Friday, June 8, 2012

Trying to slow-play being the coolest kid at Babson immediately made me the coolest kid at Babson



You know what’s really frustrating? When we meet BC people out at bars and they never seem to have any idea who I am. Case and point, Hyatt’s new Joshua Tree girlfriend who claimed she had never even seen me before. And that’s just the most recent example. This happens to me all the time. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Like, I’m pretty much living a double life. Celebrated media mogul by day. Anonymous Boston College alumnus by night. I’m basically Batman.

Seriously though, with the exception of Angie and her gluten-free blog, I’m probably the biggest internet tycoon in Newton. Just running the best inside-joke website in America and posting the best videos on Youtube. But outside of the All-Stars, what do I have to show for it? Pretty much nothing. Nick texts me every night before he goes to bed. And Josh and I still hang out on occasion. But that’s about it. I haven't seen my roommates in months. Victoria moved to Pawnee. Bo works 800 hours a day. I try to talk to J-rod whenever he's not on the prowl, but pussy never sleeps so that's easier said than done.

I mean I guess I have nobody to blame but myself. It’s cause I played my cards wrong when I first transferred to BC. Basically just walked around campus with so much swag that everyone got scared. Literally not one person could muster the strength to talk to me. I came on way too strong. They saw a big personality and they wanted nothing to do with it. Guys were threatened by me. And girls knew they would just end up fighting with their roommates over me, so they avoided me all together.

Well, as the “new guy” in my Babson program, I promised myself I wouldn’t let this happen again. 24 out of the 27 students in my program just graduated together in May. They’re basically all best friends. So as soon as I had to stand up in front of the class and be like, “Hey, I’m Mike. I went to BC for undergrad. I’m originally from Newton, blah, blah, blah,” I knew this was going to be somewhat difficult.

So I just tried to be as unassuming as possible. Wore plain t-shirts to class every day. Didn’t raise my hand even when I knew the answer. And when my Business Writing professor asked me if I had any writing experience, it took every ounce of self-restraint I had just to say “I wrote for the school newspaper back in high school, but that’s about it.”  

Well now this plan seems to be backfiring because I’m sneaky the most popular kid in class. People just trying to get a taste of this mystery man. Asking me to join Wednesday-night soccer leagues. Begging me to play basketball with them after class. I even got invited to my first Babson party last week (obviously I said I was busy even though I wasn’t). 

It's only been three weeks, but my stock has never been higher. The more things I turn down, the more things I get invited to. Eventually I'm gonna have to stop slow-playing this and just start dominating. Like, it’s probably too soon to start saying good-bye to all my Newton friends, but at the same time it might even be too late. Beaver for life!

P.S. Is anyone else’s mom going to Antique’s Roadshow tomorrow? My mom is and she is literally losing her shit right now with excitement. Never seen anything like it.