Author: Yennaedo Balloo
It’s the halfway point of my career at Occidental, or what I’ll hope is half of my career, since one can never guess if he or she may wind up spending an extra semester for whatever reason. I’m getting nostalgic and find myself thinking of all the things I’ve learned about this wonderful place and all the things that once were mysteries unfounded, but are now revealed and held truths. I feel that they are practical, a way of life, and could come in handy for anyone at this school-faculty and students alike.
First of all, the tater tots in the Marketplace, regardless of how overcooked they may be, will always be the best cure for a hangover, no matter how painful the hangover may make them to ingest. Kathy the Sandwich Lady will always make the best sandwiches, not because of skill, but because she puts love and care into them. That’s not to say the other sandwich makers don’t make a mean ham and cheese either. Rounding up the Marketplace, Warren is the best Homestyle chef around, so if you see him manning the counter, give the Homestyle section your attention; it can only mean good things. Nightly visits to the Cooler make the “freshman 15” a very harsh reality. The Cooler’s mozzarella sticks (especially with chili hot sauce in the marinara) make that “15” a bit more pleasurable to put on.
Drinking on a night before you have morning class is never a good idea, but if you must, stopping three hours before bed is the surest way to avoid a hangover the next morning. Tough love can be a good thing, especially when it’s directed at a drunk friend who’s doing something stupid like trying to break into a house because he’s convinced his girlfriend is in there. Occidental dances will always be grope fests; alcohol, hormones and dim lighting suggest not much else to people at any age. A less-evident truth for girls: you’re allowed to walk away. As for Occidental parties, finding the keg is always a good thing when you first arrive; it always taps early and it always taps just before you’re on your way to grab that last beer. After finding the keg, find the bathroom-knowing where to piss is an invaluable bit of knowledge.
Classes that are new and/or taught by teachers who haven’t taught them before are either disasters or incredible successes, but either way, you’ll generally have fun with them. An ECLS class is never an easy way to fill a core requirement (stick with art classes), but they are amazingly interesting ways to fill core requirements. If one student warns you about a teacher, consider that as an isolated incident, but keep it in mind. If more than three warn you about a teacher, proceed with extreme caution. It may affect your GPA negatively, but before you graduate, you should take a ballbuster of a teacher-he or she will make you appreciate a B like you never thought you could, and every A you get elsewhere after them will be all the sweeter.
Inevitably, someone you think is a “good person” will start dating someone you can’t help but consider a “douche bag,” so it goes. Don’t get fooled into thinking the only people available for you to get to know are the people you’ll see at parties on Fridays and Saturdays. Eighteen hundred people attend our school; you’re exposed to a rotating 300 at the party scene, 400 tops. Despite what many idiots will claim, our school is, on the whole, very good-looking. Few of us belong on the cover of GQ or Cosmo, but we’re far from needing paper bags. Anybody who makes this complaint came here expecting the So-Cal cliché: blonde girls with big (fake) breasts who rollerblade everywhere in bikinis. These people need to grow up, as do most of the rest of us in our own ways.
People at Occidental will get upset over the most inane things. If anything in this article pisses anyone off, it’ll be the prior paragraph. Not my criticism of the “administration,” which is pending. The administration will make a decision every semester that should piss us, as members of this school, off. We should be understanding of their position and that they are supposed to make decisions based on saving appearances of the school. That said, we should always expect just and righteous decisions first and should never be afraid to decry hypocrisy where we see it. It should be our job to make sure the school maintains respectability, fairness and justice among ourselves-we are adults. Still, though, we’ll always be treated like children at a boarding school in order to maintain the school’s “appearance.” If we want to live and enjoy the rights we deserve as adults, we have to think, act and speak like adults. We’re given the very tools we need in not just careers, but in our lives as articulate members of society, and we should be taking our community here as a warm-up.
Yennaedo is a junior ECLS major. He can be reached at yballoo@oxy.edu.
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