Dora Guo

Graduating seniors, we are FREEEAAAAKS! We’ve gone to naked parties, rubbed Theodore Dwight Woolsey’s toe, and watched orchestra concerts on Halloween. Our conversations include words as long as our walk up Science Hill. It’s a wonder we have friends, and yet our schedules have been jam-packed with hangouts, group study sessions, and some more freaky deaky things (I’ve seen sex scheduled on G-cals). 

For the past four years, Yale has provided a space for weirdos like us. We sometimes call it the “Yale bubble” while our relatives call us “liberal snowflakes.” Elon Musk even has a name for us, which he announced this week in a Twitter thread: wacktivist Olympic gold medalists “at the epicenter of the woke mind virus attempting to destroy civilization.” Every new moniker affirms the same fundamental truth: you’ve got to be strange to want to be here. To uproot your life to live in L-dub. To douse yourself in Eau de Stacks and call it a vibe. To make class registration one of fall semester’s biggest social events.

Until recently, I never thought I was a freak. In fact, I chose to come to Yale so that I could live more normally. “Be happier,” I told myself, after accruing more sleep debt and extracurricular activities than any seventeen-year-old should. While making college decisions, over and over, I found myself Googling lists of “the happiest schools.” Yale was consistently among the top. Truthfully, I’ve only become less normal.

I think we all have something that we can point to and think, “Yeah, I’ve always been limited edition.” Not to out myself too much, but in the fourth grade, I referred to myself as Potassium and made up weekly extra credit assignments (worth nothing, of course) for myself where I used words from my electronic dictionary in original sentences.

Yale has only added to that weirdness. I actually enjoy dining hall food because even on Tofu Tender Days, I can look across the table and see a friend I love, enjoying their chicken. My favorite movie just became “The Princess Switch 3” because I stayed up with friends in Branford dissecting its three main characters, all played by Vanessa Hudgens. And while I don’t schedule sex, I passed out Sillybandz to wildly enthusiastic concert-goers at Spring Fling and made out with one. Yalies have made me weirder, and I love it. I hope Yale has done that for you.

Through shenanigans and study sessions, we’ve banded together. We’ve been goofy when we shouldn’t have, and serious when we probably could’ve chilled out. We’ve chased our aspirations and helped our friends chase theirs. Yalies make me feel like I could run for public office tomorrow or through Bass Library naked, and both would be just fine.

Our lives are ours to live. Some of us will go back to our high school ways, but I sincerely hope some of us will make the conscious choice to keep the freak. We can spread it far and wide and live up to Elon Musk’s epidemiologic forecasting. I suspect the world could use minds like yours.

What the world doesn’t need is more boring. People love boring because it’s predictable and easy. You know exactly what you’re getting with boring. Who wants that? I certainly don’t.

So please be a freak, and never stop! But you should probably keep your clothes on in public spaces — until reunion, that is.

JACOB CRAMER
Jacob (BF '22) was a staff writer for WKND. He wrote personal narratives that dove deep into pop culture or whatever was on his mind, often with the help of influencers and local experts. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, he studied psychology and Spanish.