Certain things unite us as Vanderbilt students. We are overly busy, get involved in too many student organizations and always stress about upcoming assignments and exams. Even though Vanderbilt’s student body comes from many places, studies a wide range of majors and will go on to a variety of different careers, there are certain experiences we all go through during our time at Vanderbilt.
Whether good or bad, these canon events make being a Vanderbilt student what it is.
Getting locked out of your dorm room
One thing about Vanderbilt University is that no matter how much we “Dare to Grow,” we will always have a physical key to our dorm rooms. No scan entry, no electronic code, just a good old-fashioned key.
Perhaps one of the worst canon events is leaving your key behind in your room, then returning after a long and tiring day of classes, only to find you have been locked out with no way of getting back in. Curse your roommate for being responsible and locking the door behind them if you want, but now you are stuck either waiting for them to return or trying to hunt them down to borrow their key. You stand in front of your locked door, pondering what to do next and beating yourself up for not taking your key with you. Massive aura loss.
Forgetting your umbrella on a rainy day
As they say, “If you don’t like the Nashville weather, wait 10 minutes.” As we have recently seen, the city can go through a massive ice storm and a 70-degree warm spell in the span of two weeks. It can also go from perfectly sunny to a torrential downpour in minutes. The “bipolar” weather, as my friends describe it, makes it rather difficult to plan ahead.
You leave your room in the morning in shorts and a T-shirt because it seems like a warm and sunny day. At first it is, but halfway through the day as you walk to your next class, the rain starts pouring down out of nowhere. You are umbrella-less and raincoat-less, and now you are soaking wet. You walk into class looking and feeling a little dumb. You shiver in your AC-blasted classroom and wonder why you didn’t think to put an umbrella in your backpack, or at least a sweatshirt. Yet another massive aura loss.
Getting cornered by the campus photographer
You know you’ve found the quintessential “diverse, multicultural college friend group” when the campus photographer just won’t leave you alone. Whether it’s a snow day outing or a cultural celebration on one of the campus’s many lawns, the campus photographer is always lurking, waiting for the perfect opportunity to capture you. Sometimes you can spot him, but sometimes you remain unaware that you are being documented until your photo shows up on one of Vanderbilt’s many Instagram pages.
The liberal arts 360
Vanderbilt is not a small school. With over 8,000 undergraduate students, you would think you would not run into someone you know so often. However, nothing makes you realize how much of a small world the Vanderbilt community is like sitting in a dining hall during lunch rush. Everybody and their mother is there as you walk to your table. You recognize the faces of your classmates, org members, dorm neighbors and people who you don’t even remember knowing. You never know if someone you’d rather avoid is lurking right behind you.
The “liberal arts 360” refers to the swivel you do when you are about to spill tea but need to check that none of the subjects are nearby. In other words, if you are about to gossip about someone, you must look over both shoulders to ensure that person or one of their friends is not nearby.
Almost getting hospitalized by an electric scooter
You’re already having an awful day. You woke up late and had to rush to class, your professor just announced a one-million-page paper and your friend is mad at you for some reason. You are just trying to walk back to your dorm safely, when all of a sudden, you hear a loud whooshing sound next to your ear. You jump back in fear as the electric scooter speeds through where you were just standing. The person on the scooter does not look back.
Electric scooters proliferate on our campus. Usually, they are avoidable, but some tight spots on campus pose a threat to both safety and sanity. Specifically, the bridge across 21st Avenue is prime electric scooter incident territory. The area is so narrow that it is hard not to fear for your life, knowing that at any moment, an electric scooter could come for you.
Waiting in the Rand lines for at least 20 minutes
If it were not for the awful lines and overcrowding, Rand might just qualify as the best dining hall on campus. It has the most consistently tasty food options, with a wide variety of cuisines and dishes. Not to mention the fabulous desserts (a Rand Cookie hates to see me coming). For students like me, whose class schedule does not allow them to eat lunch until after 1:00 p.m. CST, Rand is actually quite pleasant.
However, for students who eat during the lunch rush beginning around 12:00 p.m. CST, the dining experience is sullied by the worst lines you have ever seen. Getting your food takes at least 20 minutes, taking away valuable time where you could be eating, studying, chatting or otherwise recuperating from the busy life Vanderbilt students live. The entire dining area is packed from wall to wall with people, making maneuvering around a true challenge in spatial reasoning. Want to walk past the Randwich and Tex Mex lines to gain access to the salad bar? Too bad, it’s actually everyone’s first day on Earth. Want to go grab a cup of coffee? Sorry, no one seems to have any spatial awareness today. And not to mention having to fight for your life to find an open table, just to give up and settle on a windowsill or the floor.
Fighting for your life on the hilly campus
Perhaps the opposite of the rainy weather incident is walking into class overheated and sweaty. Vanderbilt’s campus doesn’t seem all that steep until you are trekking from Wilson Circle to Buttrick Hall at 9:00 a.m. CST in the morning. As a trade-off for having warm fall weather well into November, August heat in Nashville is absolutely brutal. Walking anywhere in late August will have you sweating and struggling, which is only exacerbated by the hills going up to the main academic buildings (or maybe I’m just out of shape). Combine this with two flights of stairs up to your classroom, and you are now walking into lecture breathing heavily, sweating and oh-so-overheated. To make matters worse, your classroom is no cooler than 85 degrees (I’m looking at you, Calhoun HVAC system), so there is no opportunity to cool off.
Seeing your professor in the wild
Nothing screams jump scare like bumping into your professor at the store, on the street or at some other non-Vanderbilt location. Bonus points if they are with a family member. It’s Saturday, your one time of the week to not worry about classes and assignments, when suddenly you see your professor, standing at the entrance of the Kroger with their child. Who knew professors also went grocery shopping?
If you have a good relationship with said professor, perhaps this interaction will go well. Perhaps you have a friendly conversation and tell them you will see them in class next week. But if not, you are caught in one of the most awkward situations known to the average college student. Do you ignore them and hope they don’t see you? Do you smile and wave? Do you start a conversation? Now you’re reminded of all the homework you have to do before you go to their class on Monday. Great.
Having to kick someone out of a study room
You know the upcoming exam is getting real when you have to book a study room for yourself or your study group. You walk into the library with all your materials, ready to lock in and get some quality studying done. When you arrive at the room you booked, you find it full with no less than six students, snacks, notebooks and dry erase markers spread out all over the table.
You feel bad kicking them out, but you did book this room, and you do need to study. You and your study group check the nearby rooms to see if there is an empty one you can use. Of course, they are all full. You and your companions stand around for a minute, wondering what to do, until someone musters up the courage to enter the room with the classic, “Hey, I’m so sorry, but we booked this room.” The people inside scramble to gather their stuff as you apologize again for making them leave. Awkwarddddd.
Sitting in the sun with your friends
To end with something positive, nothing beats the feeling of sitting on Alumni Lawn with your friends, chatting and soaking up the sun. Fall and spring in Nashville offer some of the most wonderful warm weather days, making it almost impossible not to want to spend time outside. Whether that’s playing Spikeball on Peabody Lawn, throwing a frisbee in front of Commons or picnicking with friends at Centennial Park, the warm weather begs to be taken advantage of. On the first day in February that’s above 60 degrees, you can see what seems like the entire Vanderbilt student body sitting in the grass of Alumni Lawn or eating lunch on Rand Patio. This canon event reminds us of how beautiful our campus is and how strong our community is. But watch out because this is also a campus photographer’s prime time to capture unsuspecting students.
