Social

How To Win At Facebook In College

This College Life Staff

Facebook. The all-powerful demigod of social media in 2016, and probably in 2017 too. It can be used for good, and it can be used for evil. In between it all, there are the neutral parties that just wanna like and share pictures of animals. In order to shed some extra light on just how powerful the book of all faces can be for someone in college, I would like to share a few brief stories with you.

  • Giveaways and Free Food
    • The amount of times that there have been absurd amounts of food and shirts given away on campus is ridiculous, and at our school there was a Facebook page that’s sole purpose was to tell people when and where. My entire wardrobe is pretty much our school color at this point, whether it is sweatshirts, t-shirts, long-sleeves, hats or even sweatbands. Seriously, go to FB’s search bar right now and punch in “*Your school name* free stuff locator”. Hopefully you won’t be disappointed, because if your school has those they make a night and day difference in spending money on weekends. Pizza, chicken wings/strips, quesadillas hell even salads were just some of the usual items I have snagged from the campus restaurant that puts on these giveaways. Don’t even get me started on the cultural events, where they actually bring in food that’s expensive from fancy ace restaurants.
  • Campus events
    • Sure, they probably make a posting of all campus events on the school’s official website. But who the hell reads the website? It’s for prospective students and pissed off neighbors who live near dorms trying to figure out how they can complain that there’s a passed out kid in their front yard. My bet is that there is a pretty detailed page on FB for your schools events too. In the last few years, my university saw live performances, obviously a lot of sports games, job fairs, club fairs, and a number of other things that you didn’t wanna miss.
  • Remembering Names
    • Think about the number of times you have run across a person who is awesome, have a great conversation, then next thing you know, BOOM YOU CAN’T REMEMBER THEIR NAME! Enter friend requesting them on Facebook. Unless they don’t accept, and then you’ll REALLY remember their name since they’re the person who blew ya off. Kind of a glass half full outlook on it. Anyhow, there are a lot of people around in college, so this is actually really useful. Probably better than keeping a list in your phone with general descriptions, I can already see that blowing up if someone finds it and thinks you’re preparing to be the next Ed Gein.
  • Floor Specific Events
    • The school I go to has a parents Facebook page so the helicopters can discuss their kids every second of every day, and I was able to infiltrate it. Lo and behold, there was a post by a parent that their son was “left in his room alone while his floor went to dinner” and was “fighting back tears”. I guess the first important thing here is to recognize that this is an 18-19 year old male almost crying because they missed an invite. Are you kidding me? THEY WANT TO INCLUDE HIM, LET THEM! It’s the resident adviser’s job to pull as many people into those types of things as possible, and having a floor-specific Facebook page is the second best way to do it. Obviously, the old fashioned go around and knock on doors is the best, but when it’s locked and his noise cancelling headphones are on while he faps, he won’t hear. That or the door won’t be locked and it gets real awkward real fast.

There are many other smaller and maybe not as useful things to use the book for in college, like creeping on everyone that’s gonna be in your class the following semester when the roster’s released. But those are our top four best things to make the most of FB, so deal with it.

-Jim