1. Play frisbee. If there’s one thing that Loggers like, it’s frisbee. It is absolutely imperative that every incoming freshman should own a frisbee and never tire of playing with it. Ever. The sooner you get bored with playing frisbee with your fellow classmates, the less friends you will have. This is a scientifically proven fact.
2. Have a KUPS show. No facebook status in the world says “I’m cool” more than one telling friends to tune into your mediocre DJ-ing being broadcast across the airwaves. Bonus cool points for every Bon Iver or Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros song you manage to squeeze into your hour.
3. Hang out on the Diversions patio. Especially when it’s way too cold for your seating choice to be reasonable.
4. Work at Diversions. It’s almost as cool as working at the S.U.B. is uncool.
5. Smoke. If you weren’t planning on dying of lung disease in your future, get used to the idea. It’s worth it for how cool you’ll look sulking around in the Seward parking lot in the rain, sucking on your cigarette and looking outrageously hip.
6. Play guitar. If you can’t do that, at least know how to hold one. Simply being seen in public cradling that acoustic friend-magnet will send your friend stock skyrocketing.
7. Be friends with everyone… and no one. Any given Puget Sound student should look at you and have no idea where the two of you stand. Hang out with people just enough that they think you’re probably friends. Maybe. Ish. Only smile back at people every other time they say hi to you walking by on the sidewalk: this will maximize your mysterious allure, and people may even bribe you to hang out with them. Profit.
8. Have a beard. Nothing starts a conversation like a good beard. Also, liquor stores will be more likely to believe that you really are Mohammed Cohen, 22, from Salt Lake City, Utah.
9. Be a white, atheistic Democrat. Oh wait, you go to Puget Sound. Of course you are.
10. Shop at Goodwill. Because being poor is sexy. What’s that, you go to a $40k/year school? Never mind that. Ugly sweaters, oversized denim jackets and shoes that appear to have fallen straight out of the 30s are popularity gold.
11. Live in Schiff. If you don’t like backpacking, rafting, camping or skiing, you’d better shut up and change your mind. Or just wear tye dye, bandanas and Northface and pretend.
12. Write for the Combat Zone. Because anonymously passing judgment on every limb of the student body is the best way to win friends.