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It’s that time of year again.

It’s the end of August, and for some of us, that means the end of somehow legal unpaid summer internships, trips to Europe (Which I don’t understand how any of you paid for with your unpaid internship labor) and crying in the shower so your parents don’t ask you what’s wrong. It also means coming back and meeting a whole new barrage of faces in classes. Always remember, it’s never too late to make new friends! Just probably not with these people.

The “Word of The Day” Guy
Vocabulary is key to making a good first impression. Personally, I think knowing big words is pretty cool. However, everyone knows one person who just takes it too far. That’s right, I’m talking about the guy with a word-of-the-day calendar that he used every day over the summer, and you better believe you’re gonna hear some multi-syllable words during ice breakers. Leave it to him to say that his summer was “unreservedly phenomenal.”

The Traveler
If there’s one way to make me jealous, it’s telling me you traveled over the summer. Oh, you went to Europe? Get out of my face. The worst part about people that went abroad isn’t the fact that they went abroad, it’s that they won’t let you forget it. I know that the dining hall pizza isn’t as good as the from-scratch, brick-oven pizza you had in Rome. But I don’t need to be reminded of it every time we go into Ernie Davis. Not to mention the conversations had with this person. Pretty much every sentence they say starts with “Well, when I was abroad…”/ “When I was studying in _____…”/ “You know what that reminds me of? That time in ______! You should’ve been there!” No, I shouldn’t have. I have no money. The frequency in which they bring up their travels makes me question whether they think I have short term memory loss.

The Anna Wintour Wannabe
As you can see, I am not a fancy person. I don’t have fancy things, like a “BMW,” or a “horse barn,” or “a functional toilet.” For the first day of classes, I’m planning on wearing a Target tank top and a pair of shorts I bought in eighth grade with my mom’s money. I guess that’s why I don’t understand people who really dress up for the class. It’s first-level calculus, why are you dressed like Zendaya at the Met Gala? I hardly think a one-hour lecture requires a Gucci backpack, three hundred dollar pleated pants and seven-inch heels. Steve Madden isn’t teaching the class.

These are only a few of the many kinds of people you will encounter on the first day of classes. A few more examples include (but are not limited to): The Whitman student who had their “million dollar idea” over the summer, some guy who transferred into VPA Film and is now wearing a Pulp Fiction shirt every other day, and of course, and the one girl writing a humor column while obviously not paying attention in her required mathematics class.

Published on August 27, 2023 at 9:44 pm

Contact Sarah: sswells@syr.edu