A Family Weekend Confession
Oh, how you are in trouble. The first day of parent’s weekend is tomorrow, and I sure hope you’re ready.
Regardless, this is my chance to play bad cop. This is my chance to air all of your dirty laundry. This is my chance to expose what it really means to be an Exonian, just in time for all your parents, grandparents, siblings, boyfriends, girlfriends, pets, and children to see.
We Netflix. Yes, it’s a verb now. Forget ESSO clubs, forget sports, forget extracurriculars. The first thing that most Exonians have in common, except for sleep deprivation and hand foot mouth, is an addiction to Netflix. A truly accurate college app of an Exonian would list Netflix as an extracurricular for 10/10 slots on the Common App, but some Exonians feel the need to go to college, so not all of our apps look like that.
In reality, what are weekends on this campus without Netflix? Grainger filled to the brim with angsty teenagers ready to make pleasant eye contact with chaperoning teachers while leaving room for Jesus between each other while they dance? Agora absolutely filled with excited students crowd surfing and fist bumping as their dreams come true listening to the Human iPod? What are we supposed to do on weekends if a) we put off our homework until Sunday like a normal human, and b) the school still doesn’t let us “hang out” in the rooms of the opposite gender (although who really follows this rule, because, worst case scenario, if you get caught you just have early check-in giving you an excuse to get away and watch more Netflix, so it’s a win/win). How are 1100 teenagers (plus a handful of twenty-something PGs) supposed to entertain themselves?
We Netflix, and we Netflix, and we keep Netflixing until it doesn’t even sound like a real word anymore (which it isn’t, but that’s beside the point). Then we hit a point where we start making deals with ourselves and cutting our priorities short so that we can Netflix.
We pretend: “Okay, I’ll underline random passages in my English book, solve one math problem in the homework then get to class really really early, and shout my problem number to the rest of the class while we’re walking through the door! (Warning - these are the worst type of people).” We cover: “You know, I don’t really need to do the Chem or the English or the Russian or History: I’ll just smile and ask clarification questions and draft humor articles in my notebook while I pretend like I know what’s going on. Gatsby is about a rich white dude and colonial US History is about rich white dudes, so if I just read a few pages of Gatsby I think I’m covered for Histroy too, right?” And we even dick: “I’ve had Senioritis since Prep winter, so I really don’t have to go to class anymore, right? Besides the health center has the best toast on campus. *starts coughing*”
So parents, now that your children’s secrets are out, what are you going to do about it this Parent’s Weekend? If your answer wasn’t subscribe to HBO GO, you were wrong.
P.S. Hulu is for posers.