As an underclassman, one of the first skills I learned from my older, wiser and infinitely cooler peers was how to spot a senior; to observe how they blithely cock their heads when they laugh, how they sashay down the Walk, how and where they congregate. Now that my class has finally risen to the occasion, I've come under some duress. It seems that the almighty League of Seniors has dissipated before my very eyes.
As a senior, I do senior things. I eat, drink, watch HBO On Demand. I frequent de facto senior hang outs. Lately, though, I've had trouble locating other seniors as I find myself asphyxiated in a plebian cornucopia. I saw seniors at Feb Club, but even that was infiltrated by juniors. I feel like the pariah in a goddamn peon horn of plenty. Briefly, I entertained the possibility that I'm simply not cool enough to hang around the seniors ... clearly, I've ruled that out.
Take last week, for instance. Walking into Pod late one evening (my first mistake), I intended to meet up with some worthy senior friends and mingle among other worthy seniors. Instead I was ambushed by sophomores with halfway decent fakes and an ego quotient as lethal as their BACs. Wading through the crowd was akin to crossing the Ho Chi Minh Trail in 1968. By the time I reached the bar, I was too delirious to utter a color for my drink order. Fortunately, my lone worthy senior friends spared me further distress. Even the library, once a vanguard of 2007 vitality, is now a safehouse for the young ones to run free - sort of like daycare, I guess.
Where did they all come from? And what have they done with the seniors? My soul-searching ended inconclusively, so I consulted a friend. She said the admissions department overaccepted the Class of 2008. But that doesn't account for what actually happened to my comrades. Did the juniors eat them? Could seniors be hibernating during winter months? An exodus to New York and I missed the boat? This could easily be my fault, after all. Maybe I blacked out. Or maybe I went comatose through commencement. The more I think about it, the more plausible it all seems.
Whatever the answer, it is my crusade to find it. I have mere weeks to complete my mission before I'm living with parents and not on Pine Street, but my faith is high. We're all gone for good in a matter of days, only to be thrust before a crowd even lower than the underclassmen I bemoan: the work force.
