She can code, she can cry in the bathroom, she can build bridges but not her sleep schedule. Barbie isn’t just plastic, she’s relatable.
Once upon a time, Barbie’s problems were simple. Should she wear the pink mini dress or the pink glitter jumpsuit? Should Ken drive the Dream Car or should she? But then someone handed Barbie an engineering degree. Suddenly she’s not just accessorising, she’s debugging. She’s not just attending Malibu soirées, she’s attending 9 AM lectures where the Wi-Fi hates her more than Mattel ever did.
And Barbie? She’s spiralling.
Because here’s the thing: burnout doesn’t care if you’re made of plastic. It hits everyone. Barbie wakes up in her Dreamhouse thinking, what if I never pass MTE 3120? What if I was never meant to build bridges, only wear pink ones? Existential dread but make it pink. That’s the vibe.
Suddenly life wasn’t “Come on Barbie, let’s go party,” it was “Come on Barbie, let’s cry in the library bathroom because Kirchhoff’s law just circuited me.”
The engineer’s lab coat is cute until it isn’t.
Barbie looks fantastic on the Mattel box. Pink hard hat, glossy clipboard, perfectly ironed lab coat. You think, “Wow, she’s going to revolutionise renewable energy and still have time for bottomless brunch.”
Reality is less aesthetic.
Lab Barbie is crying into her safety goggles because her circuit refuses to cooperate. Lab Barbie’s mascara is fighting condensation and losing. Her lab coat has mysterious stains, possibly from hydrochloric acid, possibly from chai. She doesn’t even think about it anymore.
And group projects? Oh, babes. Barbie is assigned three Kens. Ken 1 promises to “handle the PPT” (never opens PowerPoint in his life). Ken 2 provides “moral support” and a Red Bull. Ken 3 disappears from the WhatsApp group chat entirely. Allen drops a single “👍” reaction and then ghostwrites himself out of existence.
Guess who carries it all? Barbie. Barbie builds the project. Barbie answers the viva. Barbie gets the collective eye-roll when the professor asks, “So what did you ALL contribute?”
Lab coat Barbie was supposed to be a girlboss. Instead she’s a girl in loss.
Barbie vs academic perfection.
Here’s the scam: Barbie isn’t allowed to be mid. Nope. She can’t just scrape a 6 CGPA and call it character development. She has to be topper Barbie, notes-Barbie, women-in-STEM poster-child Barbie, and still slay with winged eyeliner sharp enough to cut through all confidence interval questions, even if she’s lost all her confidence.
Professors treat her like she’s holding the entire gender on her pastel shoulders. Parents hit her with the “Beta, just score 10/10” pep talks. Meanwhile, her GPA is whispering, “Sweetie, you’re giving 5.5 at best.”
So Barbie compensates. Her desk looks like a stationery war zone. She’s got pastel highlighters for every mood swing. Sticky notes that read like diary entries: “CRY LATER,” “TRUST THE PROCESS,” and “ML ALGO = LIFE SORTED.”
Her planner is giving Pinterest-core but her brain is giving 404 Error. She’ll spend three hours colour-coding her timetable, then forget to actually attend class.
And yet, Barbie still struts into exams like she’s walking the runway at Paris Fashion Week, with calculator in one hand, vibes in the other. Will she score? Will she flop? Who knows. But at least her margins look cute.
This Barbie isn’t chasing perfection. She’s chasing attendance marks. Why is attendance counted in CWS? Barbie doesn’t know.
Existential crisis, but she makes it pretty.
See, when Barbie has an existential crisis, it’s not quiet. It’s not “oh I’ll just journal and sip chamomile tea.” No. It’s full performance art. It’s mascara streaming down cheeks in perfect raccoon symmetry. It’s crying in the AB2 bathroom while still somehow looking like she belongs in a Vogue spread.
This Barbie doesn’t just spiral, she accessorises her spiral. Tote bag full of undone assignments? Check. Cold coffee sweating like it’s running the marathon Barbie refuses to? Check. Playlist called “Life is a Highway and I Want to Crash Into a Tree”? Double check.
And the worst part? She makes it aesthetic. Like, who else could turn forgetting Circular Linked List syntax into a reels trend? She’ll caption her breakdown with “debugging life.exe” and suddenly 500 likes roll in. Barbie doesn’t cry ugly. Barbie cries like she invented sad-girl-core.
Meanwhile, Ken is asking her if she’s okay. And she is not. But she will say, “Yeah, just tired.” Then go home, stare at the ceiling, and wonder if her real degree is in existential dread with a minor in spiralling.
But here’s the gag: even in meltdown mode, Barbie is inspiring. Because every girl in the class looks at her and thinks, “If Barbie can cry through Kruskal’s algorithm and still pass, maybe I can too.”
Barbie & Ken’s love in the time of deadlines.
Now let’s talk about Ken. Sweet, clueless Ken. Ken thinks “debugging” is a medicine for your digestive system. Ken thinks “compiling” is when you make a Pinterest board. Ken brings Barbie Starbucks when she’s pulling an all-nighter but spells her name wrong on the cup (like bro, how do you misspell Barbie? It’s literally on half the toys you grew up with).
Ken has that golden retriever energy. He’ll watch Barbie cry into her laptop and go, “Babe, why don’t you just close it?” BABE. BECAUSE I’M AN ENGINEER, NOT A FARMER. I CAN’T JUST LEAVE CROPS IN THE FIELD. The crops are deadlines. The crops are assignments. And the locusts eating the crops? Midsems.
Here’s the tragicomedy: relationships in engineering school are basically group projects with kissing. Love-bombing between classes, passive-aggressive texts during submissions, the occasional breakup that aligns perfectly with exam week like it was scheduled in the academic calendar. Barbie’s heart is debugging while her code isn’t.
Barbie doesn’t want a Ken who opens doors. She wants a Ken who opens Stack Overflow. She doesn’t need “you look pretty.” She needs “your code compiled.” Honestly, romance today isn’t flowers and chocolate, it’s sharing GitHub repositories, fixing her syntax errors, or fetching printouts before the shop closes. That’s intimacy. That’s love in the 21st century.
But the gag is this: even with Ken’s cluelessness, Barbie still loves him. She’ll rant about him being a himbo but then smile when he brings her Maggi after classes. She’ll tell her friends “he’s so useless” but then gush when he remembers her favourite pen colour. Because even amidst the chaos, Barbie still believes in soft things. If anyone can turn a lab partner into a life partner, it’s her. Even if he doesn’t know what polymerisation is.
Capitalism but make it Barbie pink.
Here’s the real scam: burnout isn’t just academic, it’s commercial. Somewhere between “girlboss” and “self-care queen,” capitalism decided Barbie’s existential dread needed merch. Suddenly, she’s being sold pastel planners, pink highlighters, and “study aesthetic” LED lamps that promise to fix her attention span. Spoiler: they don’t.
Her Amazon cart looks like a cry for help. Scented candles named “Productivity Glow.” A bullet journal with “You’ve Got This, Girl!” in glitter font. Thirty shades of sticky notes that all have motivational quotes but none that actually do the assignment. Barbie is basically paying EMI on stationery that doesn’t save her grades.
Streaming platforms don’t help either. Netflix keeps pushing shows where everyone is equally unhinged. Suddenly emotional instability isn’t just Barbie’s life, it’s trending. It’s a brand. Barbie didn’t sign up for this collab, but here she is, a content creator of chaos.
The irony? She buys into it. Because when your brain is fried, a pastel to-do list feels like hope. Even if the only thing it organises is your disappointment. Capitalism really said: “Oh, you’re spiralling? Here’s a tote bag that says ‘mentally unstable but cute.’ That’ll be 1,299 rupees.”
Will Barbie finish the semester before the semester finishes her last brain cell?
For all the crying, spiralling, and aesthetic meltdowns, Barbie secretly craves her academic weapon arc. She wants internships. She wants an amazing SGPA (her CGPA is already beyond saving). She wants to sleep before 2 AM without three alarms titled “pls wake up.”
But in Gen Z culture, admitting you want stability is like saying you don’t like pizza it’s suspicious. We meme chaos, we TikTok our academic trauma, we romanticise backlogs like they’re love letters and not F/I grades. Stability is branded as “boring.”
But Barbie knows the truth: stability is actually sexy. Barbie wants to graduate, get 8 hours of sleep, and maybe plant a succulent she won’t kill. She wants friendships that aren’t just trauma-bonded but built on real joy. She wants love that doesn’t feel like a group project where she’s doing 90% of the work.
Stability isn’t boring. It’s the plot twist. It’s the underrated aesthetic. And while Barbie is busy spiralling now, deep down, she knows one day the real glow-up won’t be contour, it’ll be peace.
Barbie is not just an engineer. She’s all of us. She’s fighting deadlines, romanticising instability, making breakdowns aesthetic, and still managing to look good doing it.
She might not always get the code right. She might fail a lab or two. She might cry in the library bathroom. But she keeps showing up – glitter pen in hand, iced coffee in the other.
Because this Barbie? She’s an engineer. And engineers don’t quit. They just cry, then compile again.
Check out Her Campus at MUJ for more stories stitched with humour, heart, and a little bit of havoc. This article is written by Niamat Dhillon at HCMUJ, who codes bugs >_< by day and collects metaphors by night.