Dear Miss Muffin Top,
What are you doing after Graduation?
Everyone
F*ck you, who cares? Instead, a joke:
A Dartmouth alum walks into a bar. Sits down, orders three beers, promptly begins sipping one, then looks around. Miss Muffin Top walks in, spots said alum and a smile begins to spread across her flustered face. She makes eye contact and cruises over. "That's so, so sweet of you," she gushes, taking in the black, hole-ridden surfaces of the dingy bar her date has chosen, a bar so sour it might contain a back room emblazoned with graffiti. "How thoughtful of you to order me a beer. It's great to see you." "Oh," alum says, "I didn't know how long it would take you to get here. These are actually mine. Let's get you a drink."
Welcome to the afterlife. Looks the same, smells the same, sounds the same: is not the same. In the afterlife, Bud Light is the new Keystone and the Lower East Side is the new AD/BG/Panarchy. It is a place very different, but not so different from our Dartmouth home. As Miss Muffin Top waddles her way through the next two weeks to graduation, where she will receive a faux-diploma due to three years of outstanding parking tickets, she has been alternately devastated and ecstatic at the prospect of her departure. Here's why: Miss Muffin Top is ecstatic about the prospect of losing her top muffin top that is. Everyone knows that the average Dartmouth woman drops a minimum of 50 pounds when she graduates. She is devastated, however, about entering the so-called real world where "everyone already knows what I look like" cannot be an excuse not to exercise.
Miss Muffin Top is ecstatic to leave a culture where pong is a socially acceptable substitute for (mad lib anything). But she is also terrified of having to talk to strangers. Or anyone who didn't go to a small liberal arts college in New England. Why you may ask? Those people have STIs. They weren't pre-screened by Karl Furstenberg.
Miss Muffin Top is ecstatic about alums: they're not just for big weekends anymore! Also about being the youngest girl at the party.
She is devastated about the forthcoming obsolescence of this large, large body of knowledge she has amassed over four years of careful research, which includes, but is not limited to, proper handling of the next day blitz, appropriate moments for throw saving and making something out of nothing (and chicken salad) at Novack.
Miss Muffin Top is devastated to leave a world where her identity cannot be compromised even by the loss of her outerwear, cellular device and wallet. There is no lost-and-found Student Assembly list in New York, it's called Craigslist and it makes Bored@Baker look like fourth grade recess banter.
She is devastated that soon she will live in a place where the alma mater does not chime to signal cocktail hour every evening at six. She is devastated that come September she will not be driving up 91, exiting at Norwich and cursing those stupid bridge globes as she rolls up the hill, home.
Okay, so as you've probably gleaned from the last few paragraphs, Miss Muffin Top is devastated, but she knows that really she is ready to inhabit the world that Dartmouth has so well and ill prepared her to occupy. Much as she has enjoyed sitting on her tuffet answering your queries and ranting about the pleasures and perils of all things Green, she knows that you poppets have much more to teach yourselves about this place than she could ever tell you. Miss Muffin Top would only ask that you take care of this utopia and each other, and always remember the golden rule: no making out in basements.
See you at Homecoming,Miss Muffin Top
