Alyson

I am in the process of watching friends shed their organic, sophomore skin and work themselves into calloused juniors. I, too, am a junior, but I think I somehow managed to get left behind on the planet “lol, just doin’ me.” Like in Martian, except I am a metion. I thought that acting as landfill for others’ complaints about grades and colleges and class ranks would be the worst of it, but then I wouldn’t be writing this. However much it hurts to hear about how having a 4.0 “is sucky” (I’m getting there), or how being ranked number 20-whatever is “not good enough” (try 20 times 10), it is so much more shocking to watch these people sell out.

What really epitomizes this transformation is my friend, Q, creating a “music for cancer” club. A lot of my friends have been making clubs around campus so that they can tell a future piece of paper how this-or-that they are, even though the “club” is complete bull shark and does nothing at all—a fact practically verified by the presidents themselves. It’s annoying on the account that it dilutes the club scene, but that’s whatevs. It was finding out that Q was creating a college-application-club with a “let’s fight cancer!” facade, that made the general prick of The Thumbtack of Annoyance travel deeper into my skin and psyche.

I was barely cognizant of what has happening around me when my mom got sick, fought, and recovered. I only remember receiving lots of presents and being told again and again that “it” wasn’t my fault. Immersed in the white world of hospitals, I was clued in enough to know that I was a lucky kid to still have my mom—luckier than some of the others.

Currently, I go back and forth between telling myself I am being sensitive, and fueling the anger I have over the fact that my own good friend would start a club pretending to help cancer patients so that they could look like a good person for UC Whatever. ♦