Increasing Rates of Unique, Quirky, and Generally Esoteric Individuals Takes the UW by Storm
With a campus boasting over 50,000 students, professors, researchers, and fentanyl users, the University of Washington is easily one of the most diverse campuses in the United States. With this diversity comes a great deal of benefits, such as the free exchange of academic and social ideas on campus and the readily-available variety of skillsets that have been integral to our research and university development, but it also comes with drawbacks: namely, the ethnic food they serve at Center Table, white people claiming to be 4.6% French/8.5% Northern Italian/3.3% Irish/83.6% WASP, and the ever-increasing pandemic of individuality complexes sweeping across the wannabe liberal elites of Seattle: university students.
Following the UW’s disgraceful losing streak during last season’s football championships, we have since lost the will to identify with the shared campus identity of being a loser, and the collective urge to distinguish oneself from the rest of the dawg pack has been more prevalent than ever. Since releasing our intent to interview those who may fall in that category, our email has been flooded with requests to be the first interviewee so that they have one more fun fact to say about themselves when participating in a “niche-off.”
“I’m a skater,” asserts first-year student Anthony Falcon, who snagged that spot by threatening one of our presidents at chromatic butterfly knifepoint, “but I’m not one of those skaters that’d be in Skate Club and do nothing but skate, y’know? Like, I definitely like skating and I just figured out how to balance on my board for a minute, but I have a lot more interests outside of that, like going to twenty-dollar punk shows in Capitol Hill or listening to super underground artists that I won’t tell you because you won’t know them anyways—Deftones. I really pride myself on being open minded to new experiences and perspectives, so I really hate all this labeling and boxing-in society imposes on people like me. And by people like me, I mean just me, and maybe a few of my friends, who are also super unique but not as much as me.”
Falcon then shows our representative the underside of his board, which is carefully dotted with deliberately random stickers he claims is reflective of his interests, personality, and birthchart, not that you need to know. Following his reveal, our representative was made to sign an NDA written on a piece of blue raspberry rolling paper promising not to reveal how cool and interesting he is based on the very accessible media he consumes. We are still anxiously waiting for him to smoke it so we are able to reveal what we know about him and his many, many Gemini placements.
After watching Falcon and his friends skate but mostly sit in the middle of Red Square for a little more, our Off Leash representative was no longer able to tell who was wearing which Shein Affliction t-shirt and departed before securing a follow-up interview.
Other forms of displaying one’s personality and interests are reflected in the more high-brow brands, media, or other consumable products available to only to the students whose parents take them on trips to Hawaii or Italy or the Ivory Coast (if they’re socially liberal but fiscally conservative) every Winter, Spring, and Summer break, and who are definitely majoring in something non-STEM because they can afford to do so. Such is the case for many transplants that hail from Orange County, uptown NYC, or Austin, like fourth-year student Ceclia Rockefeller-Vanderbilt-Kennedy-du Pont, who graciously made time for our broke-ass representative in between going to artisan cafes and contemporary art galleries in Milan while studying abroad for her Fine Arts major.
“I just want to first say that I am so incredibly privileged to be sitting here in my studio apartment speaking to you right here on my computer, because most people don’t even have that,” she comments, our representative getting a clear view of the Duomo behind her, “and I think it is very important for me to recognize my privilege in the current state of the world. I’ve been reading a lot of articles about all forms of prejudice in first-world countries, and I just felt like the message really resonated with me and my own experiences. For example, my late grandfather left my brother all of his money and financial assets, while I only got the vacation houses in Berlin, Tokyo, and Lausanne, and a few blood diamonds mined from the Congo—rampant misogyny is still a very big issue all over the world, and as I have been continuously victimized by it, you can say I’m very involved in social issues.”
“Fuck you,” our representative had replied, which unfortunately cut our interview with her short. Off Leash News has since received a slew of lawsuits under her father’s name, so please buy our magazines to support the little guy in the fight against Big Military-Industrial-Complex-and-Beneficiaries-of-Apartheid.
The last method of asserting one’s individuality on campus, which has been steadily decreasing by 2.4% each year since the release of ChatGPT and when The Bell Jar and No Longer Human went viral on TikTok, is through the more traditional means of academic distinction. After a lengthy search for an individual who would provide some insight, which involved prowling through Suzzallo Library’s reading room to find someone that didn’t call it the “Harry Potter Room” or get pissy after hearing someone sniff too loudly, our representative suddenly realized there was still one more place where the pseudo-intellectuals had not yet reached: the organic chemistry study center. Tucked in the corner behind a pile of unconscious (we hope) CHEM 238 victims, we found one person willing to share their experiences.
“I’m actually taking orgo, thermo, discrete math, quantum physics, and preparing to apply to an MD-PhD program this quarter, so it’s a little bit hectic right now,” admits triple-major, quadruple-minor second-year student with super-senior standing Brian Sturgeon with a small shit-eating grin, “my hobbies? Well, my ‘thing’ is making peanut-butter cookies while watching Wallace and Gromit, so I do have a life outside academics. I also really enjoy participating in research.”
When asked about what kind of research, Sturgeon replied, “well, you know, stem cells and all that. You probably don’t even know what those are because you’re a stupid humanities major, but they’re basically the biological equivalent of the black box theory, which is the engineering equivalent of the Iran-Contra scandal before it got leaked, to put it in layman’s terms. You people have never experienced a hard class before, so I don’t even know why I’m still talking to you. I’m planning to shadow my dad’s third girlfriend at his plastic surgery clinic tomorrow and ask my stepmom’s intern to write a letter of recommendation for me—what have you done with your life?”
This epidemic has not only been observed in our student populations. Professors have also been riding the wave of individualism, most notably by introducing new grading methods, giving alternate assignments that serve the same role as a final exam, and openly whipping out a Four Loko whenever a student begins to debate them unprompted during a 50-minute lecture on a subject they’ve been researching for decades–however, due to the fact that people with a doctorate immediately become senile and boring, Off Leash News has decided not to pursue that avenue of investigative journalism.
Even the usual pot smokers hanging around the Ave or McMahon balconies have been branching out to other avenues of substance abuse, such as cocaine or black tar heroin, which is an angle we do plan on pursuing with our next batch of new Off Leash recruits as a method of easing them into our organization. Applications will open soon, so keep your eyes peeled and your sleeves long.
Our investigation into student examples of self-proclaimed eccentricity has revealed what we have already known for decades: college is a time of self-discovery for everyone who crosses the gates of higher academia, and with that often comes with the risk of hyper-individualism bordering on the verge of self-inflicted intellectual or social isolation—but is it really such a risk if most of those who undergo the process come out as more well-rounded individuals in their later years, having learned about their preferences and true interests? Would the harm done to yourself and your interpersonal relationships during this metamorphosis be permanent, unrectifiable even with the collective knowledge that such is the byproduct of growth? Do you ever regret those years in middle school spent watching anime and wishing you were in the Naruto universe so that you could swap spit with Itachi?
Our sources say no—unless you’re still doing this shit at 30. Put down the guitar pick, delete your Depop account, ghost your dealer, and log onto Linkedin.