When To Stop Acting Like You’re Twelve

A Semi-Satiric Essay by Jordan A. Masters

It’s about that time – lots of colleges and universities are on Spring Break, lots of students are coming home or going away somewhere exotic. Okay, maybe Florida’s not exactly “exotic,” but it’s at least far away from the parents. Now if you’re like me, you could care less about Spring Break – you’re neither coming home nor going away for it. If you’re like me, you never cared about it – you would have about two friends to go with anyway and they’d ditch you two minutes in.

So what’s my point? Well, if you’re away at college, you can recognize the fact that there’s drama all around you. I don’t mean the Theatre department, either – I mean the stupid people on campus that still act like they’re in high school. The kids who get one cross-eyed look from a person they’ve known since grade school and suddenly, they’re not friends anymore, and the entire world must know via the magic of Facebook! That kind of drama.

Is anybody except me sick of it?

I don’t even attend a traditional college anymore, but I have plenty of friends – and former friends – that do, and all I know is I can’t stand the high school level bullshit anymore. “Oh, Such-And-Such said this-and-that and now we’re not friends anymore so if you have a party and they’re at it, I won’t be.”

Okay, reality check time.

Number one: You’re in college. At this point, you’re over the age of eighteen – if you’re not, you will be shortly. You’re embarking on an academic journey that is supposed to prepare you for life in the adult world. If you live away at college, you probably live in a dorm with other people – most likely at least one roommate and various other floor mates. You have no choice but to deal with these people – or, conversely, not deal with them and make all your lives a living hell. Which brings me to my next point – and I might be a hypocrite for some of the things I’m about to say, but they’re true, and I will admit when I am guilty.

Number two: People inevitably have issues – some you can deal with and some you can’t deal with. Humans are kind of fickle like this. While your roommate may be the nicest person in the world – she shares everything and anything and even offers to drive you places because you don’t have your car – there are going to be things she does that inevitably, you’re not going to like. She may do her laundry – wash cycle only, all her clothes are the kind that must air dry – and so naturally, your tiny room is uninhabitable while her clothes hang out to dry on her seven clothes racks. She may lock you out of the room for seven hours while her boyfriend is over on a night you’re trying to finish a paper – and you got up for only a minute to take a bathroom break. She may…you get the point.

But what are you going to do about it? Well, as in the adult world, there is a well-structured “chain of command” that is supposed to be able to help. The first step should be to talk out your problems with your roomie. If this doesn’t work, talk to your RA. If that doesn’t yield anything, the RD ought to be able to help arbitrate something. If not…time to find a new roomie. But you may not always be able to.

Number three: Learn to deal with people’s problems without creating mass amounts of – dare I say it? – drama. The easiest way is to find some other form of release other than gossip. Unfortunately, here’s the problem:

-Blogs: Online blogs don’t work. Anyone can get to them – I found this out the hard way and it only made me wish I’d put more stuff in my blog, not less.

-Password-Protected Journals: Password-protected journals on your computer only work if your roommate can be trusted not to touch anything of yours. Considering you might not trust your roomie at that point, I wouldn’t trust this, either. Especially if you have to write the password down to remember it.

-Handwritten journals: Handwritten journals are never good. They can be stolen by anyone that comes in the room and taken off to be read at leisure. They can also be read aloud – much as can a password-protected journal if it’s printed up or a blog – to a group of people, and anyone not wishing to cause drama would more than likely immediately do so if the journal were read aloud.

You might ask why try a journal at all, then? I wouldn’t. But that’s me, and you’re not me, after all. Those are simply warnings of what can go wrong with them – reminders for those of you who already know and caveats for those of you that haven’t tried journaling before. The more important thing is that you feel comfortable with the outlet you use – you might try picking up a hobby instead. I chose fiction writing – it’s much more fun than journal writing, and you can take the people making you mad and turn them into characters without them ever being able to tell it’s them. You’ll know, and that’s the important thing.

But those around you might create drama, and that’s the real point of this essay. The stupid, pointless, high school level bullshit you’ll have to put up with. I can give some examples of what I went through during my first year at college – I lived away from home and dealt with enough high school drama to cure me of wanting to room with someone for a very, very long time. I can give you also some examples of what I went through during my second and third year, when I was a commuter at a college a bit closer to home. You still can’t escape it. Here, let me show you. These are the Seven Drama Examples.

Example one: A conversation over instant messenger, concerning one floor member’s need for information on the way the other floor members felt about him, two months into the academic semester. Freeze. If you’re so self-conscious that you need constant reassurance that people like you, let me say this slowly. Don’t ask. Get confident. You are away from home – Mommy and/or Daddy went miles and miles away and left you all by your lonesome to figure yourself out, just like you wanted. If you’re still that painfully shy after two months – may I add this kid locked himself in his room and mainly communicated by instant messages – then go home. Make pen pals, take online courses. If you’re too shy for human contact, give up your bed to someone who really wants to be there to actually have human contact.

Example two: While working on a paper due the next day, you take a bathroom break – your roommate’s boyfriend is over and you don’t think anything of it. When you come back to the room, the door is locked with a discreet “Do Not Disturb” sign over the lock – and your laptop is inside. You’re locked out for six hours and end up not finishing the paper. This has really happened to me, but let me tell you I’ve heard it’s not exactly the norm. I didn’t allow my roommate’s boyfriend to sleep over in the room – simply for the fact that it was also my room, and I liked to be able to change my clothes without some random boy I didn’t know staring at my body. While working on a paper for my Psychology class, I decided to take a short bathroom break – when I came back, I was locked out. The “Do Not Disturb” sign was over the lock, and my laptop was stuck inside along with my keys and all my research. I could also hear my roomie and her boyfriend…well, you know. So I sat down in the lounge and watched TV for six hours, then went back to the room to find them cuddling in her desk chair. I didn’t say a word, I just tried to do my paper without gagging from the stink in the room, but ended up going to bed early and not finishing the paper. This had been after fighting with her for a month – at least – about not locking me out of the room when I was trying to work on something important. And her boyfriend wasn’t supposed to have been over anyway – but someone beat me to reporting her.

Example three: Your roommate decides to badger you until you take down all the decorations on your side of the room – leaving, of course, her own alone. My third and final roommate did this – badgered me until I agreed and, in one night, took down all the photos and posters on my side of the room, while her side’s décor remained intact. When I put up a few new decorations a few months later, as part of a religious thing, she defaced them with a marker because she “didn’t like them.”

Example four: Your roommate is playing her music so loudly – through stereo speakers attached to her laptop – that you can’t hear your own music through your headphones, even on maximum volume. When she leaves the room to go to class, she leaves her music playing – then yells at you for turning it off when she comes back. Okay, let me stress that this is never okay. If you’re leaving the room for any period of time, turn your music off. By the same token, your music should never be loud enough that your roommate has to blow their own eardrums out in order to hear their music through headphones. If your roommate asks you to turn down your music, don’t get offended – it just means you’re playing yours too loudly. And, contrary to popular belief, they do have the right to tell you to use headphones if you want to blare it – they have to live there, too. And never yell at your roommate for turning off your music if you left it playing – if your roommate is listening to their own music and you leave for class with your music still playing, you’re probably lucky if you come back and find your computer still intact.

Now, for the commuters…

Example five: You sit down in the student center to take up time between classes – you have at least an hour to kill. Some random girl you don’t know comes up to you and starts bitching about how you sat in her seat and you better move your ass if you know what’s good for you. When you just stare at her like she’s sprouted antennae, she sighs and runs off toward her friends, bitching. Freshmen. We love to hate them, but I have to admit, not all of them are guilty of this. Sometimes this has been witnessed, and has been a junior or senior – hell, I’ve seen grad students working on their Master’s degrees do this too. So watch out – this can be anyone.

Example six: During a party at a friend’s house, you accidentally step on her cat’s tail. A twenty-minute fight ensues, and you don’t speak to each other for a week. This one just shows that petty shit can sometimes get out of hand, more than we’d like. You accidentally step on her cat’s tail, and she’s pissed. Naturally – I would be too if someone trod on my pet. But for her to not speak to you all week over something accidental is completely childish. Beware your accidents – college-age children will scorn you for them. Scorn!

And the kicker…

Example seven: You’ve been trying to set up a meeting with your advisor since the start of the semester, but every time he’s available you’re in class, and every time you’re available he’s suddenly got something to do. It’s finally down to the nitty-gritty time right before finals and you really need to see your advisor. You try to set up the meeting – and receive an email back from your advisor telling you that you’re “out of line” and acting “immaturely.” Now you have no meeting with your advisor, no idea what classes to take next semester, and – even worse – no idea how to get a new advisor who’s not such an asshole. This isn’t exactly an exaggeration. My advisor did this to me, and I consequently got a new advisor – who did basically the same thing. Consequently, I’m not exactly certain the department I left was exactly happy with me afterwards, and I refused to go back and take classes in their department so I wouldn’t force myself on them. That, and the two teachers I had in that department that year failed me.

Now you see. Drama – high school bullshit at a college level – is abundant, and actually knows no age limit. Don’t think that because the person you’re speaking to is a professor, suddenly you’re immune from high school bullshit. I guarantee you, you’re not.