It’s true—you know everything.
You’ve never known more about life than you know right now, and yet
you’re smart enough to recognize that you still have things to learn.
That’s one of the things you know. It’s why you’re going to
college.
Actually, the real reason you’re going to college is a mix
of things: wanting to get away from home, wanting to start over,
wanting to fuck as many people as possible, wanting to stay up as late
as you want, wanting to experiment with drugs and alcohol and orifices,
and wanting to be in the city. This city.
The adults in your life have probably been talking to you about
college nonstop—where you’re going to apply, where you applied,
where you were accepted, which school you chose, what classes you’re
going to take, when the fall quarter starts. What, why, how, when, who?
It’s as if your going to college is the only thing anyone’s been
thinking about. Truth is, no one gives a rip about your college career
except your parents, and they only care because they want you to pile
up enough sweet, green cash that you can buy them an English-speaking
live-in nurse, HBO, and morphine to enjoy when they’re old enough to
start wearing diapers again.
Now that you’ve arrived—now that you’re at school and have
seen what your living conditions are going to be like for the next few
years and are starting to meet the people who are going to be your
friends, friends-with-benefits, frenemies, and college
sweethearts—you’re ready to begin contending with life as an
adult. We’re here to help you get started.
You may feel like you don’t know what you’re doing. Well, odds are
good that you don’t. You may feel like you chose the wrong college.
Odds are good that you did—everyone does. You may feel lonely,
empty, and panicked. You should—but just a little, just enough to
motivate you. Rest assured that no one—not your parents, not your
professors, not all those adults who were giving you advice about
college—knew what they’re doing in college or knows what they’re
doing now. Adulthood is loneliness, emptiness, and panic.
Surprise! Welcome to the party. Make yourself a drink. Sit
anywhere.
Now for the good news. You didn’t choose the wrong city; you chose
just about the best city in the country.
A brief history of where you are: Native Americans lived here at
least as far back as 3,000 years ago, and then in 1851 a bunch of
Europeans landed in West Seattle on a beach you’ll surely end up on at
a bonfire party sometime. In no time, these white guys and their
children’s children were getting rich chopping down trees and selling
them, and then there were hookers, and then there was a gold rush, and
then there were more hookers, and then a shipbuilding boom, and still
there were hookers, and then there was World War II, which is really
the reason you and me and this newspaper you’re reading are here at all
(because Boeing built the bombers), and there were still more hookers,
some of them male.
And then there was a World’s Fair, which is why we have the Space
Needle, and then a black kid from Seattle named Jimi Hendrix picked up
a guitar and did a bunch of drugs and choked to death on his own vomit,
and then a white kid from Seattle named Bill started this company
called Microsoft on the other side of Lake Washington, and then a white
kid in a rock band called Nirvana wrote some angry songs and did a
bunch of drugs and shot himself in the head, which was a huge boon to
Sup Pop, the Seattle label that put out Nirvana’s first album, and goes
some way toward explaining why Seattle has a big-deal music scene to
this day.
And hookers, there are still hookers.
Now that you’re up to speed, people are going to stop asking about
your where-are-you-going-to-college plans and more about your
what-are-you-going-to-do-with-your-life plans, and you’re going to have
to get good at some sort of answer. Reading Virginia Woolf books and
talking about meaning in a classroom full of people who’ve never
experienced anything only gets you so far. You’re going to have to
start, you know, living your life—doing things, seeing things,
eating things, drinking things, fucking things.
And that’s where The Stranger‘s Secret Student Handbook
comes in. We’re here to help—because, c’mon, you don’t know shit.
We have advice about everything from the places you’ll go (Vancouver,
underage clubs) to the drugs you’ll do (yes to pot, no to meth) to the
abortions you’ll get (if you’re careless) to the books you’ll read (if
you’re stupid) to the food you’ll eat (if you’re cheap). The education
you’ll get from the city is just as—if not more—important
than the education you’ll get in your classes.
What’s in it for us, you ask? Getting you up to speed as quickly as
possible isn’t a purely altruistic act. New arrivals to the
area—from the first white settlers through successive waves of
Californians to each year’s crop of new students—tend to annoy
people that were here before. No one who’s been in Seattle for longer
than six months wants to stand behind a recent arrival in line for
coffee, or listen to you mispronounce “Alki,” or wait for you to come
out of your very obvious closet, or watch you descend into teenage
pregnancy, meth addiction, or Scientology.
So getting new students up to speed—limiting the amount of
times you hear, “What are you, new?”—isn’t a favor we’re doing
just for you. It’s something we do for ourselves.
Welcome to Seattle—let’s get started. 
