After a three-month hiatus, it’s finally time to get back to school. Contrary to most parents’ beliefs, returning to campus does not just mean returning to the books. There is so much learning going on outside the classroom.

Students are exposed to different styles, different music, different fashion, and it is easy to get swept up in what everyone thinks is cool. While everyone is dressed in their new clothes, with their new laptop, texting on their new phone, they seem to have forgotten how they got where they were.

And let me tell you, Grand Valley State University didn’t take you because you’re “cool.” GVSU took you because you were yourself, different from the last student they selected.

Let me break you the bad news, I really believe there are only a handful of truly “cool” people in the world. For example, Andre 3000. Not only was three stacks selected to play one of the coolest people to ever live, Jimi Hendrix, in his biopic, he was also selected to play one of the coolest fictional characters to ever dribble a basketball, Coffee Black, because he, himself, is cool.

When I look at Andre 3000, I see a gentleman in the purest sense, and there is nothing more appropriate than being a gentleman. Ice Cube is cool. Ice Cube can illicit so many emotions purely based on his facial expressions. Not only has Cube mastered the mic and the camera, he probably also has the coolest name. Come on, ‘Ice Cube’. Jack White. First off, Jack White is planning on playing a record in space. I don’t even have a record player, nor a record to play within this atmosphere.

Did you know that Jack White once threw a divorce party with his soon-to-be ex-wife? Did you know that Jack White took the last name of his first wife? Did you know the White Stripes were founded on Bastille Day? Did you know I’m obsessed with Jack White? Why are these things so cool? I don’t know, but I would love to do anything of significance on Bastille Day.

That’s why I don’t even try to compete with these people, because they are fundamentally cooler than me in every aspect. Yet what they all have in common is that they don’t try to be someone or something they’re not. They are only being themselves, completely different from the next, but equally as cool. That’s why the older I get, the less I seem to care about acting the part for school. I’m too cool for being “too cool for school.” It doesn’t matter how you dress, or how you talk, just as a broken record player, what really sets you apart is being yourself, only then will you be recognized as cool.

By choosing to be myself I’m at the top of the second tier of cool people on earth, also rounding out the first tier includes Pharrell, Ellen DeGeneres, Lenny Kravitz, Bill Murray, Tom Hanks and Elton John. Posthumous nominations go out to Hendrix, the guy who invented LEGOs, Frank Sinatra, Prince, Michael Jackson and John Wayne.

But remember, unfortunately you can’t be these people. LEGOs have already been invented, Prince already sang ‘Purple Rain’, and MJ already moonwalked. What you can do though, is be yourself, and who knows, maybe one day someone will be writing about you in the same sentence as Sinatra.