1. The Sophomore Who Now Knows Everything
A mere fourteen months ago, this human had all but memorized his Class of 2016 Facebook page. Dude was all up in that “Anyone into yoga?” thread.
But now, after going to great lengths to ensure that nobody ever knows he could rattle off the hometowns and interesting facts of classmates he hasn’t so much said three words to, he’s taken his obsessive institutional knowledge to new heights.
Be it retweeting the school’s parody twitter account, making condescending comments about clueless freshman (“15 freshies sitting at the table next to me, nervous and concerned about pre-reg…too cute”), or being too cool for the underage bar, this man is simultaneously the worst and the best. Just wait until he’s a senior.
2. The “Checked Out” Upperclassmen
Having been put through the unforgiving meat processor that is orientation leader induced collegiate superzeal, this person exists primarily to make fun of the Sophomore just described.
With the University experience heavily exacerbated by a recent breakup, this person spends as little time interacting with the campus community as possible. College now consists of five close friends, and trying to convince those friends to go to the hunting lodge an hour north. This person has never gone hunting, but it seems like a cool thing to do, and nobody at hunting lodges have their fucking faces painted for a useless tennis match.
3. The Person Whose Summer Experience Was So Incredible, They Are Incapable of Talking About it without Stammering and Involuntarily Drooling
Admittedly, this person is at #peakawful during early spring semester, having just returned from the life changing experience of collecting rare pebbles in Peru. But just like a shitty diner on the Lower East Side, the slower times can offer some of the more memorable characters.
4. Sam & Patrick
I didn’t go into my employment at BroBible thinking I’d be dropping Perks of a Being a Wallflower references in feature articles, but the thing about life is that the more you exist, the harder it is to give a shit. This is a universal truth.
I’d actually highly suggest Perks of Being a Wallflower, because its a nice change of pace from the tater tot-eating, feces snapchat-sending, Wiz Khalifa-blasting universe we’ve all slowly settled into. Not that any of that is bad (it’s really quite excellent if you think about what people were doing 100 years prior to this very article), it’s just that Perks of Being a Wallflower makes you realize there’s other things to consider about life, if only for a few hours. Kind of like drinking milk at dinner. On occasion, incredibly refreshing. Plus, it’ll give you a go-to thing to say when talking to literary people, and they’ll raise their eyebrows in surprise because as someone who wears sweatpants and backwards hats in public, society has decided that you are too dumb to have read anything. Which is of course the truth, so you might just want to watch the movie instead. Emma Watson plays a girl that would probably be a nightmare to date.
Anyway, Sam and Patrick are seniors who befriend a freshman because why the fuck not. In reality Sam and Patrick don’t actually exist, but they do during the first three weeks of school, when everyone’s irrationally nice to the freshman out of some sort of self-imposed desire to make it seem like the school is actually cool and worth going to. Then three weeks passes by, holy shit a few of these girls aren’t even 18. Whoops.*
*This whoops is very much a bluff whoops. Bluff whoops' are very hot right now – they let you admit to mistakes you've never actually made.
5. The Newfound Scholar
My second cousin (we will call him L-dawg) is the type of guy who I wish I'd hang out with more. But it's one of those things that never get going, and the next time we do hang out it'll probably be incredibly underwhelming due to the hype I've just given the whole operation. That said, like a junior who has recently changed majors, I think he enjoys somewhat mocking those who attempt to prove their self-worth by saying “Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealth.”
6. Overnight Transformation/The Miley Cyrus Short Hair
This specimen was the most common between 7th and 8th grade, the summer that the punk kids smoked 2-3 cigarettes outside the mall, coughed for 4 days straight, and found it necessary to trade in their Nike athletic shorts for a Sex Pistols t-shirt and a bunch of weird chains to complement that strange Hot Topic version of cargo shorts. But with so much #personalgrowth going on in college, you do see these sorts of conversions.
Note that this trend reached a pretty high peak in 2011, when fools all across campus started buying thick-rimmed glasses to indicate that they were onboard with nouveau-Bohemia.
7. Hunting Season
I don’t do stats (how cool am I?), but I’d imagine that majority of hookups – aside from the work done by a recently uncaged frat dude during senior week – occur during the first half of fall semester. Hunters, both male and female, can generally be broken down into two types:
A. Numbers Game: With a Billy Beane-like approach to college hookups, this person will treat human intimacy as strictly a numbers game. This is due to things like “their number,” and actually believing their best friend from home when he talks about how many girls he’s hooked up with. Given the freshness of a new year and semester – and the peer pressure that goes along with newfound expectations – these fools are at an all time high.
B. Steaming Mess: Coming off a recent break-up, this is the Jason Segel post-getting dumped by Sarah Marshall experience. Blind, wandering, thinking “sucking rando face” will solve all the emotional baggage and scorn. Sometimes necessary, other times heartbreaking.
8. “I’m Getting Serious This Semester”
Be it getting swoll or getting that prestigious, death-inducing internship, this is the semester where your once-fun buddy puts his Jewish nose to the #grind-stone. Success and results and using hashtags unironically will get annoying rather quickly.
He’ll eventually revert back to his trusty, ideal Comedy Central viewer ways, but this is a phase we all must endure. Best of luck, friend.
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