As you embark on the sh*tshow adventure that is college, you have the ability to be whoever you want. Whether you join the yoga club and turn into a Birkenstock-wearing queen or get tapped into a secret society and fall off the face of the earth, there’s no wrong identity, and college is the perfect time to experiment. However, while you’re going through your waves of being a hipster stoner to a frat bro enthusiast, try your best to avoid falling into the following stereotypes, otherwise your academic and social status will suffer.
The One Who Never Goes To Class
Congratulations on getting into college, you deserve a break! Too bad that break was summer and college is NOT the time to sleep through the day. Trying to pass off “staying in bed all day” as a personality trait is such a cop-out because it’s actually just you being f*cking lazy. Don’t waste the literal tens of thousands of dollars you or your parents are dropping on tuition, because there are some people who would risk going to jail (#fighton) to be sitting where you should be—in class!! Go learn something, we love a smart betch.
The One Who’s Stuck In High School
This person spends all their free time FaceTiming their high school boyfriend and searching for a new “cliquey” girl squad to replace the one they left behind. You swear you were super popular back home, but sadly no one gives a f*ck about who you were in high school. College is time for a fresh start, so ditch your home life dependence and join us adults in the present.
Sad how some adults are still stuck in the bitchy high school phase, grow up bbs xo
— M A D Z ? (@madison_16xox) September 6, 2019
The One Who Lives For Her Srat
Joining a sorority is great—fabulous, actually—but if the second you get a bid you can’t be caught dead not wearing your letters, we have a problem. Your identity and self-worth should not be defined by a four-year hierarchical social construct, and quite frankly, it’s pretty embarrassing if it is. Explore your university, talk to some non-Greek people, and stop spending time researching every item you can possibly print your letters on!
The One Who’s “One Of The Bros”
You like to chill at home and watch TV, you shotgun beer, and you “haaaate drama” (aka you’re a fraternity groupie). I don’t care how much time you spend sitting around the bong coffee table littered with empty bottles and unidentifiable substances, at the end of the day you don’t have a d*ck and you’re not part of the “brotherhood.” Swooning over the boys by picking up their Chipotle and watching them play Fortnite is not a basis for lifelong friendship. Ultimately, all your efforts going toward the boys means you’ll probably miss out on the impressive solitude of female friends. Sad.
the girls who say “they hate drama” are usually the ones starting it all?
— bean ?? (@analyssemayraa) November 10, 2016
The One Who Already Added You On LinkedIn
All of your special skills on LinkedIn have been exclusively endorsed by your best friend and your mom, and you posted allllll about your “life-changing” summer internship on every social media platform (so glad your parents found time to make that phone call for you, sweetie). You joined seven clubs your first weekend on campus, and followed half the freshman class on Instagram before classes even started. While there’s nothing wrong with striving for excellence, no one likes a show-off. Let’s cool it on the public persona and desperation to “connect.” Put the f*cking phone down and try making real friends offline.
Everyone says college is the best four years of your life, and they’re not wrong. However, in the midst of going to darties, making bad decisions about texting the guy who ghosted you last week, and shoveling pizza into your mouth at 1am, you need to make a conscious effort to keep your priorities (which should be academics) in check and stay true to yourself.
Speaking from experience, you’ll definitely become your truest self in college, so don’t waste your time and efforts being an obnoxious fake bitch because spoiler alert: NO ONE likes that behavior in college and they’ll hate it even more in the real world.
Images: Tim Gouw/Unsplash; Betches/Instagram; madison_16xox/Twitter; Lien Caputo/GIPHY; TeamCoco/GIPHY; Analyssemayraa/Twitter
The time has come. You bid all your friends a tearful goodbye because you cannot imagine being without them for seven hours, let alone seven days. You take a crappy flight/train/car ride back home, glaring at any strangers who attempt to make conversation. Look, random 30-year-old dude, it’s great that you love Stanford, but I really just want to sleep. I’m not in the mood to talk to you about how your start-up just received angel investors and is going to revolutionize the cryptocurrency industry or whatever. Stop hitting on me or networking with me or whatever the f*ck you’re trying to do.
If you live in a dorm, arriving home means you get to enjoy your first home-cooked meal in weeks. If you live in an apartment, probably the same because of ~Postmates~. Your mom is probably already yelling at you for not helping out with the dishes (like why do I have chores again?). That’s when your high school group chat starts blowing up with “Oh my god we haven’t seen each other in forever” texts.
All you want to do is watch Netflix and sleep until Thanksgiving comes. However. There’s a plot twist. Somehow, you’ve been coerced into going out. It’s the night before Thanksgiving, the most popular time to see everyone from high school that you were hoping to never see again. (Unless you’re one of those people that goes to college with half of your high school and never makes any new friends, *cough cough* half of my high school.)
You tell your parents you’re going out, and they:
a) Get annoyed because you’re missing out on family time. How could you not want to listen to your dad and grandfather argue about politics? What about a nice game of family Monopoly? Listen, mom, it’s not my fault my friends are forcing me to go out. TBH I would much rather be taking a bath right now and watching Friends for the 400th time, but you can’t have it all
b) Try to institute a curfew, which is weird because you’re used to staying up until 7am without anyone caring. Who the hell is home by midnight anymore? Parties don’t even get fun until 11:30. Time to remind your parents that you’re a legal adult and therefore don’t have to listen to anything they tell you. You then get a whole speech about how they still pay for everything. Therefore you def do have some obligation to listen to them.
c) Remind you to stay safe. Yes, mom, haven’t done this a hundred billion times by now.
After sifting through all your clothes (because you left everything cute at school), you find a decent crop top and your biggest jacket because HOLY SH*T it is freezing outside. You go and meet up at your one friend’s house that is not currently flooded with their entire extended family.
You see all your old friends from high school, which involves lots of hugging and screaming and rapid stories about a bunch of people you don’t know so that you, and everyone else, is clear that their life is amazing. Cue pretending to care about knowing the social hierarchy of all the sororities at your school. Totally not checking Instagram and ignoring you right now.
Now the vodka is starting to hit. This is gonna be a weird f*cking night. You and your friends take a billion photos, which you post to your story mostly because you want people back at college to think you’re actually having fun over the holidays. High school 5ever!
Depending on if you live in a boring town that literally doesn’t have any bars for people under 40 or in an actually exciting city, you head to a house party or a club and prepare yourself to see everyone.
If your high school was anything like mine, all the girls were absurdly tanned, aggressively highlighted, and a ripe five pounds. The boys will inevitably be dressed in high school apparel because you should rep high school forever, obviously. Best time of your life? Right?
Suddenly, EVERYONE is there. Like, why did Alice go that blond, it looks so fake? And Jesus, Nick already has a beer gut…so much for being the star athlete in high school. Every other conversation is “Omigod so good to see you we should get lunch sometime!” Haha, bitch never talking to you again. Time for more photos!
A decent song comes on and you all start dancing. You see a guy from your high school you once were, like, in love with. Then you wonder why because you’d legit never go for him now. Ew, did you even have standards when you were 16? Seriously, who the f*ck were you?
It’s 12am and you find yourself remembering that curfew your mom gave you. You hate following rules, but honestly, everyone is so lame anyway. You accomplished your goal of seeing the two people you still care about from high school.
You hug and lie to everyone that you’ll make plans and hang out soon. Then, you hop in your Uber back home to dream about Thanksgiving. Soon, you will be eating five flavors of pie, sweet potato casserole, and stuffing. You’ll be very happy you’re not wearing a crop top too. By the time you get bored of eating Thanksgiving leftovers (is that even possible though?) you’ll be heading back to your normal life. This weird trip down memory lane will have just been a dream… until winter break when you come home and do it all again.
Images: Giphy (3); Matan Segev/Pexels
