It’s noontime on a Tuesday, and I’ve decided to spend my 3-hour break relaxing in Corbett Center in the comfy new second-floor lounge. I’ve always been somewhat of a loner anyway, and one of my favorite pastimes is people-watching; there is no shortage of students going in and out of that student union on an hourly basis. Along with those students comes their youthful conversations.
It’s important to keep up with what young people are talking about. It’s even somewhat important to keep up with their lingo—on fleek, yolo, etc.—if for the simple purpose of understanding each other. I truly do believe that most times. I cannot be the only one who finds it a bit exhausting trying to keep up, though.
Most of the kids on my campus range from 18 to 22. It’s nice to feel young by association. By circumstance, many people I hang out with are between 18 and 20, and it’s easy to get along with them. Finding common ground is a piece of cake if you try. There’s just a mental balancing act when you’re a not-quite-exactly-traditional student like myself.
At times, their lingo and what younger students see as important seems a little immature to me. I’m sure part of that comes from how I grew up — I’m disabled and look different, so I stuck mostly to older people because they get it. Because of that, my opinions of what’s important have a bit more wisdom behind them. Through all this, you just have to remember that they are still growing up, and still finding themselves.
Last semester I took a 200-level English class for my minor. Our final project called for us to choose a word from one of our texts and look up the modern ways it is used. I chose ‘(a)maze(d)’ from Paradise Lost. According to Urban Dictionary, “maze” can be used as a way to refer to someone you like, which is somewhat similar to how Eve used “maze” to describe the serpent. It assumes way too much to say the ever-evolving lingo of today’s kids is especially sophisticated, but at least I can respect it, and try not to roll my eyes when I hear ‘on fleek.’