick straps are your friend!  Messenger bags are cool and all but if you’re commuting with a lot of stuff, symmetrically styled backpacks are better for your back
• You are your own person and you can walk out whenever you need to or want to, so long as you’re not disrupting the class.  Meaning you can go to the bathroom without permission, take a breather if you’re anxious, answer an important phone call, etc.
• If you don’t like the class on the first day, if you can- DROP THAT CLASS AND TAKE ANOTHER ONE!  It’ll only get worse from there!
• If you can, take a class outside your major; it’s a good break from your expected studies.
• You are in charge of your schedule.  Your adviser and guidance counselor is there to ‘advise and guide’ but if you don’t like certain classes and you can substitute for others, that’s your choice.
• Consequently, if you are changing anything drastic in your plan, talk with your adviser and instructors.
• Pay attention to your credit hours and grades.  Never leave this to the last week of school, you will be sorry and stressed beyond belief!
• Unless it’s a lab book or otherwise specified, go to the class for a week or so before buying an expensive textbook.  Some classes, while having it on their required list, do not actually use the textbook a whole lot and you might find some of it scanned online.  Rent if you can or buy used online (schools actually don’t give discounts).  Use your best judgement on what you think you need.
• Tell the people who go up to you selling or advertising things you are not interested in that you are in a rush to class and don’t have time to listen to them.  It’s less rude and they’ll leave you alone.
• The smaller the class, the better it is to have some sort of acquaintanceship with a couple classmates.  They might save your ass if you are absent one day or need to study.  And talking with them makes the time go by faster without it being so insufferable.
• You don’t need to join a club or sport, but internships are cool and useful!
• If you can afford it, take a day off once or twice each semester if you’re too exhausted.  Just be aware of what you missed and if it was worth missing!
• Your health is the most important, this goes for mental health too!!  Note: College-age/upper teens is when mental disorders like depression and anxiety are most commonly diagnosed.  Most schools have therapy services, especially during exam time.  Look into it if you need to!
• Communicate with your professor if you are having trouble with something.  Anything.
• Eat and stay hydrated.  Bring a water bottle and snack to class.
• All-nighters will happen but never go over 36 hours without sleep.
• It’s going to be hard and there will be times you might think about giving up.  This WILL happen.  You just have to make sure what you’re doing isn’t making you absolutely miserable and/or there is something rewarding and positive to look forward to at the end!

I’m willing to go out on a limb here and guess that most stories of kindness do not begin with drug addicted celebrity bad boys.

    Mine does.

    His name is Robert Downey Jr.

    You’ve probably heard of him. You may or may not be a fan, but I am, and I was in the early 90’s when this story takes place.

    It was at a garden party for the ACLU of Southern California. My stepmother was the executive director, which is why I was in attendance without having to pay the $150 fee. It’s not that I don’t support the ACLU, it’s that I was barely twenty and had no money to speak of.

    I was escorting my grandmother. There isn’t enough room in this essay to explain to you everything she was, I would need volumes, so for the sake of brevity I will tell you that she was beautiful even in her eighties, vain as the day is long, and whip smart, though her particular sort of intelligence did not encompass recognizing young celebrities.

    I pointed out Robert Downey Jr. to her when he arrived, in a gorgeous cream-colored linen suit, with Sarah Jessica Parker on his arm. My grandmother shrugged, far more interested in piling her paper plate with various unidentifiable cheeses cut into cubes. He wasn’t Carey Grant or Gregory Peck. What did she care?

    The afternoon’s main honoree was Ron Kovic, whose story of his time in the Vietnam War that had left him confined to a wheelchair had recently been immortalized in the Oliver Stone film Born on the Fourth of July.

    I mention the wheelchair because it played an unwitting role in what happened next.

    We made our way to our folding chairs in the garden with our paper plates and cubed cheeses and we watched my stepmother give one of her eloquent speeches and a plea for donations, and there must have been a few other people who spoke but I can’t remember who, and then Ron Kovic took the podium, and he was mesmerizing, and when it was all over we stood up to leave, and my grandmother tripped.

    We’d been sitting in the front row (nepotism has its privileges) and when she tripped she fell smack into the wheelchair ramp that provided Ron Kovic with access to the stage. I didn’t know that wheelchair ramps have sharp edges, but they do, at least this one did, and it sliced her shin right open.

    The volume of blood was staggering.

    I’d like to be able to tell you that I raced into action; that I quickly took control of the situation, tending to my grandmother and calling for the ambulance that was so obviously needed, but I didn’t. I sat down and put my head between my knees because I thought I was going to faint. Did I mention the blood?

    Luckily, somebody did take control of the situation, and that person was Robert Downey Jr.

    He ordered someone to call an ambulance. Another to bring a glass of water. Another to fetch a blanket. He took off his gorgeous linen jacket and he rolled up his sleeves and he grabbed hold of my grandmother’s leg, and then he took that jacket that I’d assumed he’d taken off only to it keep out of the way, and he tied it around her wound. I watched the cream colored linen turn scarlet with her blood.

    He told her not to worry. He told her it would be alright. He knew, instinctively, how to speak to her, how to distract her, how to play to her vanity. He held onto her calf and he whistled. He told her how stunning her legs were.

    She said to him, to my humiliation: “My granddaughter tells me you’re a famous actor but I’ve never heard of you.”

    He stayed with her until the ambulance came and then he walked alongside the stretcher holding her hand and telling her she was breaking his heart by leaving the party so early, just as they were getting to know each other. He waved to her as they closed the doors. “Don’t forget to call me, Silvia,” he said. “We’ll do lunch.”

    He was a movie star, after all.

    Believe it or not, I hurried into the ambulance without saying a word. I was too embarrassed and too shy to thank him.

    We all have things we wish we’d said. Moments we’d like to return to and do differently. Rarely do we get that chance to make up for those times that words failed us. But I did. Many years later.

    I should mention here that when Robert Downey Jr. was in prison for being a drug addict (which strikes me as absurd and cruel, but that’s the topic for a different essay), I thought of writing to him. Of reminding him of that day when he was humanity personified. When he was the best of what we each can be. When he was the kindest of strangers.

    But I didn’t.

    Some fifteen years after that garden party, ten years after my grandmother had died and five since he’d been released from prison, I saw him in a restaurant.

    I grew up in Los Angeles where celebrity sightings are commonplace and where I was raised to respect people’s privacy and never bother someone while they’re out having a meal, but on this day I decided to abandon the code of the native Angeleno, and my own shyness, and I approached his table.

    I said to him, “I don’t have any idea if you remember this…” and I told him the story.

    He remembered.

    “I just wanted to thank you,” I said. “And I wanted to tell you that it was simply the kindest act I’ve ever witnessed.”

    He stood up and he took both of my hands in his and he looked into my eyes and he said, “You have absolutely no idea how much I needed to hear that today.”