ALEX LASSITER: Hello, lovely people! It’s Alex Lassiter with the Minnesota Daily here, and you’re listening to In The Know, a podcast dedicated to the University of Minnesota.

For those of you who know me, after this summer I’m moving up to the retirement home of college – senior year. And while I’m not planning to yell at any of you young whippersnappers to “get off my lawn,” I’ve certainly mellowed out a lot since my freshman year. Not only that, but I’ve learned so much about myself and the world around me. Despite being a senior, I’ve only recently realized just how much of a baby I am.

So much of the stuff I wish I knew as a freshman wasn’t a matter of me not figuring it out on my own, I was just never told. So I figured, why not impart some of my wise old wisdom to the next generation? Just so I’m not rambling on my own, I invited three of my fellow graduating senior coworkers to share their own advice.

Joining me today is Sports Desk editor Alex Karwowski, City Desk reporter Ainsley Brown and Managing Editor Amelia Roessler. Fun fact, every single person speaking in this episode has a first name that starts with the letter “A.” That’s not really relevant to anything, I just thought it was cool and wanted to mention it somewhere.

All three of my guests started their college careers at the University of Minnesota. Karwowski said he chose the U because it fit two unique criteria for him.

ALEX KARWOWSKI: My senior year of high school, I applied to six schools. It was like Syracuse, Butler, Hope College, which is a really small school in Michigan, Indiana, Minnesota, obviously and Mizzou, like Missouri. And I chose Minnesota because I wanted to go to a Big Ten school, and I wanted to go to a school that nobody in my family had gone to.  And I wanted to go somewhere that, like, it was far from home, but not, like, inconveniently far, like Penn State or something. So Minnesota just seems like a pretty solid option, so I was like, I guess that’s the one.

LASSITER: Brown was drawn to the U from a feeling of familiarity.

AINSLEY BROWN: I’m not originally from Minnesota, but my family is. And so I grew up being very familiar with the Twin Cities and I applied during the COVID pandemic. And so I wanted to go somewhere familiar, so that was definitely a draw. And then also I got a pretty good merit scholarship to come here and that definitely helps because I’m basically paying in-state tuition.

LASSITER: And Roessler was wrestling between the light side and the dark side of the Force.

AMELIA ROESSLER: I had to choose between here and Madison, and I don’t even know why that was on my list because the U is obviously way better. I was a huge, like, marching band nerd in high school. Literally one of the big things was like, “Oh, the U has a fantastic marching band and Madison doesn’t.” So, shout out to the marching band for being my reason why I came to the U. 

LASSITER: My freshman year, I lived in Middlebrook Hall on the West Bank. I came to the University for theater originally, so the proximity of the dorm to my classes was its main selling point for me. When I was there, I met two of my closest friends and made a lot of formative memories. Funnily enough, Brown and Roessler also lived in the exact same building I did.

BROWN: I lived in Honors housing in Middlebrook Hall, which was definitely, I don’t know. It was a unique experience because for Honors housing, it’s all, usually everybody on that floor is Honors and the people I met on that floor were still friends. Like, we ended up clicking really well, which I feel like is not always the situation. But yeah, we all clicked really well. So it was a really nice living situation, like I’m still friends with my freshman year roommate.

ROESSLER: I lived in Middlebrook on the eighth floor. I’m not going to lie, Middlebrook gets way more hate than it needs. I know it’s on West Bank and it’s far away, but we have our own kitchen and it’s like on-campus, but it’s like kind of on the outskirts. You get to do your own thing, but I had a great time. I met a lot of my current friends there and we had, so much fun times together and it was fantastic.

LASSITER: Meanwhile, Karwowski was living it up in the 17th Avenue dorm, a space closer to the sporting side of the University on the East Bank.

KARWOWSKI: I think the biggest, the coolest thing and the thing I miss most about 17th is just, like, having a spot where I could meet my friends for like meals. Like the dining hall, people hate on the dining hall all the time, but like the dining hall was “free,” in quotes, you know, and like I could just go whenever I wanted. I didn’t have to make my own food. Like it was good. Like I kind of miss the dining hall. I never really went there for lunch or anything cause it was always too crowded, but like breakfast and dinner, I was feasting.

LASSITER: But people don’t just go to college for the roof over their head and the so-so dining hall food. Although, Karwowski is right, the food at 17th is absolutely unmatched. One of the hardest things about my freshman year was deciding which classes to take and what major to pursue. As I mentioned, I entered the University wanting to do theater which obviously didn’t pan out.

My three guests had it all figured out, they all came to the U knowing that they wanted to be journalism majors. However, some of the paths they took within their majors changed from their freshman years to now. For instance, Brown came in wanting to double major in journalism and political science, but that plan ended up shifting over to a journalism and geography double.

BROWN: That was something I actually struggled with for a little bit because on the surface, they seem so separate. And when I was going to do, you know, political science with journalism, there’s a very obvious path there to like political reporting and like that kind of world geography. That’s a little less obvious, especially since I was going into physical geography and not human geography. And that’s when I kind of realized the applicability there was for talking about environmental causes and environmental issues with journalism, because I mean, physical geography is a lot of things. It’s a very interdisciplinary science, but one of the biggest parts of it is environmental science and like environmental information. And there’s definitely a need in the journalism world for, like, effective scientific communication. And so I saw that and was like, this is, I think this is where I fit in.

LASSITER: All this talk about geography reminded me of a story I worked on last summer about the East Anatolian fault over by Turkey, the origin of those major earthquakes in the area. I recounted how I felt so lost trying to follow what one of my interviewees was talking about, which is exactly what Brown said drew her to the geography double in favor of political science.

BROWN: My biggest thing is like, if I’m going to talk about science, I want to understand the science, because I think then you can more effectively communicate it and make sure people actually understand what’s going on. Because then otherwise I think you risk some possible inaccuracies because you’ve missed something, cause you’re not a scientist, you know?

LASSITER: So to all you little freshies starting classes in the fall, just a reminder that you don’t have to have your major, or even the niche path you’ll be taking within your major, completely planned out by the day you start out. Heck, you don’t even have to have it planned out for the whole of your first year. Take some fun classes. Take some weird classes. You might meet some cool people, like how Roessler and I found out in real time during our interview that we would be in the same class during the fall.

I’m taking a pickleball class next semester.

ROESSLER: I am too! 

LASSITER: Wait, wait, which one?

ROESSLER: The beginners pickleball class on Monday?

LASSITER: Yes!

ROESSLER: No, I literally was like, “I want to play pickleball. Oh my God, there’s a pickleball class!” And I was like, “Okay, it says beginner’s pickleball.” I’m not necessarily a beginner, but I want to, like, learn more about the rules, and I just want to go have fun. And so I was, like, so excited. 

LASSITER: You are going to smoke me in that class. I’m so nervous now.

ROESSLER: No, no, it’s okay. I’ll go easy on everybody. 

LASSITER: But if there’s one word of advice I have for incoming freshmen, do not take that 8 a.m. class. It’s not worth it. Roessler and I both figured that out the hard way during our freshman year.

ROESSLER: Didn’t we have the same Spanish class together?

LASSITER: Yeah, we did! We did, we did, we did. 

ROESSLER: That class was awful, because it was… 

BOTH: 8 a.m.

LASSITER: 4 days a week.

ROESSLER: Oh my gosh. 

LASSITER: Not fun at all.

ROESSLER: Coming to college, I was like, “Oh, I can totally do an 8 a.m., like, that’s so easy.” And then I took one 8 a.m. class, and I was like, “I am never again taking an 8 a.m.,” because I used to go to Spanish class, and then I had a break before my 11:15, like, creative writing class, and I would fall asleep in Walter, because I didn’t want to walk all the way back to Middlebrook, so I would go pretend to do work in Walter and just take a nap.

LASSITER: Before we concluded, I asked each of my guests one final question: what is the biggest way in which you think you’ve changed from your freshman to senior year? For Karwowski, it was just taking that dive off the deep end and talking to people.

KARWOWSKI: You gotta, you gotta, you gotta just do it, man. It’s, I don’t know how else, how else to say it, but, like, you just kind-of have to, like, you gotta throw yourself in, in the thick of it, like you gotta go up to people and talk to them. They will not come to you.

And I kind of still am a little, like, reclusive in a sense. My freshman year, the idea of walking up to somebody, like, in Coffman, or, like, anywhere on the street is the scariest thing ever, but, like, now it’s probably one of my better skills as a journalist, just, like, straight-up walking up to people.

LASSITER: Karwowski said he also credits journalism for another skill he learned over time – listening.

KARWOWSKI: So that’s another thing that journalism has really taught me. It’s just like, the biggest gift that we have as humans is our ear. Like, we can talk all day about what we do and how great we are. And we can talk about ourselves all day, but like your ears, like you just gotta shut up and listen. It’s kind of just how it is sometimes. So that’s probably the biggest thing that I’ve learned from freshman to senior year, is I just got to listen. 

LASSITER: For Brown, it was studying abroad in Florence, Italy.

BROWN: The biggest thing that comes to mind that made that change for me was studying abroad. I studied abroad the fall of my third year, of my junior year, in Florence and that was an incredibly helpful experience because I was in a group of seven people. There were only seven of us who studied in the program that semester, which was crazy. But because of that, like none of us knew each other. 

And so I just went out into the city alone a lot of the time and I would travel alone and I got really comfortable being alone and you just learn so much about yourself and how you are as a traveler, as a tourist. That was just, like, so incredibly helpful for me because then coming back, like, I’m so unafraid to just, like, try new stuff by myself or take on new challenges by myself and feel confident and being able to know that I know how to do those things. That no matter what, I’m going to get something out of it. It’s just very much changed my perspective on myself and who I am.

LASSITER: And Roessler said despite the fact she learned a lot in college, a lot of her personal changes came from working behind the bar in Faribault.

ROESSLER: Being on the other side of the bar, I learned to stand up for myself and not take any crap. And that is another thing that, like, I learned from that too, is to stand up for myself and, like, be myself and be not a people pleaser. And so I did learn in college, like, being with my friends and being confident and, like, going through all the hard classes and going through everything. I did learn it that way too. But also, sad as it is to say, I think I learned a lot from being a bartender.

LASSITER: My own answer is simple – I figured out who I was, and who I want to become. They are really different people. I’m still a work-in-progress, and that’s okay. Some people come into college thinking that they’re going to completely reinvent themselves, but what ends up happening is they just become more mature versions of the person they are right now.

Don’t break yourself trying to fit the mold that other people shape for you. Show genuine love to one another. Even people you don’t know. Even people you don’t like. College isn’t a time to completely close yourself off, it’s a time to open yourself up more than you ever have before. To seek knowledge and the truth and to re-introduce yourself well, yourself. Take it from this seasoned old senior, change only happens when you let it. And if you haven’t already, open up a credit card and use it responsibly. Trust me, it’s going to be an absolute game changer when you graduate.

This episode was written by Alex Lassiter and produced by Kaylie Sirovy. As always, we appreciate you listening in and feel free to send a message to our email inbox at [email protected] with any questions, comments, concerns or episodes you’d like to see. This is our final episode for the summer season, so I won’t see you and you won’t hear me until September. I’m Alex, and this has been In The Know. Take care, y’all.