Posted On October 5, 2015 By In Advice For Women, Girlzone, Lifestyle

5 Things Not to Do at College

 
 

From your resident college student, here are five things you absolutely should not do while attending college. I mean, you can do them, but people will not like you and will probably write mean things about you on Yik Yak.

1. Introduce yourself to the professor in a 300-student lecture

I know it’s like the new “thing” – introducing yourself to the professor increases the chances of them giving you extra credit or letting an absence slip by – but please, for the love of all that is good and holy, do not introduce yourself to the professor in a three-hundred-student lecture class. The first day of my Philosophy class, I went up to ask a question about the textbook, and ended up spending thirty minutes in a huge line of students doing nothing but saying, “Hi, I’m [insert name here]!” And by the time he got to the students in front of me, he was just saying, “Well, it’s nice to meet you, but I have so many students; it’s not likely I’ll remember your name, sorry.” Just skip it.

2. Take the elevator to a floor that has stairs leading up to it

If you have an injury or something preventing you from taking the stairs up three flights, go right ahead and use the elevator. But if you’re perfectly able to take stairs and you just refuse, making the elevator stop at a really low floor and everyone else in the elevator groan, you’d better be able to take the heat– everyone is going to be complaining about you the instant you leave. Things I overhear in the elevator: “Are you kidding me?”, “I’m closing the doors on the next third floorer that wants to come in”, and “[groan]”.

3. Disrespect the roommates

I have a friend whose roommate cussed her out because my friend asked her to take out the trash. She said the pettiest thing ever too, which is, “Just because you asked– No!”. You’re going to be living with these people for an entire year, just take out the garbage! Seriously, what does it cost to just do a chore for some copacetic dorm living? Your alternative is being dragged to RA meetings about “respect” and “how to get along”, so you might as well just be a decent human being and do it right from the start!

4. Overstep the boundaries of “free food”

I can’t stress how much college students love free food. Of everything that wasn’t exaggerated, this wasn’t exaggerated the most. But what everyone seems to collectively hate is those who take advantage of free food and make it known. Not the quiet slipping of a few extra brownies when there’s plenty, no, this is the loud taking of seven sandwiches and letting everyone know. And then taking one to eat during the activity. And then eating another. But never touching the seven on your plate. In fact, this behavior caused someone in a club meeting I recently attended to be known as “The Sandwich Stealer” and the minute he left the room, it was dead silent until someone whispered, “He took a lot of sandwiches, right?” and after some vigorous nodding, it was decided that yes, he had taken a lot of food. And we all hated it. We were all sort of jealous, because wouldn’t it be nice to be able to ignore socially acceptable things? But we mostly hated him.

5. Distract everyone else in class

I don’t care if you eat in class. I don’t care if you use your computer.  I don’t care if you just show up in some half-assed attempt to pretend you care, but really you’re just watching Netflix. I really, really, don’t care. But please, do it quietly. Don’t show up twenty minutes late, slamming the door on your way in, and proceed to make noise in everything you do: crinkling your bag of Grandma’s Cookies way too loudly, laughing at a joke made in your tv show, incessant tapping of your pencil on my chair, or stretching out of your personal bubble and into mine. Let me fail math without your help, okay? God.

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Jackie is a college student trying to get rid of the french fry smell on her clothes and write stories that make people feel the things she's always felt. She hopes to become famous enough so her friend can eat the fancy bread they always have at award dinners. You can follow her daily life on Twitter @atragicthrill.