The American news cycle is, frankly, boring me. There is nothing interesting to editorialize, in part because the presidential election has not yet transfigured into a meme.
Facebook, Amazon, and Google are still trying to ruin the world one ad campaign at a time, security regulations have not yet caught up with the tech industry, Trump is never going to stop telling us he is God’s gift to the economy, and the Democratic Party is still in the midst of an identity crisis.
Here at Swat, the admissions office has just read through over 11,000 “Why Swarthmore?” essays and sent out acceptance letters to the new members of the class of 2023. In order to help these accepted students make their decision about Swat, I have constructed below an essay that I believe best exemplifies the true essence of Swarthmore.
Why Swarthmore
As a Swarthmore student, you will get a lot of emails about van rides. Van rides are great, but are they great enough to justify the 100+ emails we receive about them every week? That is a question for you to consider, should you choose to attend this institution.
It took me until sophomore year to figure out the difference between SBC and SGO, Lang and Lang, and Clothier and Clothier.
In my computer science Artificial Intelligence class, we are learning how to program ourselves out of a job when we fail to be better at programming than the hacker teenager living in his neighbor’s basement.
Being the elite liberal arts institution that we are, of course, we read a lot of Foucault. If I had a dollar for every time Foucault was assigned at this school I would probably be able to buy Wharton an air conditioner.
We get up every day, go to class, and receive different lenses through which we can look at the world. To be honest, these “lenses” tend to confuse the hell out of me. If we are looking at a chair with a modernist interpretation through an anthropological, sociological lens tinted with a splash of psychoanalytics, will we actually see the chair, or will we just see fuzzy remnants of our own confused, hyper-focused yet sleep-deprived brains?
Don’t even get me started on the emails. I swear Swat students get more emails per day than the CEO of a Fortune 500 Company. I honestly believe we spend more time reading (deleting) emails than actually attending the events these emails describe.
One time I ran into a window in a library after six straight hours of exams. This was not a high point for me. It was painful, and I ended up with a concussion.
To summarize, at Swat, we get up every day, go to class, internalize existentialism, do eighteen hours of homework, sleep (maybe), rinse, and repeat.
And for what? So we can become “productive” members of society? Please tell me how getting addicted to Sharples french fries and being able to analyze Foucault renders you in any way productive. Honestly, most of us are so lacking in social skills we could use a lesson in basic conversation.
The End.
Anyways, I sincerely hope prospective students do come here. This is a pretty exceptional place, despite the fact that in the outside world, you will be asked if you meant Skidmore, if you go to an all women’s college, how to spell “S-w-a-r-t-h-m-o-r-e,” and whether or not it is a community college. However, regardless of the questions with which you will inevitably be confronted about this place away from the Swat bubble, know with certainty that you will be reaping the benefits of this place for the rest of your life.
