I've spent the past two weeks waiting on inspiration for a column topic to no avail. I intently observed people on campus and found more of the same things I had already written about. But leaving central one night, a car filled with track team alumni drove past me whining, "I'm having trouble with my relationship."
When athletes who don't even go here anymore find my work banal, I know it's time for a theme change. So instead of listening to the issues people were talking about, I decided to listen to how they were saying it.
And what I found was a plethora of ranking. In conversations all over campus, people are ranking their lives. We're giving ordinal importance to everything from classes and professors to friends and events.
The penchant to rank is not surprising. Most every student knows Duke's rank in the annual U.S. News and World Report on colleges. Each week we look to the ESPN and AP polls for the basketball team's ranking. Your class rank in high school is a factor for acceptance at the University. For better or worse, numbers dictate a lot of Duke.
Assigning rank is even more apparent in the social realm. I learned who the "Core Four" sororities are as a p-frosh. The different "tiers" of fraternities on campus are well known before rush begins in the spring. There exists this need to put aspects of our lives in order. Whether it be how the most recent basketball game stacked up against the rest you've attended, or how your courses this semester fare against the previous ones, everything needs its place.
Some people even like to rank themselves. Perhaps the funniest thing I have heard all year: a group of seniors have nicknamed their clique "The V.I.P.s" because they consider themselves to be the most important people on campus. Aside from the fact that these self-proclaimed winners are pathetic at best, it seems ratings are rampant.
Once the observation had been made, I started to wonder why we're so fixated on ranking. And we're not just talking comments like "he's one of my favorite people" but statements like "that was my second best date function. Definitely among my top ten nights at Duke, ever." My immediate conclusion was that it was Duke-endemic. As is with so many other quirks on campus, maybe it's just our environment that makes us give preferential status to everything from bars to eateries on-points.
Directing the blame at Duke is a logical conclusion. At convocation they tell us that we are among the best in the country.
We attract the best athletes, the best scholars, the most inventive, most talented. and the list goes on. Nan even told us how many valedictorians and SAT scorers of 1600 were not accepted to our class. From the start of orientation, we are programmed to rank.
We come from different corners of the country (in some cases, corners of the world) to compete for another four years among even tougher competition. Most everyone I know has gone to ACES at least once to check their class rank. Whether the result is a grimace or a smile, we want to know where we lie.
Looking deeper, there is (not shockingly) an aspect of drama. Adding a rating to something adds emphasis. Sure a class can be boring, but when a person describes it as the worst thing they have ever experienced in their academic lives, it takes on a totally different meaning. Some people need to live in hyperbole because melodrama makes the triteness of daily life interesting. A bad date is information on how your evening went; a painful evening with a wretched person can spark interest and requests for details.
We're part of a need-to-know society where a significant portion wants to tell. It's a symbiosis of indulgence and divulgence. And the interesting part is how subtle ranking can be. It wasn't until I focused on the language on campus that I realized how much of a crutch it is.
While assigning ratings to people, places and things is meant to signify their importance, when it's used all the time it loses the effect. That's the problem with persistent ranking-you become the person who cries wolf, thus making the truly big moments indistinguishable from the rest.
So what's the big conclusion? There really is none. This week was meant for observation. No analysis of hook-ups. No columns about black lace underwear and sororities that stink of ignorance and trigger dry heaves. After all the hoopla about no variety in the editorial pages, it was time to go back to the basics and look at the larger student population.
Jen Wlach is a Trinity senior. Her column appears every other Wednesday.
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