#3: Seating Plans

When I was in the first grade, my teacher sat us according to hair color. Not only did this inevitably result in a kind of eerie, optical-illusion-retrograde-racism-junior-style segregation, but it made me extremely self-conscious of where I was in relation to the teacher. If I were blonde, I'd be closer to her. If my hair were darker, I'd be even farther to the back. My proximity to the source of all worldly knowledge was based on a genetic lottery outcome, and just because I wasn't an aardvark didn't mean it was okay for me to not meet Arthur in real life.



Oh, and also it wasn't fair that my teacher made me sit far away.

However, having graduated from the murky area of assigned seats in lurid plastic chairs, I thought I was done with the arbitrary seating plan. I thought I would never have to curse the demonic impulse that made my teacher sit me behind the kid with the 'fro. But sadly, it seems I was mistaken. Because here at college, the seating plan is not only a classroom construct. The seating plan is life--except without sex or booze or fun or anything people enjoy.

Some professors use the plan to remember people's names. Some employ it primarily as a demonstrative gesture: it asserts their power to subject you to random whims and not give you any choice in who you sit next to or what they smell like. But most of them don't actually hand out the seating plan. They just wait until everyone sits down, then never let you move from that spot again. This is actually worse than being designated a sucky spot. This way, if you end up next to the kid who never outgrew the paste-eating habit, or who can't concentrate without muttering L'il Wayne lyrics under their breath, it's your own fault. That first day, when you made that split-second decision to sit where you sat? Yeah, that could have gone better. Nice going, now you'll smell like adhesive for a semester or so.

And the worst thing about the self-generated seating plan is getting a seat where the professor is physically unable to detect your presence visually. They can't see you no matter what you do or how hard you pray. Therefore, in order to be called on or speak with permission, you have to grunt and wave your hands above your head and snap your fingers like you don't realize you're doing it, but really you do. You could also have a seizure, I suppose, but having the ambulance service called to class tends to distract from the excellent point you were going to make about Oedipus' tragic flaw.

Here's the point about seating plans: if you ever have a choice, use those few seconds of freedom to find the kid who a) smells like cookies or b) looks really really tired. If a), they'll probably share whatever their delicious snack is with you, so it's worth a bad teacher-vantage point. If b), their sleeping in class will make you look awesome by comparison, no matter how dumb you actually are. And then, baby, it's a one-way trip to Undeserved-Passing-Grade City.

#2: Dining Halls

Sometimes, if you listen very carefully when you're walking on campus, you can hear a soft, ethereal rustling noise beneath the clamor of chitchat and confident footsteps. It's like the beating of a hummingbird's wings, only just reaching your ears, a delicate and fragile sound. What is this, you ask? Is it the tinkle of fairies' wings as they flitter across South Lawn? Is it the whispering of thought as it blossoms within the student body? Is it, dare I say it, the audible
incarnation of education itself?

No. It's the sound of people eating things.

Food is everywhere. In paper and plastic, in boxes, on plates, in hands, in mouths. Being chewed. Swallowed. Consumed. Obliterated. Terminated. People in college get hungry, damn it, and they ain't got time for no three-course meal--that paper's due tomorrow! A quick fix is needed, right here and right now.

Hence, dining halls.


Ah, the dining hall. An experience that alienates you and gives you food poisoning in one fell swoop! Delightful! Rows and rows of tables, filled to bursting with undergraduates (basically just freshmen) who are mortally terrified of eating alone. Hence, it is impossible to go to the dining hall without being hit by a wave of tangible loneliness. Or a wave of cheesy odor issuing from the kitchen. Either one.

It's the John Jay Dining Hall that really illustrates why these places are not a good idea. First of all, to get to the food, one must trudge past the line of dirty dishes. Nothing gives me an appetite more than the sight of half-chewed Stroganoff. It also smells vaguely like three-day-old green beans around those dishes, which makes me suspect people are sloppy about their food disposal. Beware.

Then, once you get to the food, it's kind of like a game of Murderer: you keep your head down and your eyes away from anyone else, so help you God. Any accidental eye contact automatically means one of two things: you're a) coveting their food with a passion equal to that of Sodom and Gomorrah, or b) so desperate for a seating partner that you are considering spilling your soup onto their shoes and offering lunch company as an apology. Neither of these things are attractive. Hence: eyes down, partner.

The food itself is polarizing. I personally don't mind blobs of grease on my salad; others, however, have become lifelong vegetarians based on John Jay meats. Make of that what you will. Oh, also they always have cookies. Always.

Once food is procured, sitting must happen. And therein is the major conundrum. Whether one succumbs to loneliness and sits, desolate and solitary as a lone barnacle on a large rock, or goes in futile search of companions, the facts are still the same: y'all's desperate. So the cardinal rule of dining halls--never ever ever ever go to one alone. If you do, you will leave a part of yourself at that oil-stained table and you will never get it back.

#1: Communal Bathrooms

So here I am, moved in and cozy. My room even has a window! This is the view from it, to your left! Do you like it? It is high up!

And I love my dorm. The people on it are kind of a herd of buffalo: good-natured, amiable, and they can consume several tons of food in a single meal.

And my classes don't suck. Kind of. I mean, this one teacher speaks like he's hoping he'll grow old and die before the end of the sentence, and this other lady wears clothes that are so trendy they make me uncomfortable and cranky, and I'm pretty sure that TA sitting beside me was the one wafting French fry fumes for a full seventy-five minutes. But seriously. They're not that bad.

Yeah. Basically, I'm living on Easy Street in the suburb of Collegeville, which is right off the highway from My Youth Is Slowly Slipping Away City.

But then...this.

The bathrooms. A room in which there is not only no bath, but also no hope.

And sometimes no toilet paper.

Seriously. This place is not okay. The shower floors appear to have sagged slightly from years of hormone-soaked freshmen washing off the sweat of parties and fear. The lowest topographical point is tinged with black, which I can only assume is either fungus or the eggs of some opportunistic parasite. The showers themselves are like those cubicles they spray-tan you in, except those cubicles are shiny and filled with chrome and they do their job very well. In JJ showers, you have two choices: cringe like an animal in the corner as you lather your shampoo, or stick whatever limb you're cleaning out past the (blood?-stained curtain) and acquire localized frostbite as you soap up.

The toilets themselves are not awful. They don't eat you, basically. The window has a lovely set of bars over it, because we all know that when the RA comes a-knockin', out the bathroom window we're a-droppin'! The sinks are usually wet everywhere but in the basin, so put your personal belongings on the bank of sinks at your own peril.

And lastly, the capital W in the Why Me:


If my room is the Shire, the bathroom is Mordor. And the eagles are not coming, my friends. The eagles are not coming.