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College Students

      To all you students preparing for your first year of college:
      Congratulations and best wishes.
      While passing all your classes and making good grades is extremely important, so is forming good relationships. Make sure you work on your social interaction, too. Keep your friends from high school and the neighborhood, but form lots of new ones. Set aside time just for other people. Think of them as your network for future decades.

      Cultivate relationships with a variety of people, not just the dorm crowd, a class, or your sports team. Befriend a nerd, or a shy person. You're not in high school any more, so drop the cliques.) You don't have to be best buddies, but do be sincere. Speak to your professors or teaching assistants without sounding like you're kissing up. No one likes a phony. If you're snubbed, ignore it and keep on being a friendly person anyway.

      Ask someone how their day is going, then listen to the answer. Everyone loves for someone to listen politely. You don't have to be too personal. Don't probe. Don't overload others with your personal sagas; that makes you look self-centered. Save the personal details for those closest and most tolerant of you. If you're always talking about the exciting weekend you just had to people who had to work and study only, they might start to resent you.

      Stay in touch with dorm mates over breaks and summer vacations. Just an e-mail or quick text will remind them you're there and thought of them.

      Spend at least an hour a week, over coffee or soda (alcohol tends to alter the conversation), getting to know someone better. Ask some ice breakers, or just go to a popular topic in the news, around campus, or from a book you just read. Find out what makes the other person tick, what he dreams about doing, etc. Think of your time as an investment in the other person.

      Try to learn the names of the people in your classes, and use them. You may never have a class with that person again if you're on a big campus. Be pleasant and polite. You might run into each other in another city ten or twenty years from now.

      Developing your ability to care about others is a part of your education. It requires discipline, not wishful thinking. Maybe you'll work with these people some day, or need them as references. Or they'll need you. Cultivating different kinds of relationships with many people will help you to be a better supervisor, even a better parent. And all those people will teach you things you won't learn in books. You'll have memories to last, and might make many lifelong friends.