As I was sipping Swiss Miss Marshmallow Lovers from my favorite fish mug with the tail for the handle and recalling a recent phone conversation with a best friend, I began thinking about advice. It's uncanny how best friends are the most astute givers of advice.
Having recently met with my advisor to plan my last semester as an undergrad, I started thinking about how we're all each others' advisors. I mean, we live such crazy lives, we need other people to affirm what's actually going on in order to function day to day. Whether you live in Clemons or the Corner bars, it's hard to take a step back and evaluate. That's why friends, family, your horoscope, Magic 8-Balls or fortune cookies are so handy. Just kidding about the last three. Although fortune cookies make a lot more sense when you tack on "in bed" to the end of the fortune.
But when you think about it, good advice and bad advice are relative. How do we know whether to take it or leave it?
There's excellent advice never heeded such as "Don't put off writing a paper until the night before it's due." That's the best advice I've ever heard; it's brilliant in theory. It allows for no stress, you have time to edit completely, and you won't do that thing where you're writing at 3 a.m. and what's actually horribly convoluted writing sounds genius and compelling in your sleep-deprived mind. But in my more than three years cranking out papers as an English major I don't think I've ever followed this piece of advice. No big deal, though, because I've always written and continue to write thought-provoking essays -- you can ask my professors and TAs. Actually, don't. We wouldn't want to bother them with trivial questions like that.
Sometimes the line between good and bad advice is blurry. There's good/bad advice such as encouraging a friend to go out on an early weekday night because unbeatable drink specials trump studying for an upcoming midterm. A no-brainer, right? But it depends who's asking: Your parents might say that's a horrible idea. To which you'd obviously reply: College, no parents. Sorry, but that never gets old.
Except perhaps I spoke too soon, because in the case of parental advice we are all well-versed in getting tips from the wizened and elderly. Just kidding, Mom and Dad. But maybe older people give better advice. They've seen a thing or two in their day, and they used to walk five miles in the snow to get to a one-room schoolhouse with no heater. Is more life experience a prerequisite for giving valuable advice? Or are the old folks out of their league when faced with our new-fangled, often salacious drama?
There's bad/good advice to give, like when your friend is hooking up with a huge creeper and she thinks she's in love with his creeptastic self. You can't just yell: "Are you freaking blind?" Even if he looks like a beaver on steroids and seems to have shady intentions, you can't tell her he looks like a beaver on steroids. But the alternative, slightly kinder "you could do better" is a double-edged sword. Even if it's true, no one wants to hear it. If you know a friend is acting irrationally you can't just tell her she's crazy, even if you really, really want to.
And what about conflicting advice. If one of your friends likes another close friend of yours who isn't interested, how do you proceed? I have hot friends, so this happens a lot and it's quite vexing. You don't want to lead anyone on, but you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Should you lie?
There's nothing better than giving advice that works out for the advisee. Everyone's happy, and you look really smart and are automatically a valuable friend.
And then there's the advice no one wants to hear such as "You should probably save that extra cash for utilities or gas money, and not cute-and-totally-worth-it designer jeans." Or "Maybe you should stop watching 'I Love New York 2' reruns and unload the dishwasher."
So faced with all these different kinds of advice I'm wondering if there's ever the right kind. Is it possible to give objective guidance if every situation can be viewed as a matter of opinion? And where is the advice boundary in correlation to how close you are to the advisee? Are people who've known you for years more qualified? No one wants to be the creepy, tattered stranger who yells mean advice to passersby. And maybe that's an extreme example. But should you only give advice when expressly asked for it? It seems to me if you really care about the person, no matter if you give good or bad advice, the fact that you care matters. Or else I may have to agree with the 8-Ball and say: "Reply hazy. Try again later."
Mary's column runs biweekly Fridays. She can be reached at mbaroch@cavalierdaily.com.
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