Alum Disappointed with Exonian Attitude
Barbara Marcotte, an alum, recently visited Exeter again and decided to stop by Wetherell for some lunch. Marcotte knew something was wrong immediately after sitting down.
“Everything just felt a bit...off,” she explained. “There was something missing, something real and important that was gone.”
Marcotte stared at the people around her who were scarfing down brownies, gaping complacently at their phones, and laughing at their own jokes when it hit her.
“They weren’t complaining or whining,” she revealed, before correcting herself. “Well some of them were of course, some of them always will. However, there was much, much less grumbling than usual.”
Though what this particular alum observed was just one case, this was not an isolated incident. In fact, complaining has gone down by about 37.19 percent this year, according to the stoichiometric calculations of one science teacher.
The teacher stated, “It may seem totally unnatural but there is actually a definitive, biological justification for this behavior. This decline in complaining is due to the absurdly warm weather this year. New England winters have proved time and time again to be a critical moment for bonding Exonians. Without the weather to unite them, all Exonians have to whine about is the quality of the nutrition coming out of the dining halls and the decided lack of quality of the year’s preps.”
Just as the teacher postulated, this “Nice Exeter Weather Syndrome” (NEWS) has had an extremely negative impact on Exonians’ social lives.
“My ‘friends’ and I have nothing to commiserate about anymore so we just sit in silence,” one Exonian complained. “It’s like we’re all married and 50 years old, with nothing to do with our spouse but watch the news. Do I look like I wanna become some suburban house-dad to you? I came here to go to college and get rich, not sit around and open and close and open and close Facebook on my phone.”
Another Exonian agreed. “The faculty have more animated conversations than we do, and all they talk about is the history of Bulgarian towels and ant-mating patterns.”
The alum overall felt a tingling sense of loss. “This is not the Exeter I came to loathe. Where are the ice-related injuries? Where are the non-ice-related injuries framed as ice-related injuries? Icicles don’t even fall from the tops of buildings anymore. How is survival of the littest supposed to happen?”
After grabbing a couple bananas and eighteen DHall mugs, Barbara Marcotte cast one last judgemental look over the lukewarm crowd. No one noticed.