Welcome to My GWorld II: Trapped in GWorld

So here we are, the second part of my exploration of the mental construct called GWorld. If you're a prospective or admitted student, your parents and other adults have probably already told you--ad nauseum-- what a different world college is. After a while, you start to develop new habits and daily routines because you're in a new situation; some of these are good but others... not so much. If you go home for breaks, you might notice a feeling of being "out of place". This is most likely because your soul is fettered in GWorld.
Here are the top ten signs you've become trapped in GWorld:
10. Whenever you buy anything, you reflexively go for your GWorld before cash, credit or debit.
9. Regular doors (you know, the ones with the lock and key) are a puzzle to you since your precious yellow plastic card just won't go in the lock.
8. You can't help feeling exposed at night without the comforting, Orwellian glow of those campus emergency beacons.
7. Wandering outside a five-block radius on most weekdays feels like an expedition (at least for freshmen and some sophomores without off-campus internships).
6. The name of our country's first President automatically invokes the garish, Warhol-style insignia of our myriad administrative departments.
5. You go to start up the "Network Connect" application for GWireless whenever you connect to the internet, and then get all angry when it doesn't work (which isn't abnormal, even when you're within signal range).
4. Your hometown feels quaint without the slightly-disconcerting electronic Alma Mater being played out at 6:15 (or so, most days).
3. When you go the grocery store, it comes as a great shock that you can get fruit for under a dollar a piece. (Kind of the feeling after the collapse of communism? I always though Sodexho sounded a little Russian.)
2. Just walking on the street, you are shocked--just shocked--  girls aren't wearing $400 boots that look like they were stolen off of Canada's Mounties. What happened to civil liberties? ("What is this, the People's Democratic Islamic Republic of Barackistan?!? I thought this was Amur'ika!")
1. At night, your room is eerily quiet without the rustling of roommates in the other room, the constant wailing of sirens and the thump of somebody on the floor above or below blasting their subwoofer.

 So there you have it. Next Time: "Welcome to My GWorld III: Escaping GWorld."


Send me your questions or reactions at ash1290@gwmail.gwu.edu. 

Adam