Have Fun Be Safe I Love You: and Everything Else I Want to Say to My Kids About College and Beyond

By Kate Hickey

This book is a real-talk guide to navigating college and life. With easy-to-read and funny chapters like Ditch People that Drain You and Don't Go Home Every Weekend, this book is a must-have for any high school graduate or college freshman. It includes practical advice

• Language: English
• Publisher: SinMiedo Publishing
• Release date: Jan 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9780578918525

Kate Hickey

Kate Hickey holds a Master's in Education and taught high school for ten years before moving to Spain in 2018. Hickey currently works as a facilitator for Fortune 500 companies and her writing has been featured in Glamour, Forbes, Nashville Voyageur Magazine, and Yahoo News. She is the owner of HickeysEverywhere.com.This book is the result of her passion to help students understand and manage their emotions, realize their potential, and fearlessly create their own future.

Book preview

Have Fun Be Safe I Love You

Copyright © 2021 Kate Hickey

Cover art and design by Xema Tasquer Fuertes

Typesetting and cover layout by Sadie Butterworth-Jones

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles

and reviews.

Disclaimer:

The representation of views, opinions, and beliefs contained in this book do not reflect the views, opinions, or beliefs of anyone other than the author.

Print ISBN 978-0-578-91851-8

eBook ISBN 978-0-578-91852-5

For Max and Sam

The Freshman 150

This is not a typo. The only number you should be focused on for the next year is The Freshman 150.

Why 150? Because that is the average number of days you’ll spend at college this year. It’s 150 chances to figure it out, screw it up, laugh it out, cry it out, and try it out.

150 days. Let’s go.

Foreword

I think it’s important to start off from a place of honesty: I was terrified to publish this book. Almost every day that I wrote it, I battled self doubt, self-worth, and fear. The most prevalent questions on replay in my head at all hours of the day:

Who will read it?

Who do I think I am to write a book?

Is this information even new or important?

What will people think?

The answers turned out to be:

Who cares?

Someone who loves to write and help people.

We’ll find out.

I can’t care.

Growing up, my youngest brother Luke used to say I can’t care, pronounced very nasally and as one word. /kan·keer/

Besides it being adorable, I also find the phrase to be so poignant. Way too deep for a four-year-old, but I love that it implies a sense of action.

Instead of I don’t care, which suggests that we’re without empathy — it’s more about choosing not to care. Better yet, an outright refusal to care. I can’t care.

I can’t care what people think of me or it will rob me of myself and my purpose. I can’t care if this book sells two copies and both are bought by my dad. I can’t care because if I do — what’s left for me?

Also, if I don’t write a book, how will Kristen Wiig and Oprah ever find me and befriend me and call me up to talk about my ideas for radically changing the US educational system?

They won’t.

The answer is that it’s not about why I should write this book, it’s more about what if I don’t write this book? I will have failed myself, I will regret it, and I will always wonder what if? Also, I will be asking those around me to live without fear, but not holding myself to that same standard. That’s crap.

Young me cared way too much about conventional success, recognition, and image. Wiser me knows that the time and energy I spent worrying and comparing was a complete waste.

This new can’t care me is a fearless female author and I like doing life with her. I wish we’d met decades ago.

In the end, I’ve sat with my doubts and moved past them. It has been a daily struggle that will likely continue way past my publication date.

A whole new fear of have people accepted my work? will be my next chapter.

I picture myself reading bad Amazon reviews and cursing strangers: "This a-hole is criticizing my book, but can’t even spell their?!!" I’ll get real petty and hurt and then I’ll move through that rejection and fear too. I can’t care.

I’m telling you all this to say: I’m here with you. I’m not going to give you any go be the difference in the world or dance like nobody’s watching BS when I’m not willing to do the hard stuff myself.

So here we go, friends. A book on how to live your best college life while coexisting and moving through self-doubt. Practicing while preaching.

We can’t care.

About the Book

This next chapter in your life will fall somewhere between the panic of I have four years to figure out my entire future and the party-mode internal switch that flips when you hear the beat drop in your favorite song.

Quite the spread.

Lots of pressure is put on you in your early 20s as you step out on your own.

You’ll be trying to figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life, sculpting who you are and who you want to be, and navigating how to live on your own. Those are three pretty big asks of someone at any age.

This book is designed to unpack and demystify each of those three categories and is set up in those same sections:

Sculpting who you are and who you want to be:

Part 1 — On Building Yourself

Navigating how to live on your own and practical advice for classes, professors, books and more:

Part 2 — On Slaying Your College Days

Figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life:

Part 3 — On Building Your Career

This book is titled Have Fun, Be Safe, I Love You because after fun, safety, and love — the rest are just details.

All of the advice in this book is general. It does not take into account your story, your truth, or your history. It is meant to be a broad guide and a collection of advice from recent college graduates, anecdotes to make you laugh, and quotes to get you through. So, scribble in the margins, underline, doodle, send pics to your friend, and tear pages out.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to life. Take what you need and leave what you don’t.

ON BUILDING YOURSELF

One Black Cow

Upon her arrival at Texas Tech, my mom wanted to be a veterinarian. On day one, jacked up on that freshman energy, the incoming vet-hopefuls