No doubt you’ve been told that college will be the best years of your life – or the worst for some.

You are now entering the world of personal responsibility, coupled with a ginormous amount of autonomy with which you are the Proclaimed Lord and Savior of Planet You. Welcome to the first steps into adulthood. The decisions you make as an undergraduate are long-lasting, sometimes for better or worse. For some and hopefully most students, college is the place where students discover themselves – without adult supervision. Now that we understand each other, it’s no secret that students want to do all of the things that our parents told us not to do.

I can see it now: your hands on the edge of a keg and your legs in the air with the spigot in your mouth about to take your first keg stand, when, suddenly, you faintly remember something your parents warned you against. “”Don’t take candy from strangers?”” No, that wasn’t it. The beer is already gushing in your mouth when you remember. “”Now, offspring, I want you to stay away from beer and liquor.”” Oops, too late. Now you’re drunk and chasing pigeons around the Student Union.

Not only do students experiment with drinking, but they also want to have SEX! Yes, I said it. The naughty three-letter word that occupies our brains every five seconds. One can’t help but think about it. Wherever we look, everything seems sexualized. I personally blame the heat. The hotter it gets, the less people wear. The less people wear, the more excited we get – you know the rest.

Since we’re on the subject of sex, I am sure that we’ve all seen enough movies geared toward college and college-bound high school students (“”American Pie”” and the like) to get the gist that you want to get laid during some point in your undergraduate years. Sticky situation (in the figurative sense): is sex about quality or quantity? For those who feel the need to live life like a pirate hooker, then by all means, pillage and plunder. For others, that first time is going to be the most magical, romantic and earth-shattering experience EVER! Then there are those who just stumble into it.

I think it is a common stereotype that college students throw their virginity, common sense and caution to the proverbial wind. If you came from a high school where sex education was an abstinence-only parade and structured like animal husbandry, then I am probably sure that you were taught to believe that “”only heterosexual married couples have sex”” – while being held in captivity. The decision to have or not have sex is a personal matter, and is sometimes muddled by peer pressure and blurred by booze. May the record reflect, I didn’t “”lose”” my virginity like losing one’s keys; I offered it on a silver platter to someone that I trusted.

Sex does have consequences if taken for granted. Without proper protection, one enters the world of STDs and possibly having to tell your parents that you are with child – YIKES! I don’t know if it is the heat, hormones, general sexual deprivation, binge drinking or a combination of each that contributes to one’s decision-making abilities when initiating sex, but in any case, whether you chose to have or not have sex, try to make it healthy.

If we are going to talk about sex, then we may as well talk about credit card debt. Sometimes, people approach credit card purchases the same way they approach sex: cool and clear-headed or impatient and impulsive. Credit cards offer buying power that can become intoxicating. New cardholders can falsely believe that their new buying power can transform them into a glamorous sophisticate. To prove that wrong, I’ll recount my freshman year when I maxed out two credit cards within six months. What did I have to show for $3,000? Let’s see, I bought a pair of leather pants (don’t judge me), leather boots (Cole Haan) and some crazy pimp shirts. Needless to say, I looked more like a Power Ranger than a glamorous sophisticate.

As a second-generation college student, I should have known better considering that my parents were excellent teachers of frugality, but I wanted to impress my peers and enter into a class where I thought I belonged. All in all, I managed to pay off my balances and get my credit back in check. This is especially important when you graduate, as you might be in the market for a car or house thereafter, and good credit makes such tasks a whole lot easier.

Decisions, decisions, decisions. What I love about humans is that we are creatures of habit. Creating and maintaining healthy and protective habits early in your undergraduate career will make your sexual and financial lives much healthier and better later on. You don’t need “”sound”” advice from Tony Robbins to make reasonable decisions. Just ask yourself, WWJD (What Would Jeremiah Do)?

Jeremiah Simmons is a second-year graduate student in the College of Public Health. He can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona