Why It Sucks to Be a Freshman at Penn

by Jim Newell | September 13, 2007 at 6:54 pm

                          Why It Sucks to Be a Freshman at Penn

Because after only two weeks with strangers in a strange land, you might get made fun of by a jackass 14,000-circulation magazine you've never heard of, by soulless editors you've never seen, for trying to appear confident/fetching in a headshot taken at Sears that your mom probably made you dress for. Penn '11, meet 34th Street Magazine's "Freshmen Superlatives."

(Let's get full disclosures out of the way: I was Editor-in-Chief of 34th Street in 2006. Go ahead and complain, but I don't even know half of these people anymore.)

Street, the Daily Pennsylvanian's weekly culture magazine, released in today's first issue its annual--and highly popular, as these things go--"Superlatives." In years past this meant stealing a copy of the freshmen directory, scanning funny headshots and writing a superlative for each (think high school yearbook). "Superlative" eventually became "random asshole comment," and this year the University didn't even publish a freshmen directory. Street editors took shots from Facebook instead.

Click on the top image for a JPEG of unrelenting abasement. And if you're a Penn freshman not seen here, you've dodged your first bullet.

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