McGill is a big school. This is an observation I made the other day after accidentally walking into a building that I’d never realized existed. The building incorporated a bunch of metal oddities (which I’m assuming had something to do with engineering). Feeling completely awkward and hopeless, I galloped out of there like someone being attacked by the ubiquitous Nazi-Ghost, a prominent figure in the mythology of my friends and video game designers.
Nazi-Ghosts aside, this moment had a profound effect on me. Soon afterward I found it impossible to go into a McGill classroom without feeling incredibly insignificant; which is ridiculous considering that I am Joseph Barnbar the VI and am therefore far more significant than the majority of you. But don’t worry, I quickly found a way to deal with my feelings of inconsequentiality and now, thanks to this article, (another Barnbar triumph) so can you! You see, I realized that the easiest way to make myself feel better about my own triviality was to create a stereotype, apply it to each student in a specific faculty, and then rest content knowing that I—situated outside the stereotype—was indeed an individual.
I’m going to presume that the first objection you, the reader, have to my master plan is that it’s far too creative to be carried out by someone who isn’t me. Graciously I acknowledge this objection as fact and, therefore, in an act of unfathomable kindness will provide a simple layout of the faculty stereotypes that I was able to create. I deal exclusively with the fields of literature, history, and anthropology, as these constitute the majority of what I study. So if you’re in science, please ignore this magnificent article entirely and concentrate on finding a cure for the raucous fungal growth I’ve developed on my lower back. It’s starting to smell like heated mayonnaise.
I begin with Literature, because this is the faculty in which I find myself most alien. Visibly, I define this faculty as the faculty of scarves. I don’t understand what compels so many lit students to purchase so many scarves and of such variety. Are their necks really that cold? Do they need to wear them so tight and avant-garde? Is it connected to a fairly obvious addiction to autoerotic asphyxiation? I assume so, as this is also the faculty in which one will undoubtedly meet the archetypal, intellectual masturbator. Everyone knows this person: his/her name is always somewhere in the realm of Sebastian or Ophelia, in class, they raise their hand like they’re holding a glass of brandy, and they will often become so flustered at attempting to relate the works of Mark Twain to Sigmund Freud’s boner that they’ll wave their hands manically in the air before proclaiming, “I’m sorry, I’ve lost myself.” If you recognize immediately that you’re NOT one of these people, then go ahead and give yourself a pat on the back, because I don’t hate you.
The second faculty I’d like to break down is History, as this is a faculty whose stereotype I can readily identify with. This has much to do with what I like to call the conjunctive continuum of paleness and strange eyebrows. History is one of the few faculties where you can immediately situate the academic success of an individual based on the pastiness of their skin and the irrationality of their eyebrows. If you’re sporting a moderate tan and plucked brows, I hope you like stocking shelves. If your pallor resembles that of a seventeenth-century aristocrat and your eyebrows have birds nesting in them, a Rhodes scholarship isn’t far off. And if you’re an albino whose eyebrows are presently circumnavigating the globe, congratulations, you’ve just won history. Collect your prize at the site of the 1765 battle between Donald St. Euqpear and Duke Barnbar of Magornia – I assume you know where that is.
Finally, I’d like to break down the field of anthropology. To be honest, this field was the hardest for me to stereotype. However, after a couple hours of research I found one character that appeared in every single class. This individual was “the guy/girl who never showered.” Apparently, some anthropology students are so enthused to start fieldwork that they begin adapting to the hygienic standards of the great apes long before they are forced to compile a detailed analysis on the fragmentation of their feces and identify its relation to the development of capitalism. Interestingly however, “the guy/girl who never showered” often embodied a few other distinctive traits. The most perplexing was the fact that amongst their almost endless supply of hemp and tie-dye clothing was an absurd amount of rock-climbing equipment. “Look, brethren, another carbineer! This will look so great attached to everything I own. Maybe I can use it to attach my water bottle to my backpack. God, this is so untamed!” This is something I’m sure they shout on a biweekly basis, or in other words, about as often as they bathe.
In conclusion, I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that I—the genius that I am—constructed this entire article as one big exercise in recognizing a clearly lineated stereotype, and significantly, one that appears multiple times in every single McGill classroom. To put it more plainly, I’d like to reintroduce myself one last time as Joseph Barnbar the VI, “The Arrogant Asshole.”
~ Joseph Barnbar the VI/David MacLean
