Open Letter to College Social Life
Dear College Social Life,
You are probably the most arbitrary element of the University Experience, and I think I hate you more than I love you. You are unfair to those who don’t enjoy partying, and unreliable for those introverted people who like to have fun in alternative ways.
You have convinced parents, future students and extroverted people that you are omnipresent in every student’s life and available for everybody to have, but you are not. You have entered into the category of the taken-for-granted elements of the University Experience, along with tacky professors and the good-enough food for which one pays. You, and the immature vision of equality you have on college students, is what makes this next four to six years of education a lonely, repressed, excluded time, when people of all sexes and majors discover more of themselves every day they don’t go partying or putting a bill between a thong and a thigh.
You make people think that you’re available for everyone, making comments about school clubs for books, video games and movies and Dungeons & Dragons, but the truth is, not all of us are suited for that, and you know it. You are well aware that some of those clubs are social-life killers, and I’m sure you’re sure that those groups do not operate at night. You give us options to semi-socialize between classes, but the nighttime is dead for most of us. And you know it.
It is that image you have that angers me the most. That image everyone has of you, College Social Life, where you are some kind of a heroine out to save every college student from a solitary life, but it is not true. You are always present for those who embrace the crazy life of college, who have social skills and–most importantly–enjoy going to clubs and dancing with strangers, who have fake IDs to buy alcohol, and who do not feel uncomfortable with the idea of letting the music turn off their ears for the whole night and the morning after. And what you call “alternative entertainment” comes in the shape of a house party, which is arguably even worse than those dirty clubs; you assume that all of us are comfortable with going to a stranger’s house and finding a way to start a conversation with somebody who possibly has nothing in common with you, but many of us are not. “Life Starts at the End of your Comfort Zone” must have been said by a socialite.
Some of us may enjoy a little bit of extroverted fun. Some of us may even like to drink and have fun with friends. But it’s unfair from you to believe that every college student is looking for alcohol and easy sex, because it is not true. Even if some of us would like alcohol and easy sex, not everyone likes to spend the night in a dance club with strangers and overwhelmingly loud music.
College Social Life, you are unfair and unreliable, some may even call you the College Edition of a politician. When you understand that not every person acts the same, is the day you will make every college student a happier person. If you ever come to your senses, I wish to still be around here to see you shine.
Attentively,
a very angry and unsatisfied semi-introvert.
Jorge Luis Rojas
Jorge Luis Rojas was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, on October 19th 1995. He is a second year student at the University of South Florida, double-majoring in Creative Writing and Film Studies.