One of the most difficult aspects of working on a project like this is that, occasionally, in service to the larger point that I want to make to help America’s college students, I’m forced to include stories from my own past that I now find embarrassing.  This, I suppose, is one of those instances.  Today’s lesson is for all of the undergraduates out there who arrive on campus in the fall and quickly discover that they are less wealthy than most of their classmates.  Economic inequality, even among the relatively fortunate portion of the world that is privileged enough to attend college, can slap you in the face like Zsa Zsa Gabor.  Your job is to not let that slap throw you off your game.

When I graduated from Mattoon High School in the Fall of 1998, my parents gave me a copy of Michelle Anna Paige’s After the SATs: An Insider’s Guide to Freshman Year.  In all truth, I learned a lot from this book that was useful.  For instance, one of the things that the author recommended was the purchase of the biggest Foreign Language dictionary on the market – and on my bookshelf I’ve still got a French-English tome that would work as a door-stop at any bank vault in America.  Unfortunately, even with the purchase of this thirty-pound dictionary (which I occasionally still use to prop open a door when moving a large piece of furniture in or out of my apartment), there were still some aspects of college life for which I was completely unprepared.  Chief among these aspects was the fact that my 1993 Oldsmobile Achieva was no longer cool.

Now, in part, I brought this economic meltdown on myself when I joined a fraternity full of kids who had attended ritzy private high schools and had fathers that were powerful stockbrokers.  Wealth, in the United States, is a relative concept; and as an 18-year-old moron I quickly forgot that for the past two years I had felt quite lucky to even own a car.  My Achieva was clean, it was red, and it had an aftermarket CD player.  I was…to borrow one of my friend Jon’s favorite phrases…straight up “living the dream.”  In fact, it had never even occurred to me, coming from an economically depressed small town where no grown-ups owned a BMW, that I might suddenly find peers who drove cars with sticker prices equal to four years tuition.  But upon entering a larger world with more (or, actually, probably less) economic diversity, my perspective underwent a paradigm shift.  All of the sudden, my formerly sweet ride was decidedly unhip – indeed so unhip that the General Motors corporation would soon choose to completely eliminate the manufacture of Oldsmobiles altogether.  My reaction?  I spent five thousand dollars, a nest egg provided for me by excess scholarships meant to cover additional living expenses for four years of college, by Christmas break of my freshman year.  Needless to say, my parents were extremely disappointed.

At some colleges, like Saint Louis University, where I teach now, or Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where the parking lot looks more like a BMW dealership than a repository for hand-me-down Fords, the situation can be even more daunting for students who arrive on scholarship.  Witness the ridiculous story of my friend Jerry, who attended SMU for undergrad.  During the fall semester of our freshman year, Jerry forwarded along to our group of friends an email from a girl whose shallowness makes the Pet Rock seem intellectually deep.  Here’s the scenario: after initially agreeing to go out with Jerry on a date (he’s intelligent and attractive), she reconsidered, writing that “after she thought about it she decided she just couldn’t go out with a guy who drove a Toyota and worked at Old Navy.”  Are you fucking kidding me?  I have no idea what this girl is doing now, probably breeding stuck-up children with Roman numerals at the end of their names, but I can tell you that Jerry went on to become a very successful financial planner who could probably purchase the British navy if he wanted to do so.  Last year he bought his wife a Range Rover, which can’t be cheap – but as for himself, Jerry still drives the same Toyota, because he likes it and he doesn’t care what other people think.

That’s the bottom line of this lesson.  Kids who drive BMWs are neither intrinsically more cool than you nor intrinsically less – and you’ve got to remember that.  It’s not their fault that their parents have money, and it actually probably makes their lives easier.  But if you see people with nice things, and you’d like to have them someday, don’t respond by trying to keep up now with money you don’t have; don’t run up credit card debt or blow through your savings.  Rather, if you must, use your envy as motivation to work harder in school – because it is a valid human desire to want to enjoy the fruits of rigorous labor.  Still, the point I’d rather stress is this: what Jerry knew all along, and what I eventually figured out, is that the secret to being hip is to be a decent person and just not to care what other people think.  From my perspective now, ten years down the line, I can promise you that at some point in the very near future your sub-generation’s paradigm will shift back to a better place, where the people who everybody else wants to emulate are the people who quietly go about their business, marching, to use a cliché, to the beat of their own drummer.  All of the sudden, it’s cool to be the guy who always wears the Army surplus jacket, or who drives the 1978 Ford Crown Victoria.  All of the sudden, it’s cool to be the girl who goes to the coffee shop on Thursday night to read Anna Karenina instead of being the girl who goes to the bar to do body shots, yet again.  And so, I leave you with this picture of McLovin – probably not for the final time – because it serves my point, and because it makes me happy.

Joe Webb teaches American Literature at Saint Louis University.  For more of his advice, check out http://dr-wizard.com.

If you comb back through the annals of American television, you’ll see that we have a long history of casting 30-year-old actors and actresses as 18-year-old high school students.  In fact, I would not be at all surprised to learn that there exists a secret pact among network executives that declares all actors under the age of 25 ineligible to play high school freshmen on the CW.  It’s like some weird, twisted version of the NBA Draft’s new 19-year-old age requirement that has been designed to keep Dakota Fanning and Abigail Breslin from growing up and stealing roles from Kirsten Dunst. So, keeping this phenomenon in mind, let’s look at a few examples of the pattern:

Example 1) – Beverly Hills, 90210.  This one may be a little too old for some of you to remember, but we’ll consider it first as it establishes an historical precedent.  I’m pretty sure that not a single actor or actress on this show was under the age of 30 when they were cast, with the possible exception of the guy who played David Silver.  Just think about how preposterous some of these choices were that the show’s producers made.  Both Jason Priestley and Luke Perry had visibly receding hairlines by the time they started hanging out at The Peach Pit, and Tiffani Amber-Thiessen joined the cast of the show as a high school transfer student from Buffalo after having already played Bayside High’s Kelly Kapowski on Saved by the Bell for at least 6 years.  Do the math – it can’t be possible.  But this isn’t even the worst.  Andrea Zuckerman, who attended West Beverly Hills High School from 1990-1994, was born in – this is just unbelievable – 1961.

Example 2) – Dawson’s Creek. In 1998, the Parents Television Council proclaimed Dawson’s Creek “the single worst program on television.”  While I’m pretty sure this rating was meant to be a warning for parents about the sexually explicit content of the show, I’d like to think the award was instead handed out to honor James Van Der Beek as the least believable 14-year-old in history.  Seriously.  Think back to your freshman year at good old Abraham Lincoln High.  How many guys do you remember who had to shave at lunch to keep their 5 o’clock shadow from busting through their makeup?

Example 3) – The O.C. Here again, we see the wizardry of Hollywood Math in action.  Fact: Adam Brody is older than I am. This means he’s also older than Albert Pujols, Conor Oberst, C.C. Sabathia, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jason Scwartzman, Tony Romo, John Krasinski, and Jason Segel.  Can you imagine?  And Seth Cohen didn’t graduate from high school until 2006.  Even stranger – Seth was supposed to be Newport Beach’s awkward, nerdy kid who gets beat up a lot.  As my friend Clark points out in his forthcoming book, Hipster Philosophy, this casting is “just ridiculous.  Seth Cohen would have been the third best-looking kid in my graduating class of 450, and would have probably been the fourth coolest.  What are the real nerds supposed to do when they compare themselves to Adam Brody?  It’s no wonder the average teenager has issues.”  Exactly.  And this is what makes the following so noteworthy…

Earlier this year, the producers of One Tree Hill, after similarly casting a group of 26-year-old models (and one MTV vee-jay) as students at Tree Hill High School, boldly decided just to fast-forward the plot of the show 4-and-a-half years into the future, skipping college altogether – presumably because no one would believe the Shakespeare-quoting Chad Michael Murray wasn’t one of their teachers.  At the same time, the show decided to drop that Gavin DeGraw song with the video where everyone is wearing a scarf as their theme music.  Evidently, they decided that they did “want to be something other than what [they] been trying to be lately.”  I say, on both counts…good for you, One Tree Hill.  On behalf of the professors of America, thank you for deciding to stop mind-fucking the nation’s undergraduate population with your impossibly cast college students.

Look, I want to make this as clear as possible, so students, listen to me.  I am on campus every day, and I see this over and over again.  You have got to get past the fact that you do not look like a cover model – because no one else does either, and you are all driving yourself crazy.  Almost every girl I’ve ever dated since high school has had some sort of body-issue that can be blamed on popular culture, and there were at least 6 dudes in my fraternity who were anorexic (think about that – 6 dudes!!!).

Every semester, I read papers that just scream out, “please tell me I’m okay.”  Well…you are okay.  You’re just fine. You’ve got to understand that these nighttime soap-operas cast professional models, dressed by professional fashion consultants, to deliver incredibly witty lines written by professional writers.  And the real-world just isn’t like that.  It’s more like the new generation of teen-comedy movies.  Most of you look a lot more like McLovin, or Michael Cera, or those three kids from Drillbit Taylor than you do Ryan Atwood, and you can’t all date Sophia Bush.  So make the most of your potential, but be okay with who you are.  Stay fit (this doesn’t mean take steroids), dress well (this doesn’t mean you need to run up $10,000 on a Barney’s credit card), and be nice – and you’ll find you have all the opportunities you want with the opposite sex.  Then, who knows.  Maybe five years after graduation you’ll get a call from the CW asking you to audition for a new teen horror drama – Dracula High: The Locker Stalkers, or something equally ridiculous.

Joe Webb teaches American literature at Saint Louis University, where he spends equal time discussing Entourage and Leaves of Grass.  His book, Dr. Wizard’s Advice for College Students, is scheduled for national release in the fall of 2009, and will include lessons on everything from Greek Life to Greek literature.  For more of Dr. Wizard’s Advice, check out http://dr-wizard.com.