One: Open your eyes, look down and verify existence of limbs. Now assess yourself: Count parts, lumps and features. Consider what is and isn't there. These are your limitations -- forget them.
I'm kidding, but please do.
Two: Locate an atlas.
I'm kidding. Use Google Maps. The effort and design that give print media like atlases and encyclopedias their air of confident authority are the same shortcomings that leave them hopelessly outdated. Big British-y names in bold print and astounding numbers of editions don't mean anything except that a bunch of old white dudes got together and agreed.
Kidding -- Google maps is notoriously unreliable.
Three: Take the atlas back out of the trash can and read the biggest print on the cover. Where are you, and what does that make you? Then find the publishing information. Who makes the objects, gadgets and atlases around you, and how has that made you? Where are they?
I'm kidding, of course. Rand McNally is based in Illinois, and they couldn't care less how you live your life. Throw the atlas away again please.
Four: Try everything until you find something you're truly passionate about, something that makes you forget not just what time it is but that there is even a thing called time that you should be keeping up with. Something that holds your attention so deeply you're unconscious of everything else there is to do and be done.
Nope, kidding. Passion is important but you have to tame it. Keep trying new things, and more importantly, never lose sight of the world around you. You are inevitably involved in and with much more than yourself, and as such you are responsible for your actions and effects far beyond what you know.
Five: Find people who let you be yourself. See who you become when you just throw yourself into relationships, unburdened by your compiled social past. Then find like-minded individuals to share experiences with.
Scratch that. Don't find people like yourself -- find people you want to be, and then surpass them.
Kidding, again. How do you know the person you want to be is anything like the you you'll be looking for when you've had a little more time to look? As long as you're spending time with people, you're doing something right.
And for everyone you meet, stop and try to mentally calculate just how many lucky breaks, unfortunate accidents and biological variations separate them from you. How could you have been them, but why are you now you?
Six: This list is predicated on a false premise. Forget everything I've said. You are not finding yourself but building, building with every person you meet, every risk you take, every word you write, every world you explore.
What you do creates who you will be.
I'm kidding, naturally. Just try to have fun.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/150574744/Mail-Home-Edition-for-New-Students
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