The summer before I started college I went on a family vacation to Hawaii. My father, the intrepid adventurer that he is, thought that it would be fun to go on what was deemed the “lava view hike,” a controlled journey over the forbidden lava fields to see a majestic flow of moving magma that shows us Earth as the living, breathing thing she is. I would like to say this hike was fun, but it wasn’t. It was, however, exciting. Maybe it was the fact that the hike took us over miles and miles of jet black lava rock that not only absorbed the heat, but cast it back at us tenfold. Or maybe it was the guide who warned us that a false step could cause the rock to cave in and not to breathe the mist because it was a cloud of sulfuric acid. Either could be responsible.

The first time I saw the Brickyard, that image came back to my mind. Just wall-to-wall brick insanity. Massive amounts of people heading to class, people handing out flyers, a seemingly crazy man holding a Bible yelling out verses to the passersby. My jaw dropped for a minute, my mouth helping my eyes, ears and nose to take in all the things around me.

So there I was, this naive little freshman, viewing the volcano fields for the second time in my life, only instead of worrying about dying in a rubble of rock and acid, I now worried, “How am I ever going to find my place here?”

According to its website, N.C. State has an enrollment of more than 31,000 students. We go to a school of enormous breadth. With a campus and a student body this size, the possibilities are truly endless. My point is that there are amazing things all around us.

Freshmen, consider this column directed toward you. I dedicate it to you, actually, because when you get to college, you are presented with all sorts of awesome freedom. No curfew, fewer rules, and a lot of pretty people to hang out with and buy dinner. It is hard to fight the temptation just to grab liberty by her sweet little hand and run with her. Staying out all night and partying with friends — this is truly what college is all about, right?

I disagree.

Sure, those things are great — I mean really great — but that is not the whole picture, my friends. If you want to be successful in college — and perhaps this is even the key to life after college — you have to stay connected and get yourself out there. There are mounds of opportunities here. Clubs, sports, plays, religious groups, community service projects, campus jobs, student government, student media and a hundred more I forgot.

In high school I had a biology teacher who gave me a motto to live by. It was a simple quote that he didn’t even mean the way I took it, but it is one that I tell myself on a regular basis. Whenever anyone in the class would start to slack off, he would shout their name out loud and point to them yelling, “Do some thing with your life!” I think he meant that my lab partner and I should stop juicing our specimen’s eyeball, but I took it a different way.

From that class on, “do something with your life” has become my mantra. The quote has so much potential. It is not “be a doctor” or “think of a way to end world hunger,” it’s just a command for you to do something — anything!

This school is big, and if you aren’t careful it can swallow you whole. The only advice I feel qualified to give is the same that I was given in the volcano fields.

Stay away from the dark crevices you could fall into, drink lots of water (it’s hot), don’t inhale anything that you think shouldn’t go in your lungs, and otherwise feel free to explore one of the few places where we are creating the future world.

What are you going to do with your life? Send us your thoughts at viewpoint@technicianonline.com