“I’ve had this feeling before—of going out to get a poem, like hunting…[I felt] erotic, oddly magnetic. Like the photographic paper. As I walked I was recording the details. I was the details, I was the poem.”

—Eileen Myles, on her process

For the first time in four years, I am porous, open, “oddly magnetic.” Any advice people give me, it sticks to me and is gobbled up by my hungry deprived conscience. The way sea urchins vacuum up small creatures at the bottom of the ocean. Every piece matters, I’m starving for instructions.

For the first time in four years, I’m realizing my malnourishment in the advice department, as I come to the conclusion that I know nothing at all and have nothing to hang onto that will prevail as true throughout the coming decade. No heart to heart, face to face moments had naked in the forest or in the dark wings of a closing night production. Just the icy voices of internet people, hellos and how are you’s outside CVS. The vulnerability of feeling alone has caused me to be more impressionable than ever.

Before now, I was purposely tuning out the things people told me, because, as my fourth grade teacher told my parents, I am “too resistant for my own good.” And the only warranted, sage advice I can possibly give to anyone in a place slightly before me in life is this: take the advice of everyone. Process it, distill it, use what you need. But listen to it all. Murder your stubbornness, especially if you’re a Taurus, Virgo or Capricorn.

College is the ultimate barrage of resistance-breaking activities, requiring a surrender to a distinct and clearcut social and academic flow unlike anything you’ve experienced before. Out of sheer panic, I started swimming against the flow, and, exhausting myself quickly, found a place to rest in television show binges and obsessive art projects and other kinds of mind numbing things that one does in solitude. There were others equally exhausted and equally numb, but we never managed to befriend one another.

So of course, there are regrets. But I don’t regret having them because they’re fueling the fire, the beautiful impressionability.

I wish I wasn’t so quick to push against norms instated from the beginning, norms regarding partying hard and studying hard. I was living by the Beyonceism of “Who needs a degree when you’re schoolin’ life?” except my version of schoolin’ life was ignoring piles of neglected class readings for more important things like teaching myself how to knit. I schooled it alright. There is nobility in coasting along, of doing that thing they talk about in rush (ha), “letting the system guide you where it does” and evaluating afterwards. I am no different than anyone else here, and should have picked myself up and pushed myself towards the direction of the flow when it was still early enough.

And though I’m positive there was advice coming from so many angles, I tuned out too early to even hear the rest beyond “It’s an intense place here, everyone’s in the same boat, you’ll be okay!” Wish I listened to PAs, senior-most people in clubs and meetings, coworkers, neighbors, professors, fellow students in classes I loved and classes I hated so hard. Wish I had mentors, wish I knew the inside of a professor’s office by memory. Wish I kept in touch with sweet people I met early on, wish I went to lunch with cool people I met closer to the end. Wish I wrote a book (or self-advised thesis) in my spare time. Wish I gave Greek life a slightly longer chance. Wish I didn’t possess a bitter hatred of a cappella, wish I instead used that emotion to start an all-girl band. Wish people knew I even sang. Wish I lived with creative types. Wish I got to know more members of my tribe, the Jewish one. Wish I deleted my Facebook ages ago.

If I had taken advice I was given back in Wildcat Welcome, I’d have less regrets and more memories I want to take back home with me. Or maybe I wouldn’t even be going home. Who knows.

My most joyful moments in college were those spent in the fleeting sun, writing, usually about HOW to do things, or WHY we do things. What should have been more joyful was DOING THINGS IN REAL LIFE. This new magnetic energy that grows in me every day, it’s telling me that the next chapter is about doing, doing and listening. The writing will come because I’ll be living it.