The definitive list of everyone in your freshman seminar

Your freshman seminar is a social minefield – difficult to navigate, easy to step on explosives and combust into a thousand pieces of public regret. The stakes are high, as you have to blend in but without standing out too much in a way to earn a title like “That Kid Who Can Never Get An Answer Right” or “That Girl Who Still Brings A Perfectly-Manicured Pencil Case To Class.” With that in mind, we’ve compiled the definitive guide to everyone in your class from the TA who wishes they were anywhere but here to that one guy who thinks it’s a normal thing to turn up in a three-piece suit and sinister leather gloves. Welcome to the next four years of your life.

Kid who is always three minutes late

He’ll walk in blowing air through his lips and shaking his head to let the professor and the rest of the seminar that he’s had a “nightmare” this morning. He’s not normally like this, but he seems to have a “nightmare” literally every Thursday morning.

Kid who is always 10+ minutes late

“Sorry!” he will mouth-whisper as all 170 heads whip around at the sounds of the door opening. This will happen every single day leading up to the final, for which he will not show up.

Kid who is always 10+ minutes early to stake out his area and ass-kiss

He’s just checking the notes he made from the reading before. The professor walks in. He literally starts tapping his notes on the desk. He bursts into a coughing fit. Silence for a moment. “What did you think of the reading?” he asks, knowing full well you haven’t opened a book.

The TA who is wishing they had pursued a career in literally anything else instead of having to endure but one more second of this hell

“I’ve got friends who are already earning 100k pre-tax,” they’re thinking, “and here I am distributing lecture handouts like a sap. And here comes Zach, if he does that ‘this isn’t really a question, more of a comment’ shtick, I swear to God I’m going to lose it.”

The guy who says: “umm yeah this isn’t really a question, more of a comment?”

Zach, please, you’re going to make the TA cry again.

Communist guy

Green canvas jacket. Beat up white sneakers. “Full communism now” tee. Lenin cap. Lank, greasy hair. And the ultra-exclusive insider knowledge that capitalism is cancer.

The international student who doesn’t speak a word of English and whose name is butchered every day by the TA taking attendance

She sits, silently watching, silently judging.

The guy in a suit for some reason

Do you like Huey Lewis and the News? Their early work was a little too new wave for my taste. But when Sports came out in ’83, I think they really came into their own, commercially and artistically. The whole album has a clear, crisp sound, and a new sheen of consummate professionalism that really gives the songs a big boost. He’s been compared to Elvis Costello, but I think Huey has a far more bitter, cynical sense of humor.

The guy attempting to discreetly fart but failing miserably at it

You see his hips tilt slightly and you know it’s inevitable. He shuffles uncomfortably, and clears his throat. We all know what just happened. Thanks Chuck.

Person who raises their hand to ask a question when there’s only five minutes left of class

Fuck you, buddy.

Girls who are all rushing together

“We’re Tammy, Tiffany, Janie, Jenny, Maddie, Miley and Sam!” They’re all walk in wearing white tees grinning with pride thinking we don’t know what’s going on. We know, and it’s not as funny as you think.

The frat guy wearing a Make America Great Again cap and Reagan/Bush ‘84 tee

Big government sucks! Socialism doesn’t work! My absentee father never gave me the encouragement I needed to thrive in elementary school!

Girl who’s really into horses

Or are they just de-horned unicorns? You’re not sure. Either way they’re all as white as she is and surrounded by rainbows. They’re her background, key ring, pencil case, and on her phone. She thinks it’s cute. It’s weird.

The dude looking at porn on Tumblr

It’s not hentai, it’s art.

Those two girls who only talk about how drunk they got last night, even if it’s a fucking Monday

Your mother would not be pleased.

The girl who still has a pencil case full of useless stationery

She’ll rifle around in it every few minutes to select the next perfect shade of felt tip pen with which to continue taking notes. She doodles cute borders around key topics, highlights important sentences and holds her hand over an open flame every night while screaming at her reflection: “You’ll never fucking be good enough, you fat fucking fuck-up!!”

The girl who brought what is definitely not a service dog into the lecture hall

But you can’t ask if it’s a service dog. So do you know if it’s a service dog? No. But actually you do know, and plot twist, it’s not a fucking service dog. Besides there was that one time you went to pet it, because it looked all cute af weighing in at 12 pounds with the tiniest god damn paws in a navy quilted jacket wrapped around its sausage body, and it practically bit your arm off. But she tells everyone that it’s her best friend, that it helps her through “really tough times” and who are you to challenge the fact that Lady looks likes just like the Chow Chow who won the Puppy Bowl last year?

The guy eating a full Chick-fil-A meal

I also wanted to smell your Spicy Chicken Deluxe at 9:01 on a Monday morning, thank you kind sir.

The aspiring frat bro who only ever wants to bring up Reagan and thinks poor people should just work harder

Did you know he was the most electorally successful president in American history? Yes Chet, we did.

The person who noisily packs up to leave 15 minutes before class ends

“I think we’re done here, don’t you?”

This philosophy bastard

“As a woman.…” girl

The second you see her raise her arm, proud and fully extended, you know what’s about to happen. “Yeeeah. As a woman, I don’t think I can fully register this syllabus as acceptable. You’ve referred to this semester as the fall semester, which, as you know, is a misogynistic and patriarchal term. I think I speak for every other woman in class when I say that we would feel a lot safer and more comfortable if we referred to it as the fall ovester. It’s also less triggering. Thank you, professor.” She retracts her arm primly.

The couple sitting together who hold hands each other throughout

They have one eye on their iPhones the whole time, knowing that as soon as the bell rings they can go back to their natural state of spitting squarely into each other’s open mouths.

The guy who won’t stop coughing and is literally wheezing at this point, Mike, pal, please leave the room nobody will mind

Mike has coughed so much this lecture that he is now too nervous to do it again. He feels everyone else in the room primed, awaiting his next cough, ready to stare daggers into his back. His mouth is parched, his throat feels like dry asphalt. Oh God. Here it comes. Another cough. Please God, thinks Mike. His entire being is straining against coughing again. He wants to leave, desperately, but Mike is caught in an anxiety vortex, where he wants to leave but doesn’t want to create the additional fuss of packing up his stuff and walking out mid-lecture. A girl next to him says: “Hey Mike, are you OK?” And in his state, it is all he can do to respond: “Hnnnghgh.”

Guy who always needs a pen, pencil, or clicker

“Hey buddy,” he whispers, doing something with his hand. Somehow the gesture he is miming does not make it obvious what piece of stationary he needs.

Guy is really possessive over his unassigned assigned seat

“That’s my seat,” he says flatly the one day you decided to move a little closer to the projector in an effort to actually try this week. You give his heavy Gore-Tex coat and combat boots a look and decide it would be wise to never piss this guy off again.

The guy who smells like he hasn’t showered for days

Spoiler alert: He hasn’t, but only because he’s trying to dreadlock his hair. “Why can’t they put more men of color on the syllabus?” he grumbles every day. He is white.

The guy who needs to blow his nose, refuses to do so, so spends an hour sniffling instead

Where is he storing it all? I see his head getting larger as the pressure begins to build up. Is it going to blow or not? Do I need to move back a row, or is that admitting defeat?

The one who’s already read everything on the syllabus

Ten points to Gryffindor, Miss Granger!

The military spouse who is way older than everyone else and tries to relate every comment back to being a military spouse

If you disagree with her, she looks at you like you hate America and Our Boys.

The girl online shopping for her formal dress in front of you

I know that H&M uses, like, slave labor in Cambodia, but I would look sooo cute in florals.

The girl text-fighting with her boyfriend

She’s got inches of blue sent bubbles on her Mac’s iMessage screen and she’s still typing furiously, pausing only briefly to sigh angrily and slide the computer over to her friend of some “am I being crazy?” input. Girl, what’d he do??

The guy who is sad because he just found out his long-distance girlfriend is already cheating on him

They thought it was a good idea to stay together even though she goes a state school 400 miles away. Through tears and hugs in his car, they promised to make it work, promised they wouldn’t let it change things. The first day was great, they texted all day, they talked about the new friends they made, what their dorms were like, what classes they signed up for, how their new Keurig was gonna make mornings a BREEZE. Fast-forward three days. His eyes are red, his phone is out of data and he’s realized that all the crying in the world won’t stop his darling Natasha being railed out by Some Fratty Junior wearing Vineyard Vines. He won’t participate in the discussion, and if you try and make conversation he’ll tell you that love is a lie and happiness doesn’t exist.

‘Sorry professor, we can’t have homework, we’ve all got lax tonight’

Four bros already wearing their lacrosse gear solemnly nod their heads and pack up their things, thankful that the alpha of their group had the balls to say something. Coach would be so pissed if they were late again.

The one who always contributes but never gets it right

“Ah right, of course,” he says as though he knew the right answer but just got his ideas mixed up. That seems to happen a lot to you Kevin, doesn’t it?

The athlete who hasn’t showered

Why.

The one who uses unsubstantiated anecdotal evidence as fact

“Yeah, I see what the author is saying, but my uncle was telling me a friend of him served in the government for a while and actually it works differently.”

By Amanda Ross, Caroline Phinney, Charlie Capel, Elena Alvarez, Harry Shukman, Jacqueline Suazo, Josh Kaplan, Maggie Fischer,  Matt Gibson, Matt McDonald, Sarah Desiderio, Shannon Murphy, Sharon Mejia and Una Dabiero.