The teenage years are behind you, or are soon to be, but let’s face it: you’re a student. No matter your age, university can be an awkward place, in and out of Ring Road. Here’s a pop quiz to help alleviate your suffering and guide you through your next post-secondary social dilemma. Ask yourself what you should do in the situations below.
1. At the grocery store checkout, a guy you know from when you were in res stands behind you with his girlfriend. He puts a box of condoms on the conveyor belt.
a) Make a comment about someone on the cover of People magazine.
b) Pretend to have forgotten the product number on your trail mix and run away.
c) Ask if he’s enrolled in Healthy Sexuality.
2. Your English professor sees you reading The Hunger Games on the bus.
a) Say your little sister told you to read it.
b) Explain it’s research for your thesis on young adult fiction.
c) Ask why it wasn’t on the syllabus.
3. True or false: If you’re in a study room and someone else booked it, it’s okay to propose you solve the conflict by seeing who gets the highest score in Angry Birds.
4. You lock your bike onto someone else’s bike.
a) Offer to buy them coffee to redeem yourself.
b) Promise next time you’ll lock it onto someone else’s.
c) Throw a Hail Mary; try to bond over how few carbon emissions you emit.
5. True or false: It’s okay to positively critique the graffiti in the library washroom stalls if you feel the prose flows.
6. You accidentally pick up someone else’s skim non-fat latte from the Biblio Café.
a) Do they even make those?
b) Early bird gets the latte.
c) You feel like an entitled prick all through your class on colonialism.
7. Your friend tries to show you a YouTube video on her MacBook Pro and you accidentally drop it in the Petch Fountain.
a) Blame the university for not draining the fountain.
b) Dive in after it at a very steep angle.
c) Dry it off with your toque and tell her to stick it in a bag of rice.
8. A stranger invites you to slackline.
a) Nike up; just do it.
b) Explain that you don’t do drugs.
9. You visit your TA during office hours and don’t know if you should close the door.
a) Ask TA if they’ve read Lolita.
b) Ask TA how they’d feel if Bieber covered The Police’s “Don’t Stand So Close to Me.”
c) Grow up. Shut the door. Talk about your academics.
10. True or false: The second floor of the library is shush-free.
11. Your cell phone goes off during your prof’s most passionate lecture in HIST 387: The Holocaust. (Your ring tone is Lou Bega’s “Mambo No. 5.”)
a) Face palm.
b) Drop the course.
c) Volunteer community service.
d) Be glad you didn’t set your ring tone to Hanson’s “MMMBop.”
e) All of the above.
12. True or false: You have the right to be frustrated with your academic advisor when they tell you that you don’t get credit for Hempology 101.
What’s the verdict?
If you chose mostly a’s, you’ve got reflexes. You would fare just fine in a shoot-out. For better or worse, you do not hesitate before reacting to awkward social situations.
If you chose mostly b’s, you’re either committed to evading the consequences of your social dilemma or brazenly cavalier — think hungover rockstar who just wants a dark room and some coffee.
If you chose mostly c’s, you are one of the more academically minded, mature and ingenious students, but also the most prone to be disappointed by “the real world.”
