As an incoming freshman, you’re probably drowning in everyone’s take on how to optimize your college experience.

Parents may be encouraging strict study habits. Peers may be telling you to rush Delta Tau Chi. Media personalities like Jordan Peterson may be clogging your social media feed with their takes on everything from libido to lampooning.

College advice is everywhere. It isn’t useless — it’s misunderstood.

We live in the Information Age. This is a positive for college and career planning. While basing your life decisions on projected salaries would be naive, it is helpful to have data like the Illini Success report and resources like the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And while I’d love to tell prospective Illini to make choices without money in mind, finances play a critical role in determining students’ educational paths.

Long story short: It’s beneficial that we have all these resources to factor into our college planning, people and podcasts alike. However, college advice becomes damaging when it steers decision-making instead of guiding the choices.

Daniel Bugingo, who is pursuing a juris doctorate at Columbia Law School, distinguished between two types of advice: life and practical. For practical advice, like how to lift weights, he suggests instructions — “Do it this way” — as the most effective form.

For life advice, however, he claims instructions are the worst form of delivery. Bugingo emphasizes questions as the best way to provide life advice. And he’s onto something.

Actor-turned-communication scientist Alan Alda found that empathy was the key to communication. Questions do just that — they increase empathy and encourage dynamic conversations rather than one-way sermons.

College advice should be interactive. It should involve challenging questions and considerate conversations.

The problem is, most college advice is instructive. While it’s not always direct, videos like “The Most Regretted College Degrees” provide stereotypical signposts for forks in the road between humanities and STEM majors, among others.

Plato warned that writing — lectured advice instead of a question-answer dialogue — could be a fickle “pharmakon” that diminishes philosophical truths.

Newsflash: Influencers sitting in front of a microphone and ring light making tier list videos is not an interactive discourse. Most college advice fails to be tailored to the individual’s desires; it instead universalizes life goals to a broad audience.

OK, but what about the adults at the graduation party drinking IPAs and professing their advice? Those are conversations, right?

“Decision-makers are significantly more risk averse when choosing for others than when choosing for themselves,” according to Jason Dana, visiting associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder Leeds School of Business, and Daylian Cain, senior lecturer at the Yale School of Management.

People often disguise regret and worldly cynicism as sage wisdom when it comes to life advice. The 28-year-old cousin saying you’ll be broke if you choose that major is worth a listen but also warrants criticism. Same with your dad’s friend who says, “Two words: Quantum computing.”

Then again, this very article could be a pharmakon. My directing you on which college advice to consider is, itself, instructive advice in the written word. I guess “I contradict myself.”

When it comes to college advice, tread lightly. Use resources to make informed decisions, like whether to take that unsubsidized loan. Listen to trusted adults and professionals, but also remember to take their advice with several grains of salt.

Ensure the advice you actually consider comes from a productive conversation that weighs your personal interests and capabilities. In other words, you don’t have to join business fraternities just because Braxton from Oozma Kappa said they’re great for “networking.”

If I had to offer you one piece of my own advice, it would be the simplest (and most cliche) advice out there: Make mistakes and have fun. And don’t wear nice shoes to your first frat rush party.

Alex is a junior in LAS.

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