The real and serious struggles of being left-handed at college
It’s like they’re putting us in Siberia
As a lefty, I often feel like I get the short end of the stick.
This is especially true in Boston College classrooms.
No one enjoys writing long blue book essays, or trying to balance a laptop, notebook, and slew of papers on the tiny desks in our classrooms and lecture halls.
But when the desk is on the wrong side, it’s much worse. You’re forced to turn your body to meet the desktop. It’s unnatural, awkward, and it’s a kind of bodily misalignment no one should have to endure. You’re left praying the curve will be in your favor after a brutal midterm because academic success is impossible without proper elbow support and back alignment that can only be provided by the appropriate desk. And as we all know, relying on the curve is a losing game…
Lefties grow up adapting to the right-handed world, but sometimes it’s exhausting. It’s embarrassing to be twenty years old and still struggling to cut with scissors. I promise I passed kindergarten. The scissors just don’t work unless I use them with my right hand.
I can rarely find a lefty desk in a classroom here – or, more often, the token lefty desk changes its location in the classroom each day as if by dark magic. Honestly, Voldemort might be at work here. They might be trying to kick us out all together, who knows.
We investigated the lefty desk life in Gasson to find out which classrooms are most accommodating (if at all).
Gasson 207
The token lefty desk…off to the side… alone
On the first day of class, lefties know to check the sides of the classroom for desks – they like to keep us in Siberia. We all know the burning need to secure a permanent desk for the rest of the semester. Now, imagine if your beloved seat was taken away. When a rogue student sits in your seat you have half the mind to defenestrate them, so what would the punishment be for simply removing your seat? Or worse – placing it in another section of the classroom, forcing you to be that seat-stealing punk we all desire. For a professor, it would be absolutely horrifying to see a lefty desk messing up the flow of the sea of righty desks.
Gasson 207
29 regular desks, one lefty desk
Gasson 302
49 regular desks, four lefty desks
Gasson 310
49 regular desks, three lefty desks
Gasson 305
92 regular desks, six lefty desks
In this classroom, as in other lecture halls with desks that fold up, it’s not easily apparent which desks are for lefties. Are we supposed to check each of the 99 desks one by one? It’s disheartening for any lefty.
To make matters worse, privileged right-handers, blissfully unaware, sit in our lefty desks because they want to be on the aisle. Well, I’m sorry to break it to you but your desire to be on the aisle is by my need to be able to properly write. I just want a place to write correctly so I’m not forced to hunch over my desk with my nose a half inch from my test. How insensitive, righties. Shame on you. But it’s not their fault entirely – no one understand this brutal lefty struggle. But if there was ever a time for the phrase “the struggle is real” – this is it.
In sum, that’s 219 regular desks and 22 lefty desks, which is almost 10:1.
AKA, the best ratio a freshman guy could ask for to get in the mods.