If you’re something like me, a secret, selfish indulgence of yours is online articles that pander specifically to you, like you’re an insider on a scandal that hasn’t yet hit the tabloids and you’re somehow special for staying mum. During the duck syndrome-laden mania that was fall quarter of freshman year, I sought out stability in the chaos by clicking on college-related columns and relatable listicles with titles like, “Five Thoughts You Have Your Freshman Year.” The theory was, I suppose, that by suddenly understanding the content — the inside jokes, the terminology, the collegiate cultural touchstones — I would feel more anchored amid all the Stanford insanity.
As you can likely predict, it didn’t quite do that.
What it did instead was feed every vainglorious impulse in my brain, fluffing up my ego even as first-week failures — e.g. gluing myself to a map to find Green Library, bombing a cappella auditions, saying something stupidly personal in introductions — ravaged it. I was alternately inadequate and condescending, at once anxious and cavalier. Articles like Odyssey’s “You Know You’re a Stanford Student When… (Undergrad Edition),” despite their pretension, were some strange coping mechanism through which I could pretend to be thriving rather than surviving.
Reading college articles without the rose-colored tears of freshman year stress, however, is another experience altogether. I’m now more inclined to criticism than projection, calling out the clickbait for what it is instead of clinging to kernels of truth (of course, this is another class of hubris in and of itself, but I digress). Three years into my Stanford career, though, “You Know You’re a Stanford Student When… (Undergrad Edition)” feels a mite contrived; after all, I never see people picking fruit off the trees on campus (#8 of the 41 entries), playful confusion over Stanford acronyms (#19) is played out and Roble Package Center (#28) no longer exists (thank God).
Admittedly, though, the complaints about spotty wi-fi (#16) and the ominous, omnipresent “Please close the door” voice (#32) are spot-on.
This doesn’t just apply to stories about Stanford, though; attempting to encompass the entirety of the American college experience is an ambitious target no matter how you slice it, but watering down the variety of college life in order to appeal to the young adult audience at large is a little insulting. (Honestly, it’s analogous to that gif of Steve Buscemi, holding a backwards baseball hat and a skateboard, rasping, “How do you do, fellow kids?”)
It doesn’t have to be, though; as an upperclassman, Alloy’s “19 Mildly Embarrassing Things We All Did as College Freshmen,” for instance, reads as endearing rather than desperate, gambling on nostalgia instead of demographic schticks. Frosh shamelessly sporting their lanyards (#7) is, apparently, universal, as is forgetting every name offered in a get-to-know-you group (#18) and waddling between buildings like penguins huddling for warmth (#11). While vague enough to be viable across campuses, “19 Embarrassing Things We All Did as College Freshmen” is celebratory instead of tacky, which tempts even the most cynical of college students (i.e., me) into smiling.
These articles, as is the case with your academic career (and, consequently, with what strikes you as a compelling article), can become even more specialized, though. Read It Forward’s feature, “Books You Read in College as an English Major,” fails in this relatability, as I, a card-carrying English major myself, have only read two of the listed titles (Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” and Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick”), though I have read other works by five of the recommended writers, just not the novels the website suggests. This missed target draws a reader’s ire instead of their delight, and my tendencies towards criticism and condescension return with renewed force.
The more niche the content, then, the harder the article works to ensnare a possible audience; articles must therefore be ambiguous enough to accept audience’s emotional metaphors into their thesis, as they were my freshman year. Perhaps we as a society will eventually tire of the exclusivity of these articles, of their insistence on the reader’s “specialness,” but it seems unlikely; people like seeming special, and they especially like the ego boost that comes with casually publicizing that which makes them special — in this context, attending a university.
Contact Claire Francis at claire97 ‘at’ stanford.edu.