I graduated high school with a class of 143 students. We all knew each other and saw the same faces every day, but then I came to Mizzou where my freshman class was listed as over 6,000 students and the student body was over 30,000. It was a bit overwhelming.
I didn’t really know what to do. I had never been in a situation where I didn’t know anything about anyone before. For the first couple of weeks I tried to talk to as many people as I could. I sat with random people in the dining hall, talked to other students in my classes, and watched TV with everyone on my floor, but the whole process of getting to know everyone was taking a long time. Eventually, I learned of a better way.
Stereotyping is a really useful way to quickly learn about a large set of people. It is a fairly accurate and efficient way to learn, among other things, likes, dislikes, fashion sense and personality types of different cliques. It took me a while to figure this out for myself, so I want to share what I learned with all of the other students out there.
—-
**Business Majors**
Dress: Blazer, khakis, probably carrying a briefcase
Likes: Golfing, watching sports, Wolf of Wall Street, Matthew McConaughey, Drake
Dislikes: Writing, creativity, fun, emotion
Personality: Although sometimes stressed, pretty relaxed since they are studying something that will actually make them money
**Computer Science Majors**
Dress: Stained t-shirt, jeans, ponytail, neck beard
Likes: Xbox, League of Legends, Fight Club, Jalapeño Cheetos
Dislikes: Fruit, their technology-challenged parents
Personality: Pretty friendly, but you will have no idea what they are talking about
**Education Majors**
Dress: Whatever they have at Target in their size
Likes: Inquisitive children, helping, summer vacation, molding young minds
Dislikes: Dumb children, helicopter parents, fair pay
Personality: Really nice; don’t be intimidated by their ability to color inside the lines
**Engineering Majors**
Dress: Short-sleeved button-down shirt tucked into underwear, jeans that are too short, pocket protector, glasses
Likes: Making the world a more efficient place, studying, robots
Dislikes: Free time, social lives, people
Personality: Likely to state a scientific law and then start laughing at it. Was that supposed to be a joke? My friend who is an engineering major bought a fish and named it Ohm. That’s the kind of stuff I’m talking about.
**Journalism Majors**
Dress: Either pristinely dressed or possibly homeless — no middle ground
Likes: Coffee, the written word, coffee, grammar, coffee, talking about how they are journalism majors
Dislikes: Plagiarism, math, deadlines, other journalism majors
Personality: Usually pretty chill — just use the correct “your/you’re”
**Music Majors**
Dress: Jeans, hoody, at least two instruments
Likes: Classical music, jazz, theater, Monty Python, really really hardcore gangster rap, irony
Dislikes: Metronomes, key changes, directors who know less than them because they know what they are doing; they were all-state
Personality: Very energetic; expect constant inside jokes and references to shows you’ve never seen
**Philosophy Majors**
Dress: Flip flops — but really, what are clothes?
Likes: The metaphysical, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, The Matrix
Dislikes: The finite, class schedules, ties
Personality: They are probably high, so very agreeable and hungry
**Theater Majors**
Dress: Depends on what character they are currently researching
Likes: Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Paul Rudd, breaking the fourth wall
Dislikes: Two and a Half Men, extras, bears
Personality: Very loud, very dramatic, always quoting things, and always singing
—-
Use this as a guide to choose your new friends. But be careful, because if you choose poorly, you will be stuck with them for the next four years.
