Time to cram for your next big test: Yale

FILE PHOTO Yale's best-looking newspaper staff welcomes you to four great years. Buckle up—it's a wild ride.

College is cool, but there's something about Yale. Like many of you, I did the Grand College Tour my senior year, shopping around in an attempt to figure out what name would eventually go on my diploma. I won't name names, but the other schools I checked out just didn't have it.

What is it? I'll tell you what I told my mom when she picked me up at Phelps Gate after my visit: interest. Yalies are both interesting and interested—a powerful combination.

Interesting: of course. Quirky, even—having a long high-school résumé, after all, isn't really about being well-rounded; it's about being polyhedric, with all kinds of different angles. Whether you're a star athlete who writes classical music, a golfer obsessed with The X-Files, a political activist who speaks fluent Swahili, or a punk rocker who can't wait to get to med school, you'll fit right in. Not, of course, because there's anyone else quite like you. You'll find that having something in common with another person, like winning the World Series, comes down to "intangibles." All of us are too many things at once to be defined by any ready categorization (even "nerd").

At Yale, you never have to apologize for your passions. Intensity is the name of the game; though their outward personae run the gamut from chilled out to hyped up, Yalies all have fire in their bellies. What's your obsession? Camping? Community service? The can-can? Over and over again, you'll say to yourself, "I thought he was such a quiet, unassuming person. Until—" Until you found out he could talk for hours about ornithology. Until you found out she was determined to become the next world champion foosball player. Until you discovered he was publishing his first novel. Until you saw her name in a prominent scientific journal.

Which brings me to my next point. As my kindergarten teacher taught me, everyone is interesting in his or her own way. (I even met a few interesting people at Harvard.) Having an active, outward-reaching curiosity is what really makes the difference. Maybe it's just because I'm self-centered, but as a pre-frosh I was amazed that my hosts wanted to know about me. Who was I? What was I into? What was I reading? What did I think of all this?

I thought it all was a little overwhelming, to tell the truth. Think you're pretty smart? Yale will humble you. But even if you're as intimidated as I was at first, you'll realize you can more than hold your own. From section to lab to meaning-of-life debates in the wee hours, you'll have something to say—because someone will want to hear it. Over 5,000 of America's best and brightest are about to become your interlocutors, your shoulders to cry on, your biggest fans, your testing ground for crazy theories—your classmates. Our appetites, for knowledge and insight and friendship alike, are insatiable. I'm a lover of ideas myself, and I admit that every once in a while I get burned out. I start to feel like all the truly deep things have been said and thought. Without fail, Yale will prove me wrong. Someone, a professor or a friend or a classmate, will say something that makes me think in a whole new way. Check your paradigm at the door.

For the next four years, you won't know what to write down when a form asks for your permanent street address and phone number. "Do you want my phone number here, or my parents' phone number in Denver, or my phone number in New York for the summer, or my phone number in Tanzania next semester?" Yale won't let you feel completely settled—in your physical surroundings (get ready to pack everything up again at the end of the year), in your opinions (get ready to have them challenged and re-challenged), in your identity (get ready to enter a world without context, where who you are is who you decide to be). If you still aren't sure who your new best friends are going to be after the first two weeks, don't worry. Remember, everyone is dying to get to know you, so long as you're willing to return the favor. That goes for all four years.

Q.E.D., Yale students are a pretty phenomenal bunch, and you're one of them. A Yale education is expensive, but rest assured, you'll get your money's worth. With interest.