Thursday, March 6, 2008

College students' worries

While I was on one of my interviews, I stopped at a student organization's display of students' secrets. They put up a clothes line and students were supposed to write their secret on a 3x5 index card and attach it to the line. So many of them sounded familiar, painful, or funny.

- I'm worried [university name] has killed my self-esteem and motivation.

- I'm a CS major with a 4.0, but I've never been loved.

- I tell everyone I'm a diehard Democrat, but if it's Obama vs. McCain, I'm voting GOP.

- Sometimes I wish I went to another school.

- I never feel that I'm good enough, so I spent a lot of time being afraid.

- As much as I want to fall in love, part of me just wants to get laid. A LOT. [Female handwriting?]

- Although it disgusts me, I have a sexual relationship with my dog.

- When I was young, I burned down an unfinished house out of anger. No one knew.

- I'm terrified I will never really be happy.

- People tell me to be myself, but I don't know who I am.

- I masterbate. [and can't spell.]


There were stories about how a poster's father shot himself last year when they were sleeping down the hall, and another poster's best friend bled to death, but it wasn't a secret and everyone knew about it. A community college student came to visit the university for motivation. A guy slept with his best friend's sister, and then felt too weird to ever speak with his friend again.


Some secrets are scary. Others are surprisingly universal.

1 comment:

C. Moon Reed said...

This is a really great post! I like the idea of a clothesline as a low-tech version of an anonymous blog.

My only bone to pick is your comment: "[female handwriting?]" The comment contains a lot of assumptions about female sexuality that may or may not be true.