Complain, complain

Complain, whine, complain, whine, bullshit, complain… and on it goes, such is the verbal existence of many Princeton students.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to complain. My favorite is the classic “I’m so tired.” On Monday I gave it a twist by adding a dash of “today felt like a week!” And yes, if you’re wondering, when some probable curve-wrecker wrote “Stop complaining, work harder” on the blackboard near the Rocky-Mathey library, I responded with a chalky “Fuck you :)!”

During lunch at my eating club a few days ago, however, I realized things might have gone too far. I was chatting with someone about the things I had due in the next few weeks, no complaints intended, when the MOL major sitting next to me felt the need to butt in and emphasize the intensity of his work load.

I’m a history major and all my friends are either pre-meds or engineers. I get it already: humanities majors never do any work/have no job skills/should be beaten with lead pipes, whatever. But this didn’t feel like a regular bashing. It was the ugliest and most obnoxious form of complaining: “the monopoly on suffering.”

Acting like you’re the one with the worst lot is not only self-centered and reeking of bad social skills, but an insult to people in the world who have to worry about than a couple of nights with a few hours sleep. I think we can all agree that everyone here works hard, even those of us without problem sets. Beat me with a lead pipe, I’m biased.