An introduction (to my column)

According to my pick-a-major pressure sensor, and exemplified by my grimy but capable Hillsides suite, I’m not a freshman anymore. I’m a sophomore, with all of the typifying accouterments: the swagger, the social circles, the babies and all.

But although time has passed, I can still reap the benefits of certain freshman-esque habits. I can still do, essentially, the “freshman shuffle.”

Before you start painting a more sordid picture than I intended to elicit, crammed with unsavory frat parties, stressful schedule rearrangements and seemingly self-confident awkwardness, let me delineate just a bit.

The “freshman shuffle,” as I and probably no one else calls it, is a social tactic freshmen and others may use to engage and assess their interests. It’s the let’s-sign-up-for-everything-at-the-activities-fair-because-it-all -looks-so-cool phenomenon, the I could do anything so let me do everything instead thought process.

It’s an admirable objective, one I’d like to emulate, only slightly tweaked, so as to avoid any semblance of inherent naiveté. And I think this column can help me do that.

Instead of adorning my schedule with every activity that seems even remotely interesting, I plan to allot definite amounts of time to projects, assumed habits and mini-objectives. These escapades may be as plain as spending a week showering at a normal rate, or as adventurous as spending a week not wearing shoes.

Then, to mirror the inevitable soul-searching of every freshman, I’ll reflect on the experience and relay what I’ve learned in a hilarious and illuminating column. That’s the plan, anyway. If I were feeling generous, I’d call it immersion journalism, but if I were being realistic, I’d call it fooling around.

Immersion journalists of yore have had their fair share of enlightening experiences. They range from the treacherous and life threatening -- consider Sudhir Venkatesh, a University of Chicago graduate student who was inducted into a drug gang as a sociology experiment -- to the playful and (relatively) harmless -- enter A.J. Jacobs, an author who spent a year of his life living as biblically as he could muster.

After six years of witnessing the brutal beatings, rigid hierarchy and squalor of the gang life, Venkatesh published a book, got successful and calculated that foot soldiers of drug gangs make a mere $3.30 an hour. As if Breaking Bad didn’t teach us that already.

A.J. Jacobs, alternatively, while following rules like love thy neighbor, be fruitful and multiple and do not wear clothes of mixed fibers, wrote an amusing and thought-provoking memoir. Those are definitely adjectives I’d like to be, as long as my freshman shuffle merits being put into words.

One trait shared by immersion journalists and gawky freshman alike is, I think, their learning style. It’s adventurous and total. It channels the Suzuki Method in that both college and, say, gang membership, are at first abrupt immersion experiences and it isn’t always pleasant. But like every over-enthused high school teacher used to say, this just may be the discomfort in which learning happens.

So one goal I have for this semester, guided by this column, is to learn as much as a freshman does outside of the classroom. I’ll do this by immersing myself, within reason, in whatever single activity it is I want to learn about that week. And I’ll definitely take suggestions.

Whether I’m honing my freestyle rap abilities or learning to belly dance seductively, I’m ready for fall 2014.