Column by Allison Borthwick, Opinion Editor
Have you ever thought about how weird college is?
I’m a very weird person, and even I’m aware of how weird everything about college is. And I don’t mean “weird” as in “lol sometimes I wear mismatched socks and don’t care how my hair looks because I’m QUIRKY.”
No – I’m not Zooey Deschanel weird. I’ve got the big eyes and poofy hair down, but I’m no national treasure. People aren’t waiting for the day Nick Miller and I get back together (I wish).
I’m the kind of weird that involves getting aggressively excited when ABC Family announces another showing of Wall-e immediately after watching the first showing. I slept with a stuffed penguin named Oliver for so long (ages 15 to 21) and loved him so fiercely that there’s now a gaping hole in him – he’s still my pride and joy (RIP lil homie). I still can’t figure out which character in Bob’s Burgers I relate to the most.
The list goes on.
But college has got to be the WEIRDEST part of my life right now.
We’re essentially in an alternate universe where the sole inhabitants are, for the most part, twenty-somethings trying to figure out if someone will notice if they wear what they wore yesterday again.
This is a hallowed place where we’re allowed to wear all elastic everything while simultaneously learning about how to run a business or how to shape the minds of our nation’s youth. If we want to take a nap in the middle of a public library, we absolutely will and with no regrets.
The future of tomorrow rests on how comfortable we are today – FACT.
We live in a world for a few short years where professors and students can be in the same pub on a Tuesday at 3 p.m. without it being awkward. We all know why we’re there – to shamelessly pretend Tuesday is Friday. No need to acknowledge it or squander glad tidings.
We can ship ourselves off to London or Spain for weeks or months at a time and not have to worry about saving up vacation days or whatever else real adults have to do in order to leave the county for an extended period of time.
Then one day we graduate.
We can no longer schedule out our weeks so our days start at 11:30 a.m., end at 2:20 p.m. and Fridays are free days.
We have to wear pants with zippers and buttons. We have to buy shirts. That should be the end of that sentence, but to clarify: we have to BUY shirts that weren’t launched at us by a T-shirt gun.
A horse isn’t going to run a lap every time we turn a project in at work on time. Likewise, we probably won’t be able to get away with not showing up to work or turning in something late because we’re down with a serious case of the bird (Grey Goose) flu (hangover).
We’re going to have to start paying for food with something that doesn’t have our faces and residential college crest on it. We’re not going to have a resident food truck that tweets at us like our significant other would.
So I suggest we enjoy college while we can.
We’re not going to be in this weird alternate universe for long.