College is all about taking leaps.

Some leaps are metaphorical, some are physical, but all can land you in some tight spaces.

For instance, there’s Grant Birdsong, a 22-year-old Pitt student who on Aug. 23 tried to jump from the roof of a Bruegger’s Bagels to the roof of a Qdoba to impress a woman he’d met at a bar. He ended up wedged between the buildings, and it took emergency crews around four hours to destroy the Qdoba wall enough to free him.

There are a lot of lessons college students, especially new ones, can take from his story. Perhaps the most obvious: Do not try to leap from a Bruegger’s to a Qdoba to impress a woman you met at a bar.

But college is all about digging deeper, finding truths less obvious than “oh goodness you really should not jump off buildings, even if you’re only trying to get to another building.”

An example: You might, over the course of your college career, find yourself between the Bruegger’s of your inability to grasp the material in a course on your own and the Qdoba of your need to feel independent, fully unable to move.

You will never escape from that space on your own; you need the emergency crews of professors, counselors and other university resources to help free you from that crevice. They will use the jackhammers of tutoring, one-on-one time and understanding to help you. But they will never arrive if you don’t call 9-1-1.

If you don’t call 9-1-1 and admit you need help, you will rot between the restaurants, starving even as the mingled smells of Mexican food and bagels torment you.

Call 9-1-1. It might be a little embarrassing, but it would be far more embarrassing to die of starvation between a Qdoba and a Bruegger’s.

If you’re a freshman in particular, you might also wind up stuck between the Bruegger’s of loneliness and the Qdoba of being too anxious to talk to strangers.

Calling 9-1-1 in this case involves finding a club you’re interested in joining, and the emergency crews will be the already-established members of those clubs.

The Globe, for instance, is an excellent emergency worker whose jackhammers of inside jokes and near-constant absurdity can create a bond powerful enough to free you from that dark place.

But it’s possible the Globe isn’t the right emergency worker for you. Flitting between emergency workers until you find the one strong and dedicated enough to free you from those restaurant walls is normal and healthy and part of the college experience.

On the off chance you end up substance-abused between a literal bagel place and a literal Mexican restaurant, call 9-1-1 and take solace in the knowledge that someone has already made this mistake and survived with nothing but a broken ankle and (presumably) wounded pride.

Someone has probably made every seemingly-catastrophic mistake you will make and survived. College is a time for growth, and growth can be painful, especially when that growth involves being extracted from the wall of a Qdoba by emergency crews.

Welcome to Point Park. You’ll do great things here. May most of your leaps and all of your falls be metaphorical.