Listen up, peasants. I am your Guardian Devil for the semester. Because Duke is currently undergoing what I can only call “campus botox” Joan Rivers style, the higher-ups have asked me to guide you through these trying times while they figure out how to best shut down East Campus without anyone noticing. For the next semester, I will be providing you with unsolicited guidance for your totally cool and awesome (read: sad and pathetic) lives.
I’m here to be your best friend—a relationship I can only hope will be stronger than mine with Papa John’s. I’m actually going to be useful, without being passive aggressive, like your first academic advisor or your sorority big. And, unlike A from "Pretty Little Liars" or your Duke Alerts, I’m not cryptic. Think of me as that relentless d-bag who won’t shut up about their totally bougie, affluenza-inducing, fancy—and I mean actually fancy, not like fake Iggy Azalea “fancy”—summer job with JP Morgan or Google (a job that probably pays a little too well for being on Buzzfeed half the day and being someone else’s b***h for the other half) or some poverty porn bimbo who shuts you up by talking about how they were in some third-world country all summer mentoring/hugging children for two months and still loved every minute of it—even though they got malaria, jaundice and/or missed the Game of Thrones finale.
Speaking of being an annoying little s**t, I am going to dedicate this first column to the first-years. Dear freshmen, let me be the first (but more likely the 937th) person to welcome you, the Class of 2018! You guys (and girls, too! Your guardian devil is learning how to avoid gendered language almost like how you’ll soon learn to avoid the Marketplace and any party that has flyers) are so effing fantastic. Let me just tell you how mind-blowing you are, in case the neon-wearing fascists who are going to help move you in won’t. Some of you precious angels can read while others of you can speak a language. A lot of you played a sport. And, impressively, none of you died from that Mayan apocalypse. Finally, many of you will be the first in your families to go to college and lose their dignities by vomiting all over your new classmates after a wonderfully Aristocratic evening of bacchanalia (or again, the Marketplace).
But I still worry because I think your naiveté makes you, simply put, “basic.” And without embarrassing all the lame nerds who do gross things like wear glasses, read books for fun or pour buckets of ice on themselves for charity, being basic is just another fun way of saying you suck. And if I’m going to be an honest guardian devil, I must say I’m a little worried you all suck a lot, like more than Belle Knox but less than Central Campus.
So, unlike class attendance policies and alcohol laws, here are some rules you should actually follow.
1. Learn some Duke vocab to fit right in. Remember that you “literally can’t even” with someone/something/the BC plaza/your roommate/class every time you just want to “work hard and play hard.” If you really are into “effortless perfection” at our “Gothic wonderland,” you’ll take this advice to heart. Also, side note, if any of you francophiles, aka freaks, actually say “Au Bon Pain” instead of “ABP,” I swear I’m going to take the Chapel crane and destroy whatever building you live in—unless it’s Pegram, because basketball players live there and they’re like relevant.
2. The attire.
Gentlemen: If you don’t look like J-Crew vomited on you after you stole all of Monet’s pastel colors, don’t even try. Nothing is sexier than looking like you were just cast as a member of "Barney and Friends." The more pink (read: Nantucket) shorts you own, the more you pull. That’s science. Someone premed is doing an independent study on it, I think.
Ladies: Whatever you do, look like you’re trying but not trying too much. Having others know you’re trying to look nice is unsettling because you’re a Duke student now and you should focus on something other than looking good #malegaze. Dressing comfortably is equally disturbing because you’re a Duke student now, so maybe you should dress for success? God, no one is going to take you seriously unless you demonstrate some “effortless perfection” (see rule 1). Also, if you choose to wear leggings to class, know that you lose any right to complain about how sloppily dressed someone else is. Dressing like an individual is overrated at a school like Duke. Maybe none of you can actually read because I’m pretty sure you also signed away your originality when you decided to attend this university.
3. Shooters. What better way to show your parents, your future classmates and Alcohol Law Enforcement what a Duke education can offer while you frequent the finest establishment Durham has to offer? Watch some white girls try to twerk. Make friends, make enemies. Get drunk, make mistakes, get mono and then cry about how you wish you had more food points. After all, the X’s will stay on your hands for a day but your memories won’t. Also, if you think you’re too good to dance in the cage or ride the bull, you’re probably going to end up majoring in chemistry or some other major that won’t let you party six nights a week (shout out to Canadian Studies). As a side note, there’s nothing else to do in Durham besides Shooters, so don’t venture off campus. I hear the townies have cooties and didn’t get a 2500 on the SAT. If you happen to be some weirdo who is not satisfied with the wonderful diversity of grasses, trees and squirrels that constitute Duke’s campus, go to Southpoint. I think Southpoint has a J-Crew so it’s like a home away from home.
That’s all the advice I have for now. Until next time, deal with your problems by Facebook stalking people you hate or compulsively checking your email.
Your guardian devil loves pole dancing on the C1, compiling ugly Snapchats in a burn book and judging how attractive people are from their dirty laundry.
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