Done and over FYP

In a little over two weeks, your time in FYP will be over. Just like that, you’ll walk out of your second oral exam (probably with an adrenaline rush so intense you could lift a car), pack up your dorm room, and get the hell out of dodge. In the past eight months, you’ve sat through Plato figuring out what thinking is for the first time ever, Dante going to Hell and back, European first contact, the death of God and countless other human achievements that you may or may not have been paying attention to. With the weight of the world’s history on your shoulders, what do you do now?

Don’t be a super senior.

Some people go through their entire degrees without ever getting over FYP – they’ll brag about As on essays about Augustine, exclusively take FYP tutors’ courses and offer unwarranted advice to poor, unsuspecting first years. Stop chasing that unequivocal FYP Monday feeling. It’s over, and that’s OK. Now you get to experience real university like the rest of the student body.

Read something stupid.

Go to your local public library, close your eyes and run your hands over the endless James Patterson or Nora Roberts sections. Pick one at random and read it. It’s probably garbage, but the schlockier, the better — it’ll make you feel really smart. You might look foolish to everyone else, though.

Exercise your endless philosophical knowledge on people who don’t care the entire summer.

Long drive with your mom? Radicalize her with Simone de Beauvoir. Boring lunch break at your minimum wage retail job? Let your coworkers with lives and families know about the symbolism in Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. Don’t know how to talk to your friends from high school anymore? Walk them through Baroque art, one agonizing detail at a time. They’ll probably just nod and say, “Oh wow,” while waiting for you to stop. Let’s just hope they don’t ask any questions that fall outside the bit of lecture you can actually remember.

Think forward!

Though FYP may seem like your whole world in first year, it’s a speck of dust in the grand scheme of King’s. Now, you get to pick exactly what you want to do. Take some crazy niche King’s classes with made-up names like “Wizards and Hexes 101” or “20th Century Swashbuckling.” You’ll get a B+ and feel just alright about it.

Explore Halifax’s nightlife.

Many first-years spend a terrible amount of Friday nights in a crowded tri-bay room drinking warm liquor and thinking, “Is this all there is?” Luckily, it’s not. You’ll most likely be 19 by the time you get back next fall, guaranteeing you a front-row ticket to Halifax’s bar scene. You get to dance to crappy music at bars and wait in line for an hour and a half in the rain to get into The Economy Shoe Shop or The Local. Broaden your horizons!