Saturday, September 13, 2008

On Freshmen

Purpose: To understand the nature and behavior of the freshman
Hypothesis: All freshmen are the same. They all think they're cool, while they aren't. They all wear things they think are cool. They don't even try to be different from one another.
Observations/Data: All freshmen are easily identifiable by their physical appearance: small, young-looking, wearing the same clothes (mentioned below many times). Behaviorally, the freshmen are separated into two types, the respecting freshmen and the despicable freshmen. The respecting freshmen are the ones who display typical behavior: fearing the professionals (juniors+, sophomores meh), lacking confidence, lacking individuality, sticking together to ward off threats, and of course the utter inability to navigate a square even with maps and schedules telling them what to do, etc.
One interesting phenomenon is that the head level of the respecting freshman rises proportional to the number of other freshman in its close vicinity. In the rare case that the freshman head does rise, it is only to stare distantly at another (imaginary?) one of its kind.While the freshman superficially displays its high-schoolosity by chewing gum in classes, it does not understand the true meaning of high school: doing real stuff.
However, my previous studies of the freshman and my undercover work as a freshman two years ago indicated that respecting freshman will eventually reach a level of intellectual and emotional maturity.
The despicable freshman is that freshman which considers itself above the unwritten rules of freshmandom. This sort is despicable in that it needs attention, takes on alpha role in groups by using loud utterances, and exhibits an odd mimicry of the upperclassman. But it can easily be distinguished from the upperclassman in that the upperclassman does not mimic itself. Unlike the respecting freshmen, the despicable freshmen do not become respectable upperclassmen. They remain freshman for a longer time, perhaps all the way through their second year
Results: 80% of freshmen are respecting, 19.99% are despicable, and the very rare .01% (sometimes entirely absent from a whole freshman class) are respectable
c=ng, c: how cool the freshman thinks it is; n: noise freshman is making; g: number of freshmen in its group
Conclusion: Hypothesis is largely correct, except that the respecting freshman many times does not even think it is cool.

In other words, a freshman is a nub.

4 comments:

Lauren Z said...

I liked the lab format of this paper. It was ironic that even though lab reports should be obkective, that a person can still make them subjective which was what you desplayed. Nice post.

Donald Magnani said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jane Danstrom said...

This was a really interesting way to approach freshmen. Your use of quantifiable results makes it obvious what you think of freshmen. I was also tipped off by your use of "nub."

My only question is are they subterranean?

Ashvin said...

I like how you use the scientific method approach when describing the likes of freshmen. Very interesting. The c=ng was very funny. Nice.