DR. WALLACE: I'm a first-year college student, and I'm about 1,200 miles away from my hometown. I love this university and really am enjoying my college experience.

But beyond what has been a successful academic year for me so far, I feel frustrated that I'm not able to use my downtime and free time to the best effect. Since I'm in a new area, I don't know the towns, roads, attractions and so forth very well.

I often hear other students in class talking about great weekend trips they took to various lakes, other small towns they hung out in for a day, or even rock climbing or hiking expeditions into interesting canyons. I'd love to be able to do this, but I must admit that my "inner adventurer" has remained pretty much dormant, and not only since I've come to this new area; I was never the type to be heading out on adventure excursions.

I'm now old enough, mature enough and responsible enough to handle it, but I'm a bit hesitant because I don't know my way around this town very well and don't know how I would go about trying to head out on a few adventures of my own. — Want to Experience Adventure Day Trips, via email

WANT TO EXPERIENCE ADVENTURE DAY TRIPS: Instead of feeling that you have to invent the wheel for yourself in your new area, lean on those who attend your college that know the local area well. Yes, this means you may have to be bold, tell your classmates you overheard them talking and found it very interesting, and that you wanted to ask them a few questions.

Do your best to strike up a conversation in this regard, and if it goes well, ask them if they would be willing to invite you along with them one time so you could get the rhythm of what's available in your new area since you just moved to the community and are learning about it.

By asking to tag along, "just one time" indicates to others that you would view it as a privilege to go with them and an opportunity for you to learn. You don't need to say more than that, because if you and your potential new friends get along well, they may indeed invite you on further outings and excursions.

And even if their personality types don't mesh with yours, you'll have benefited from the opportunity to get out and about a bit, and you can bring that experience up in conversations with other friends and fellow students you come across in the future.

BACK-TO-BACK LETDOWNS HAVE ME QUESTIONING MYSELF

DR. WALLACE: I'm generally a very positive person, and I pretty much keep an even keel and a good attitude almost all the time as I go through my daily life. I'm known by friends and family to be friendly, reliable and a good conversationalist.

For the most part, I tend to gravitate toward other people who have attitudes similar to mine, and I generally get along with them really well. However, over the last three months I've had two unfortunate experiences in which two unique individuals who know me (and don't know each other) have truly let me down in very poor and frankly embarrassing ways. If just one of these two experiences would've happened, I probably would've dismissed it and simply moved on. However, when two similar experiences both cropped up so close together, it caused me to wonder if there's something I'm doing that may be at the root of why these experiences befell me.

How can I best figure this out? I really don't want to go back and talk to either of these individuals anymore at this point, so only the information I have now is all I'll be able to use when I try to think these situations through.

Why do you think someone like me would have back-to-back experiences like this, and do you think it's likely that something I'm doing cause this? — Back-to-Back Letdowns Shook Me, via mail

BACK-TO-BACK LETDOWNS SHOOK ME: I truly don't think it had anything to do with you personally. There's a wide variety of individuals with a kaleidoscope of different personalities in every community and state, and even the world, for that matter.

Having a couple of them let you down due to what you viewed as poor behavior is something they brought to the table, not you. My advice is to not give it another moment of thought in terms of wondering about yourself. If you must occasionally try to figure out what happened, view those past experiences through the looking glass of whether or not you can now see that they left any clues early on that would seem to indicate they were less than forthright, ethical or reasonable when you first met them.

Dr. Robert Wallace welcomes questions from readers. Although he is unable to reply to all of them individually, he will answer as many as possible in this column. Email him at rwallace@thegreatestgift.com. To find out more about Dr. Robert Wallace and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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