Now that my relationship with MSU is, finally, at an end, it is with a sense of wonder and trepidation that I prepare to don cap and gown and say goodbye forever to my home for more than three years.

I imagine there is a sense of trepidation in you, as well, as you prepare to don your first MSU collegiate hoodie and say goodbye to friends, family, girlfriends and boyfriends to begin your college career. It's an amazing journey, and I can testify the person you are today will hardly resemble the veteran of academia you will become when you graduate years from now.

But let's get one thing clear: College is not about academics.

College is, and always will be, about the people you encounter in your time here. Roommates, classmates, teammates, lovers, losers and teaching assistants all will play a role in shaping the future you. Every type of person you can imagine exists within the miles-wide labyrinthine campus that is MSU. And the more diverse, complicated and not-like-you people you seek out and befriend — and God forbid fall in love with — the stronger, wiser and kinder you will be as you prepare to head into the "real world" after graduation.

So my first piece of advice is to not let your classwork occupy more time than is absolutely necessary to complete your classes. Make sure you spend time studying at coffee shops and checking out the hot (insert appropriate sexual gender you're attracted to).

Join student organizations. Volunteer. Take the weekend off and go to Chicago or Windsor. Learn to skateboard to class. Carry your campus map everywhere and get ridiculed for it. Argue with the Wells Hall preachers. Go to a Broadway show at Wharton Center. Run for student government. Check out Satrang or Cultural Vogue. Take classes on world religion, comic books and sailing. If you can imagine it, MSU offers it.

In short, do not, under any circumstance, spend your time at MSU commuting back and forth from home to class to work to the bar to home to class to work to home again.

Trust me, as someone who did not start college until age 24, the working world is a black hole of responsibility — a huge sucking vortex of other people's demands on your time. It is up to you to find out who you are and, if you're at least marginally adept at passing classes, you only have four years to do it.

When I came to MSU, my only thought was to get the experience I needed to excel in my future career. And I let myself down. I never attended a football game at Spartan Stadium, camped out for Izzone tickets, checked out the SADA fashion show, went to the East Lansing Film Festival or ate chili at the East Lansing Winter Fest. Now, I never will do any of those things.

But you can. All that and more.

To do so, however, there is one thing you need to bring with you from home — an open mind.

Do not bring with you ignorance, intolerance or preconceived notions of other people, cultures or the world around you. Those are fatal to any chance you have of becoming a better person at MSU.

That doesn't mean you forget your past or the experiences that made you who you are today. But you can never hang blindly on to the prejudices that are a product of your upbringing, no matter where that was.

Your experience here will be life-changing. There's nothing you can do about that.

Only by embracing this change can you use it to make yourself a better person and get the most out of your college career.

Josh Jarman spent his last semester at The State News as campus editor. Reach him at jarmanjo@msu.edu.