November 2013 – Wampoholic

To cleanse the palate, here’s a comedic essay I wrote four years ago and just now very quickly punched up. It’s actually still kinda funny and somewhat prescient, and I wanted to remind people here that I’m not all miserable highlights of my Facebook loneliness.

Another year, another bunch of people stressing and tearing their hair out and taking ludicrous amounts of stimulants over college admission drama. Allow me to give these students some sage advice from a man who was once in your quivering, piss-soaked shoes: shut up and just go to NYU.

By the time I left home for college, I knew exactly what I wanted. I came from a school where one of the main tenets was diversity- and I was sick of that bullshit. How lucky was I to find a school with a homogeneous student body of Asians. It’s kinda cool to be in the minority though, I never knew there were all sorts of neat-o stereotypes about white people too!

I was also well aware of the sort of education I would get in New York City. When you decide to go to school in the cosmopolitan capital of the world, your professors are “the streets of the city.” Unfortunately, they don’t offer a degree in traffic engineering or drug deals so the streets act as a poor classroom.

But I digress: while I have learned tons from my hard time in the ghetto of Union Square, the professors at NYU are pretty devoted when it comes to teaching and academia. When I have needed help and approached a professor, I’ve only been told a few times to “return during office hours.” Thankfully, they’ll often open our conversation with a brisk “fuck you,” so they don’t waste any of my time.

One thing I didn’t expect to learn about at NYU was crime. At my high school, you could leave your possessions lying around all over the quad and nobody would steal them. This all changes at NYU, where the only thing you see abandoned around campus are the transients and the shattered dreams of film students. Besides, in New York City you don’t need to leave things lying around to get them stolen; people will break into your locked apartment to steal things for you.

While sports aren’t NYU’s forte, we might surprise you with our attendance and good cheer! As a member of the illustrious Bobcat Mascot Team here, I’ve seen the amazing lengths NYU goes when it comes to school spirit. For instance, some students dress up like a giant Bobcat for sporting events to show that they care about the teams. Other students get drunk before the game and dive-tackle the Bobcat in the middle of his Bobcat Dance. At moments like these, it is truly inspiring to see the school come together and cheer in unison, (including the security guards.)

You may have heard that we don’t have a football team, but that’s okay- we have an excellent basketball team who sometimes challenges their rivals, the legendary Lebanon Valley College Basketballers, in an annual match commonly known as “A Hoopsball Game In The Beginning of January. No, I Don’t Know Who’s Playing.” If we’re lucky, we might even win!

I know that NYU is a pretty expensive school- I’ve taken out tons of loans from the government and from other private lenders, but I am confident in my decision. If a concentration in “making jokes” from the Gallatin school doesn’t have me rolling in the money by the year after graduation, I’ll eat my words. I won’t eat them out of shame, though; I’ll eat them out of necessity. My shoes, too. Because I’ll be poor.

So my point is, stop worrying. While I urge you to try NYU out, pretty much any other college will give you the exact same experience; except with maybe a few less kids singing fucking musicals wherever they go. All schools will give you the same opportunity to do what you really want to do, with a long list of classes from all fields of knowledge. But none of that really matters because regardless of what you major or minor in, you’re going to go premed. Asshole.