Bonnie Chau Chau is a second-year
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It has come to my attention North Campus majors suck. South
Campus majors rock. Wait, what am I saying? What has rendered me,
an English major, so disillusioned? Perhaps it is less of a
disillusionment with North Campus majors than it is a growing
obsession with South Campus majors taking ahold of me. Gasp! Can it
be true?
Alas.
The occasional foray into South Campus is just too interesting.
Freshman year, I had a class in the Math Science building ““
an English class of all things ““ and I was forty minutes late
the first day, trying to find the room. Back then, I thought I was
really south there ““ MS! Whoa! Connected to Boelter! Ahhhh!
But having a class in the Life Sciences building this year has
given me a whole new understanding of the Deep South. It is like a
whole new world.
Now, when I go to South Campus, I know it. People are different
there. They look different, they walk differently, they dress, uh
… differently. People shuffle, they scuffle, they mumble, they
mutter, they look at the ground, they look at the sky. But at least
they don’t ostentatiously wave around books of
Shakespeare’s sonnets in my face, as some normal ““
“normal” ““ North Campus students do.
I know there must be “normal” people on South Campus
too, but where are they hiding? Where are the people who shower and
brush their hair and at least glance into the mirror or turn on the
light when they dress in the morning?
 Illustration by JARRETT QUON/Daily Bruin Where do they
come from, these South Campus people? I always feel as if I am in
some colony of the future ““ though I am not sure how I would
feel about this as a representation of the future. Some colony of a
new post-world world. Like in “Waterworld” or
“The Postman” or some other movie with Kevin Costner
and pseudo-heroic people in rags.
How can North Campus even compete? On North Campus, we have
normal weird, good weird, bad weird, annoying weird, intentional
weird. But people in the South are weird. The weirdness of these
Southern folk is just beyond me. Weird weird.
But this is why I love them.
Sure, I have comm friends, history friends and poli sci friends,
but if I find out you’re a physics, engineering or comp sci
student … it’s all over. I will follow you around
forever.
“So what’s your major?”
“Electrical engineering.”
“O reeeeaaaally?”
I am pretty sure the obsession has nothing to do with fashion
sense or with money or with the probable future of laboratory or
cubicle jobs under fluorescent lights ““ appealing as that may
seem.
Perhaps, then, it is the mystery, the skill, the talent, the
genius I cannot begin to comprehend. I am not bad at math and
science, although people seem to think so. But there is no way
I am good, and there is even less of a way I could devote my
undergraduate years, much less the rest of my life, to math and
science. Which would explain why I find every weird physics student
so mindblowingly fascinating.
I wonder how many other people out there are secretly or not so
secretly obsessed with physicists? Is it something to be
embarrassed about or ashamed of? Nah.
I was talking about this with a friend who shares my sentiments.
She thinks the attraction is to opposites and extremes. She was
drawn to either end: design, art and film, or comp sci, physics and
engineering, while dismissing the middle pool (poli sci or econ,
for example) as not extreme enough.
I thought about this, and decided as awesome as it would be for
me to surround myself with cool artsy Northern people, the chances
of this seem quite low. Because North Campus students suck.
Maybe down South they don’t spend as much of their time in
school bullshitting. They are not as skilled in the art of
pretense, facades, lies and poppycock that goes on in the writing
of so many papers.
Up north, there is a kind of boastful atmosphere that gets
obnoxious after a while, and I don’t think I should
intentionally drag any more condescending and overwise people into
my life, since I probably provide enough condescension and
pretension for my own life as it is.
It’s refreshing to be in contact with people who are not
so overly wise. This was proven to me when I found myself talking
to a South Campus friend about love ““ what I claimed to be
the universal language. He suddenly interjected ““
“No, the universal language isn’t love, it’s
math.”
Math! The universal language! Over love! This honest conviction
in itself is enough to make cowlicks seem endearing.