So I have a kid sister who is a freshman in a college far away from here. She calls me and emails me every so often with trite freshman news that is so stereotypical I just have to laugh. She’s done some things that, when you get to be my age, you look back on with regret. “Oh, I was young, I was immature.” I enjoy our conversations, because I guess by looking back at the mistakes she’s making, I can see my own mistakes more clearly.

I once ran with a different crowd. As freshmen, we made bold declarations like we’d bring back sweater vests and reinvent the paper clip. We wrote fan fiction for Joss Whedon TV shows that he hadn’t even written yet. Not episodes, but entire shows. We wrote a blog set in 1999 espousing the merits of sweater vests and another blog set in 2003 mocking sweater vests while we wore sweater vests. We were that meta. We were young; we were naive. We were hipster gods.

So I smiled knowingly when she began to tell me her own stories. In the first few weeks, she got a tattoo with some of her dorm mates. I had a long phone conversation about that one. Look at me, I had never had a tattoo and I was really cool and only sort of wish I got that tattoo that said “Mom” on my bicep during my frosh scavenger hunt. But she was really adamant about getting this ancient French design of royalty. I told her we’re not French. I told her we’re not royalty. I told her our family isn’t ancient. She told me that Mom never loved me. At this point, my cell dropped the call. And threw itself against a wall. Touche, sister, touche.

She got a significant other her first three weeks of college. I remember my first college relationship. Junior year. Poor girl, she’s going to look back on that relationship in years to come and realize that it was just her wanting a college relationship, not really wanting the person she’s with. I haven’t had the heart to tell her this, however, as she’s still with him. I met him at Christmas. Nice guy. My mom says he’s “the son she never had.”

Then there was the phone call that she got discovered by a talent agent. Ho-hum. One appearance on an MTV reality show later and you’d think this was the first time someone had stumbled upon fame their freshman semester in college. Why, I remember getting a quote in the college paper during my freshman semester. I don’t mean to brag but Christen Hollt was immortalized for all eternity in the college paper. You can google it. A couple million people will see her bare her soul on television and it’ll get burned off another dozen times on reruns. Big Deal.

I get tired of her hearing about her new friends. Yes, college friends are very different than high school friends. Yes, some of them may be famous. But she sure makes a big deal that she goes clubbing with various Hollywood-type kids and how she’s getting flown to Ron Howard’s island fortress for Christmas. A simple “I’m busy” would have sufficed. I mean, I have famous friends too. It’s Stanford. I lived down the hall from the guy who invented that one hot program that lets you download porn faster. We eat in the same dining hall every day. You get used to knowing celebrities in college, so she shouldn’t make a big deal about landing that supporting role in Zach Braff’s next production. Silly freshman.

Now she’s in some kind of band. I play trumpet, so she didn’t have to point out what it’s like being in a band. As the lead singer. Of a band already signed to BMG. When she’s no longer a freshman, she’ll realize that trying everything is fun your freshman year but you’re going to want to cut down on the childish commitments later on and buckle down on your work. I was really into the high-profile exciting life of the student government at one point too, but I realized it was a fad. Starting a rock band that has a mild following on the Internet and is in negotiations with a label? I doubt she’ll still be interested in something like this during her senior year.

I hope she grows out of these freshman trends soon, though, because I think the kid has a bright future.

Chris would like to assure people that the above column is purely fictional. Any relation to reality will result in me getting yelled at by my family. Send complaints to cholt@stanford.edu.