Three Things: College Trends

 

▽

It is week two of classes and I have already found things that bug me. No, I am not going around searching for annoying habits of my peers! But when one spends as much time in the presence of such a homogenous band of peers, one tends to notice the trends. What follows are three trends I have observed here on my college campus. They are harmless, granted, but they just somehow annoy me. 

△

1. Short hair all around the head except for the very top of the head. 
In the immortal words of my Czech/Polish friend Daniel: What is the heck? Why are the youths doing this disservice to their heads? Why do they appear to think this actually looks good? It is like they have buzzed their entire heads and then been like, "Uh. I wish I still had some longer hairs." So they put a longer toupee top! I believe this obsession with Toupee Hair is a throwback to the 1950s gone wrong. It is as though these young gentlemen were trying to pay tribute to studs like Marlon Brando or James Dean. With the exception that they look terrible. Please, Guys, just stop doing this to your hair. Bring back a different terrible hair trend. I would even take the mullet or the ducktail over this monstrosity.

2. Water bottles with every sticker you got over the summer stuck on them.
I looked around my Christian Thought class this afternoon and noticed at least four people had taken out a ginormous plastic water bottle and placed it onto their tiny fold-out desk. Plastered all over the bottle and obscuring the brightly coloured plastic were stickers: camp logo stickers, weird sayings stickers, evangelistic outreach ministry stickers, "I climbed a mountain/ran a race"stickers, etc. So many. I guess this trend is sort of in line with the old campaign button trends or the sticking stickers on your guitar case or patches on the sleeves of your denim jacket. But for some reason it irritates me. Perhaps because I rarely receive stickers. I guess I am not involved enough, or at least not involved with enough outdoorsy sticker-dispensing activities.

3. Dressing like you are on a yacht even though you are not
OK. You have seen it, right? Guys who are wearing leather boat shoes and a crisp short sleeve shirt tucked into their pastel coloured short-shorts. I would be like, "OK. Fine" if these guys were ON BOATS. I would even be OK if these guys were NEAR WATER. But they are in Wheaton. The closest body of water is a marsh. Why do they insist like dressing like wealthy yacht owners in their early 60s? Their clothing says, "I am a man of leisure. I wear clothing to reflect my lifestyle of ease and opulence. Later today would you like me to show you some photos of a boat I found on Pinterest that I would like to own someday?"

Now that I have gotten all that angst out of my system I feel better. But I realise that this post is very hater-y. Just like the haters who are gonna hate, hate, hate as in Taylor Swift's song "Shake It Off'". I am sorry I have let you down, Taylor, and let my negativity pour out onto the interwebs. But to any Toupee Haired People, to any Sticker Hoarders and Faux Yacht Owners reading this post I would like to advise you to "Shake it off".