Begin, of course, with hello. In your second or third year of high school — give or take a few based on your level of precociousness / misery — buy that giant book of America’s Best Colleges. Pretend to be looking as closely at average GPA and SAT score as at the campus, dining, party rating or male-female ratio. Somehow, both of these factors never seem to correlate. You will likely learn this all too late.

Try to ignore your parents hovering over your shoulder as you fill out applications on the computer they have just learned how to turn on. Be thankful technology is good for something. Fail to realize parental figures have the canny ability to make you feel their hovering presence from any distance, at any age.

Go on that college-visit road trip. Or plane trip. Just don’t walk. And make sure you can ditch said parent accompaniment for at least some portion of time during said visit in order to really get a sense for how things are at college.

Burn the bible of America’s Best Colleges at a beach bonfire with your high school friends. Try not to think about money too much. Remember it is just paper. Acknowledge later that against personal principle it is valuable paper. Don’t give it more credit than this. Ever.

Decide where to fulfill your fate based largely on gut instinct and the smile on your face when you were walking beneath the shade of an ancient tree on chosen campus.

Make sure you are the first of your friends to go. Make for absolute sure you are not the last. Cry a little when you leave for the airport. Cry a lot when you leave your high school boyfriend/girlfriend. Fail to realize you will never forget them and that it will never, ever work. Even if you are going to an all-girls, pre-nunnery school somewhere in Iowa, or an all-male, pre-priesthood farm, interestingly, also in Iowa. Cry a lot more until you end this relationship that seems your life, but you’ll probably wait until later.

First, just get to college. Have parent buy you your first [insert U here] sweatshirt. You will try not to wash it for a long time so it stays soft but you will wear it everywhere and won’t want to be labeled the smelly kid. You only get one chance at being labeled. Try to act sad as you wave goodbye to your parent’s rental car. Fail to realize how quickly you will be calling them up, really saying I miss you when you’re asking how to make a bed properly.

Over the next few years try to be everything you have always wanted to be — popular, bubbly, funny, sexy, the smart one, pensive, artsy, crazy fun, wickedly good at this game you have learned called beer pong or that sport you were decently successful at in high school or any other assortment of previously held talents.

Then realize: you are not as smart as popular, bubbly, funny, sexy, smart, pensive, artsy, crazy or fun, or remotely wickedly good at anything as you thought you were, but the person next to you probably is. Once you have accepted this fact you will realize you are not so bad off as you thought you were and you will start to enjoy the place.

Drink a lot and then learn the hard way how much you can drink. Make some truly awful decisions, especially the kind where against your own best judgment you hook up with the jock jerk or your housemate’s sloppy seconds and then learn the hard way what it is that you don’t want. Make some truly great decisions, almost always soberly or subconsciously. Sadly you won’t realize they are great until he or she is gone and learn the hard way what it is you do want. Avoid hitting yourself on the forehead when one day you wake up and know the one you want is the one who’s been there all along. Revive your inner romantic, give it some room to breathe.

Realize after a number of heartbreaks that your best friends are the ones you made the second you walked into your dorm room with a bag on every inch of arm that first day of college, or running around in a circle, or at a dining hall table, or in those student groups your “real” friends don’t even know you’re a part of.

Be Undecided. Take some psych courses, maybe get into painting, learn a language kind of and, after a lot of grades you never thought you’d get for the amount of work you never thought you’d do, find yourself where you started, probably where you belong. Try to deny your natural tendencies towards liberal arts as much as possible. Learn things that make you depressed about the state of the world. Become a cynic. Learn how little you know, probably from people completely unlike yourself. Do not be defensive about this. Fail to realize they are your greatest teachers. Become an cynicoptimist.

Ignore your father when he tells you you are a lawyer. Give up dreams of being a ballerina, an astronaut, a professional baseball player, a saint, a doctor, a porn star, a professor, president or a Peace Corp volunteer. Hold onto the ones where you change the world.

Fail, mostly, at said endeavors. Learn, change, grow — all that jazz. Then, clumsy as you are, fall into yourself. Forget time.

When it’s 3 a.m. and you’re still at the office or as you watch the sun rise in the library; or when you stay up all night debating something utterly ridiculous; or when the final buzzer buzzes; or you get back that bombed prelim; or when you read what will become your favorite book; or when you are sitting in the grass chewing a sandwich and smiling at your friends; or when you dance on a table; or when you take that trip; or when you sit on a bench alone and watch the sunset behind the hills; or when the bells toll only for you; or when you find your other half; or when the snow is falling or the fall leaves or the magnolia petals or the water from the lake, forget to stop and say, “Hey! Just stand still for one goddamned second!”

Find yourself suddenly with three days left of classes, boxes unchecked, questions unanswered and a future looming large and fierce. At the blurred edges of your mind fight to keep it from interfering with your memories or with your daily life that walks you steadily onwards towards graduation. The End.

Write a column. Title it “How To Say Goodbye to College.” Forgive yourself for the missed opportunity for a last, hard hitting knock out, and bask in the nostalgia. Be so, so grateful you are without words — or space — for everyone and everything. Cheat by ending it the way you began, with the final advice: carpe everything. Most especially sandwiches. And the only way to say goodbye: don’t.