Hey Sars,

I love your site. You are so smart and I agree with all your (opinionated) essays.

Here’s my problem. I’ll make it short and sweet.

I have a band. I have a crush on my drummer. It’s mutual. Should I instigate a relationship with him, or ignore my whim for the sake of my band? I am a very serious and professional musician and I really love my work.

Thanks so much.
Loves Her Work But Loves A Boy

Dear Loves,

I don’t see why not.On the other hand, maybe you see why not, and maybe that’s why you wrote to me, but it’s not in your letter, so I don’t know.

It doesn’t have to turn into a whole Stevie Nicks/Lindsey Buckingham melodrama.If you both dig each other That Way, go for it, but if you don’t feel comfortable about it in the context of the band, set ground rules at the beginning — no schmooping in front of the rest of the band, no favoring each other’s song ideas, whatever makes you more at ease with it.

I mean, at the very least it’ll make a good story for your eventual Behind The Music, right?

Dear Sars,

I am an eighteen-year-old freshwoman at NYU.I should be happy to be going to such an academically awesome school, and my classes do rock, but I’m miserable.The kids SUCK, all my friends from throughout the years are all over the place from Boston to Tennessee, and I just can’t seem to be happy.I want to stick it out because the program I’m in (speech pathology) is one of the best in the country, but whenever I have to interact with any of the students, my stomach turns.I silently thank my parents every day for not letting me dorm because if I was dorming I probably would’ve lost my mind by now.

Am I just anti-social, or am I making a big deal out of nothing? Either way, please help me.

Ang in Astoria

Dear Ang,

Okay, there’s a lot going on here, so let’s break it down.

First of all, it’s freshman year.I’ve said it before in this space, and it’s worth saying again — if you hate school first semester or first year, it’s not just you, and it’s not abnormal.It’s a big adjustment, no matter where you go to school.You have to get into a different academic routine, learn a new environment, meet new people, blah blah blah, and not everyone makes lifelong friends and settles in right away.It takes time.But it will get better.You will get used to it, you will find people you like, you will feel less out of place and green and new…all of that will happen, but it takes time, and you have to give it that time.It’s only October.

Next, let’s look at what you said about dorming.Frankly, I think you’d have an easier time of it socially if you lived in the dorms.It forces you to meet people.It forces you to spend time with them — at home, at meals, on the way to class in the morning — and especially at a big-city school like NYU, it gives you a sense of college community at a school that’s really big and spread out and doesn’t have a formal campus to speak of.By continuing to live at home, you’ve isolated yourself a little bit from the usual rhythms of campus life, many of which center around the dorms, so it’s going to take a more concerted effort for you to meet people than it would if you lived in Weinstein with a roommate who snores really loudly and a bunch of hallmates who DJ out in the stairwell.I don’t know how your parents would feel about it, but you might do better if you lived in the dorms with other people your age.

But…it’s NYU.It’s really big.It’s not on a real campus like, say, Lehigh, or even Columbia, uptown from you.Even when you live in the dorms, it’s hard to meet people you have something in common with; it’s just more of a fragmented experience, and you’ll run across a fair number of obnoxious artsy kids.My brother went there, and he didn’t have a good experience his freshman year for various reasons, and during his sophomore year he made noises about transferring — didn’t really like his program, didn’t really like the people, felt he’d have a better time on a more traditional campus.But eventually, he found some cool people and got an apartment in the Village and switched into a program at Gallatin that he liked better, and by the time he graduated, he’d found a place for himself and felt good about NYU.

NYU isn’t for everyone.I’d have hated it, I think.You have to work harder at making friends and finding a place for yourself, for lots of reasons, and you haven’t found anything that’s you yet, that’s yours.But you have to acknowledge the situation.You have to look at it and say to yourself, “I haven’t met anyone cool, it’s hard for me right now with all my old friends scattered around the country, it’s lonely.And that sucks, but it’s not going to last forever.”You have to give it longer than two months.Gut it out.Go to your classes.Chat with the other students who seem nice.Go out to coffee if someone invites you.Attend events.Join a club that interests you.Give it time and look forward to having a better time, and if you still hate it after two years, transfer out.

[10/25/01]

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