This is a week of welcomes – N.C. State is welcoming all new students to the Wolfpack and welcoming back all returning students.

And regardless of who you are, I’m sure you will be a little tired of hearing the same old spiel from administrators, family members and student leaders about the importance of getting involved. The bottom line is that all the pomp and circumstance of orientation and convocation is a bunch of inspiring but fairly unhelpful talk.

So instead of giving you more of the same old stuff about involvement you’re getting now, I’m going to look everywhere but the present – the past and the future.

As far as the past goes, you must have done plenty of things right – you took the right classes, occasionally listened to your family and made a fair number of good decisions. Don’t forget what you’ve done and who helped you get here. Your future may lie ahead of you, but you always need to remember what got you to where you are.

Looking down the road, the future is definitely unsettling in its uncertainty. Quite a few students aren’t exactly set as far as what degree they plan on graduating with and what to do after leaving college. Yes, college is definitely a lot of fun – there are a lot of things to do and a lot of different people to meet on campus. Having fun is not a problem.

But don’t have too much fun. Hopefully, we’re all here to do something constructive with our lives, get an education and head off into the world to seek our fortune (or at least get a job). I can almost guarantee that college will suck if you don’t have a fun time. I can also almost guarantee that having too much fun is not going to help you graduate.

Having said all that, there are a couple of things you definitely do not want to learn the hard way. For starters, don’t skip class – as Woody Allen said, “80 percent of success is showing up.” So showing up is the same as getting about a B-minus in your course.

And boredom is a college student killer. Sitting around doing nothing usually leads you to more sitting around and doing more of nothing. And as unfortunate as it may be, you cannot graduate by doing nothing.At the end of the day, though, it really is up to you as to where you go and what you get out of college. Whether you’re a senior with 12 hours of class left or a freshman without a credit to your name, it’s your college experience and your life. Get to it.

E-mail your thoughts on the start of a new academic year to [email protected]