Anatomy of a first year student
An informal treatise of the first year
BEN POGGEMILLER, VOLUNTEER STAFF
Everyone hates first-year students. I’m not trying to be inflammatory but it’s a fact of life. First you learn about the birds and the bees and then you learn about how for eight months of your life everyone will hate you.
It’s not because you don’t know your way around. When I first started at the U of M, I didn’t know University Centre from Hitler’s last Führerbunker. It took me months to realize that there actually is no difference. See how dumb I was?
There are several ways in which we grizzled veterans of university life can pick you out:
Slow walking
Since you don’t know where you’re going, you tend to walk slowly in front of us. We are right there behind you while you drag your feet and saunter around. We are in a terrible rush since:
a) We know where we are going.
b) We are late. Everybody knows that you’re not supposed to show up for school on time.
Large groups
Ellis Island may accept your huddled masses but we do not. Since you don’t know where you’re going, you barely know where you are and you don’t know where you’ve been, a familiar face is ultimately helpful to you. Everyone that you knew from high school is immediately your best friend and eventually your entire graduating class is huddled together inside University Centre. You are all facing inward and do not see us trying to get around, through or even over you.
Appearance
Girls, your outfits are crisp and clean, your hair is crimped, coiffed or straightened and your makeup is far too immaculate. Guys, you’re too well shaven and your shirts are not wrinkled enough. A “real” university student is walking at warp speed in sweats, unshaven and with their hair in exquisite disarray. Their coffee mug is firmly secured in an iron grip. The especially self-conscious veteran students cover their bird’s nest of a hair-do with a hat.
Classroom etiquette
On the first day of class, half of you are always sitting there with your brand new, bought-at-the-BookStore, sometimes-still-shrink-wrapped textbook on your “desk,” which is specifically designed to be smaller than an actual piece of paper. Your notebook is open and the first page is immaculately labeled and dated. You take notes on absolutely everything the professor says, including his irrelevant, offhand remarks about why British people travel to the Greek island of Zakynthos. The other half of first-year students are the ones that are most hated, though. You’re the ones who come completely unprepared, unmotivated and unable to be a functional part of society. You rudely talk with your friends during class and you take almost no notes. You make all the veteran students stroke their hunting knives with malicious intent. We all have sharp hunting knives, by the way, so you had better watch yourself.
Last and least, since most people have stopped reading by now, is your tremendous political conviction. In discussions you rabidly siege other ideologies and defend your own with medieval zest. You are entrenched in idealism and have little to hear from other camps in spite of not knowing what the hell you’re talking about. It’s not that I disagree with you, though I usually do. It’s about arrogance, being naive and not having the necessary cynicism to survive university. That’s something we’re willing to dull our knives over.
