Welcome freshmen! After years of hard work, you’ve finally made it to Duke’s vaunted spires. Here at The Chronicle, we know you might be feeling a little intimidated; it can be difficult as a newcomer to make sense of the complex social norms and traditions on campus. That’s why we have put together this handy guide to get you started out right.
ASKING FOR DIRECTIONS: You’re in a totally new place filled with people well used to this environment. You’re going to get lost, and it’s natural to feel awkward asking for directions. But you shouldn’t feel intimidated asking for help because most Dukies will be fully welcoming and understanding. Just make sure that before you ask any upperclassmen anything, you first say the words “My name is Margaret Rennert, and I am the governess of an outer colony of the Empire. I have journeyed for some time to reach this place and have business here to which I must urgently attend. If you so allow, I would seek to learn the whereabouts of my charge.” Say this each and every time you meet an upperclassman, and you’ll get all the help you need.
RELIGION: For the most part, religion is not a big part of the public life at Duke. As you probably already know, Duke is “officially” a Methodist university, meaning that it worships the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli. In practice this has no ramifications for your life at Duke except that each new moon every student must make a sacrifice of three calves to the god Huitzilopochtli. Remember: you don’t want to be that freshman that only leaves out two blood-drained calf corpses for Huitzilopochtli to devour in preparation for battle against his four hundred jealous brothers while defending his mother Coatlicue. Classic freshman fail.
DATING: So you’ve found someone special – good work. At Duke, if you want to begin a romantic entanglement, you must bring your intended partner to the Duke Quantum Electronics Lab. Once you have both completed the proper paperwork, the science people will put your relationship into a quantum superposition. This will force your involvement to become simultaneously a casual recurring hook-up and a romantic relationship. It is important to remember never to try to clarify with your partner exactly the nature of your relationship. Doing so will invariably cause a collapse in the wave function and induce your partner to end the involvement altogether. If this does happen, the correct Duke thing to do is to swallow the longing and heartache, hold them in the pit of your stomach forever and become a cold and distant person. This is a traditional Duke coping practice, dating back to the days when the university was an embattled Peloponnesian city-state.
FINANCIAL AID: Those of you on financial aid may notice your aid appearing to jump up and down in value from semester to semester, seemingly without regard to your demonstrated need. This is because of the complex process by which aid is determined. First, Duke takes your family earnings report and checks it against the previous year’s. Next, they factor in inflation for the intervening period. This paperwork is filed in triplicate with Duke Payroll and photocopied before being returned to FinAid having been spritzed with Payroll’s verification scent. After this step is complete, the Board of Trustees meets to determine how much of the endowment to invest in Congolese proxy forces for the coming fiscal year. Once this has been decided, your aid paperwork is buried in a peat bog and a man in a room presses a button on a random number generator which decides your aid total.
MAKING FRIENDS: You’ll find that Duke people are some of the friendliest people around, but we understand that early on it can be hard knowing how to correctly talk to your fellow students. A correct social interaction at Duke should go like this:
“Hello fellow student how are you”
“I am good ugh I have [x] assignments due in [y] hours plus this stupid lab that will take [z] hours right now how about you?”
“Ugh yes I have [x+1] assignments due in [x-1] hours plus this stupid project partner meeting that will take [y+2] hours right now.”
“Damn that is much okay I must leave now let us hang out at some time” [lie]
“Yes” [lie]
As you can see, the first student won this conversation because she has demonstrated herself to be the busier and therefore better person. The student that wins the most conversations each year is sent to an all-expenses-paid dinner at Le Bernardin restaurant in New York at which President Brodhead will stand behind the winner’s chair and once a minute whisper “remember, you are dirt” into their ear to remind them of their ultimate human fallibility.
That’s all for this installation, but be sure to come back weekly for more. And remember – once finished, the proper thing to do with any copy of The Chronicle is set it on fire and leave it in a trash can outside your dorm. This is to ward off the angry ghosts of lung cancer victims that haunt Duke’s campus.
Anyone looking to contact Monday Monday should stand in the middle of Chapel Quad screaming their correspondence repeatedly for twenty-four hours.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.