1. Your $200,000+ tuition is going towards maintaining a patch of tulips by the church.
2. Our lunch specials will taste better than even your most cherished family recipes.
3. Those who claim college is a completely new and different experience from high school don’t, as Mean Girls would put it, even go here. Class sizes of roughly 30 students: check. Sporting events no one cares about: check. Fascist regime ensuring you never take a sip of the devil’s elixir/alcohol: check. Hooking up with some cute guy at a party and subsequently seeing him in your 9 am accounting class, the Maher circle tram stop, three tables over in the cafeteria, buying a classic bean-and-cheese at Sara’s, and basically every freaking day for the rest of your college career: check, check, CHECK.
4. Seriously, ladies, acquaint yourselves with the men over at San Diego State. Sure, engaging in actual conversations with them may constitute cruel and unusual punishment, but it sure will spare you a lifetime of USD incest!
5. Swimsuits will be worn year-round.
6. Consequently, everyone you know will be partaking in a juice cleanse and diet of kale, chia seeds, and Adderall at all times. As someone who eats like a fat man who just found out he has 1 day left to live, there was pressure to conform… but luckily, with access to burrito shops that couldn’t have possibly passed health inspection on every street corner, I persevered.
7. Do yourself a favor and join the rest of the senior class for spring break in Cabo. Book it early, prepare your liver, and I promise the memories will be priceless. Blurry, yes, but priceless.
8. Drop that 7:30 am Monday class and stop kidding yourself.
9. Tory Burch flats aren’t just for housewives who drown their sorrows in white wine spritzers and Oprah reruns anymore. (In other words, the entire female study body is confused and thinks they’re 40. So very Benjamin Button!)
10. Likewise, Lululemon leggings and Michael Kors watches also constitute the unofficial school uniform. I’m sure they’ll be sponsoring our school any day now.
11. Parking tickets are an evil that cannot be avoided.
12. Somehow, Greek Life authorities find the time to create fake Facebook profiles in hopes of uncovering the oh-so-scandalous behavior of students here. So yeah, they know about those red cups in your photos.
13. For male students working out at the gym, every day is arm day. It’s an unfortunate truth but a truth nonetheless.
14. If nothing else, Greek life teaches you how to be exceedingly creative when it comes to costumes. Graduate and suddenly Halloween becomes child’s play.
15. Attending classes? Actually a thing here.
16. USD requires a minimum of three theology courses to graduate. It’s still up in the air whether their intention was to make us embrace religion… or despise its very existence by the time we’re seniors.
17. Beachcomber: by no means a good bar, but hey, it’s there. (Just remember to get your tetanus shot!)
18. The Olin parking lot will be littered with Ferraris, Porsches, and Aston Martins. Not one will belong to a professor.
19. It’s an unofficial sorority rule that your little must look like you. Don’t ask me why, it just happens.
20. If you think it’s hard to muster up the motivation to attend class when it’s raining… just wait until it’s 80 degrees out and you live on Mission Beach. See you never, psychology homework.
My final thoughts? It’s easy to make fun of a school like University of San Diego. Half of the conversations you hear are alarmingly basic (even guys will talk about making “Starbies runs”), there’s a surplus of students you know have to be richer than God (exhibit a: the guy who repeatedly parks in the handicapped spots and repeatedly racks up parking tickets because he can), and the constant adult supervision makes Greek functions feel like an episode of Orange Is The New Black (no references to drugs, alcohol, foreign cultures, stereotypes… or anything at all, really).
But still, I wouldn’t trade my last four years for the world. The friends I made are for life, many classes taught me valuable life skills (Finance, Public Speaking, Human Communication), many classes stretched my thinking and expanded my world view (Race and Ethnicity in America, Sociology, Business Ethics), and, at the very least, the experiences gave me endless comic material to blog about.
Also, living 5 feet from the ocean? Worth it every time.
The Art of Being Basic 