(Alternatively; A Defense of UG2023)
“yAAAAAAAYAYAYayAyaAYaYAaYAyAYaYAyayAyAYAYAYAYayeeeeeeeeeee.” -Yoko Ono, at some point probably
Every Beatles fan in the history of Beatle fandom has gone on a journey with Yoko Ono. From hating her and blaming her for the Beatles breaking up, to realizing it actually wasn’t her fault, to then realizing that hey, her music’s actually kind of avant-garde, before realizing that no, it sounds terrible, before finally treating the whole matter with indifference- none of this really matters when it comes to the music- you can tell where someone is in terms of this journey depending on how often they watch The Big Bang Theory. (no you cant I made that up)
As a bright eyed, bubbly 18-year-old, I went into the multiple zoom breakout rooms and online Bash of 2024’s telling anyone who was interested that my top artist on Spotify was the Plastic Ono Band (it wasn’t). I’d do anything to look cool, and for people to like me. Then, O week started.
It was fine at first. The sessions were engaging, and informative about the university. But, slowly and surely, one began to hear whispers that things weren’t okay, from the false advertising on the Ashoka website, making everyone think that all the RHs were exactly the same, to the missing dog statue. Each zoom call became more and more tedious, with the repetitive calls to introduce oneself and one’s major becoming a nightmare. My head kept replaying different avant garde musical pieces performed by Ono, each more terrifyingly screamy than the last. As my online o-week ended, I had to wonder- is this my college experience? Zoom breakout rooms and whatsapp forwards?
As a third-year often mistaken for being a fresher (it happened again ☹) I couldn’t help but look at UG25 and UG2023 in envy. They got to experience their first year on campus- they got to whine about RH4 much earlier than the rest of us, they actually knew what their cohort looked like, and most importantly, they went through the friendship evaluation process much earlier than the rest of us (the process wherein one realizes that the people they call friends aren’t what they seem like in real life and dump them).
I hated them. I hated that they got to make mistakes and learn from them earlier than I ever did, that they got to mess around and have fun earlier than I could, and that they got the whole campus experience of 3 years, vs. mine of 2.25. But then, I remember what they looked like during their respective O-weeks. Dazed, confused, lost in AC-02 and on the brink of tears, they looked like the physical embodiment of ‘No, No, No’- overwhelmed with too much information in one go with literally no one to turn to, not really.
O-week is like RH5- it’s where your college dreams go to die. No matter how you experienced it, online or offline, it still crushed your vision of an Ashoka where all the residence halls had the same format and the dog statue was still there with a reality that’s far more troubling than we can ever imagine.
As much as we hate them, we’re all in the same boat in this black hole... I mean, bubble in Sonipat. To me, that’s sadder than I could ever imagine.
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