If you have been watching the CW’s “Gossip Girl” or any other joke of a television program in recent weeks, you have probably seen a commercial for Saturn (GM’s peasant label) featuring the brand’s tagline of “Spending money like it’s out of style is out of style.” While many UConn dropouts and graduates alike line up to buy these cars, I believe that some Wesleyan students are subscribing to a philosophy of their own: that graduating in four years is like leaving a party at 10:30 p.m. (in a Saturn).
Walking to and from class, TA sessions, and make-out sessions, I have seen some familiar faces from years past—people whose sentences in Middletown are up, but who continue to hang around anyway. While some are here for grad school or can’t let go of their significant others, most were not motivated by the prospect of leaving Wesleyan to live life in the real world of dollars and cents (instead of points and fractions of), and were unable to complete the basic requirements and/or graduate with a GPA above 2.5. I liken those on the five-year plan to black men in South Africa demanding the reinstitution of apartheid: not only does it not make any sense, it’s painful.
Why force yourself to return to Wesleyan when you could be living in a dingy but hip apartment in Brooklyn? Why subject yourself to one more year after an already uneventful four? Because you can! Beneath those hemp bracelets, dreadlocks, tight jeans, and any other quality included in the poor-starving-artist archetype lies a piece of paper with a lot of zeroes. No, it’s not the number of times you’ve listened to “Stop Making Sense” in its entirety. I’m pointing my finger and calling some of you trustafarians (defined by UrbanDictionary.com as “priviliged white kids who subscribe to the hippie lifestyle (because they can) since they have no worries about money, a job, etc.; they devote their lives to eating organic, following Phish, and wearing dreadlocks (no need for job interviews”).
As you wait on line at Usdan for tempeh, black beans, and chopped pubes on a whole wheat wrap, you try to conceal that the cost of your bar/bat mitzvah rivals the annual income of most Canadians. But if you’re still around and not even Jewish, I bet you very well may convert if it’ll piss off your parents.
After last weekend in New York, I wonder why Wesleyan students don’t venture away from the headquarters of culture and excitement that is commonly referred to as Central Connecticut. But, as our pockets aren’t deeper than “Garden State” and we have assignments to complete, most stick around campus and find a way to get their kicks. However, knowing that the real, outside world exists and is reachable, why keep yourself at Wesleyan for another nine months? Is it because Saturday nights are as fun as taking pregnancy tests? Or do you agree with me in thinking that they’re just covered in piss/pissy?
Maybe you’re sticking around “Liddletown” for the education that will surely pay off. Traffic and Transit are on the 1’s, but first, the news: We don’t go to an Ivy League or career-oriented university where employers are familiar with a pedigree. We go to Wesleyan, a university whose tradition and reputation I enjoy lampooning; an academic institution which many mistake for Wellesley College, where I (if enrolled) would be the only student identifying as a male to actually have a penis; a bastion of intellectualism which most WASPy investment bankers confuse for Ohio Wesleyan; a country-club of a college which makes Middletown look like a Hoovertown.
However, thanks to Gawker.com and the social pariahs who help to make the fake news, Wesleyan gained considerable recognition over the summer as it was crowned the Most Annoying Liberal Arts College in the U.S. of A. So give that friend of yours a handshake the next time you see him/her/ze demanding three types of mushrooms at Usdan or a pat on the back in your neighborhood transgendered bathroom.
Also making for some collegiate conversation around the office water cooler was another Gawker feature mentioning a current Wesleyan student who received a grant [money] to be homeless [no money] in New York for two weeks and consequently become a temporary member of the “Bad Luck Club.” As I fielded questions from coworkers, sex-workers, logicians, and mathemagicians alike, I too was left asking myself, “So where is the grant money necessary or involved in this ‘academic’ endeavor?”
Graduating from what jock fundamentalists refer to as “The Tech” is often similar to an acclaimed chef going on to operate a snack bar. I have seen Wesleyan psychology majors working as dog walkers, executing a Pavlovian response as they bend over to collect fresh feces; economics majors working retail; CSS majors handing out flyers on the street; women’s studies majors waiting tables; astronomy majors working as astrologists; and queer studies majors selling Skittles and all other flavors of the rainbow late at night in subway stations.
After my attempting to rip Wesleyan a new CFAsshole, you might defend it by arguing that Wesleyan is a sort of microcosm—an adequate and accurate representation of the real world. As long as you don’t live in Greenwich, Conn. or call Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch “home,” your permanent place of residence is more “real world” than Wesleyan. Not the “Real World” where seven strangers live in a house where people stop being polite and start getting real, but the “real world” where writing on the sidewalk is a punishable offense, and where stuffing your chubby cheeks with sweet potato fries and boogers is considered immature (and a poor diet).
But while the silver spoon of the trustafarian feeds and supports a curious lifestyle, many current seniors don’t plan on sticking around Wesleyan for an additional two years in an attempt to earn a black belt in Javanese gamelan. So if you plan on sticking to the four-year plan set by Wesleyan, your parents, and their accountant, I suggest that you liken yourself to a fetus as, at the end of the nine-month academic year, you will be released into the real world. There will be warm, welcoming hands for only a select few of our classmates at the end of the birth canal that is CT-66. Many will be like orphans in regions that celebrity couples have yet to discover—collectively alone in a place where you’re not wanted: experiencing feelings similar to what anyone with two eyes, ten fingers, and a general conception of reality might experience when entering a party in the dungeon of Alpha Delt.
So, seniors (on the four year plan) and all those who will have to face reality at some point in the near future, I urge you to get off of Facebook and get them mind grapes a-growin’.
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