Cute boys divert attention from college classes

by Maggie Knox, Journalistic Reporting student

Knox
by Maggie Knox

 

It’s like I can’t even hear what the professor is saying. Scrambling to take notes, losing my train of thought. Is this even the right classroom? I’m not sure.

 

All I know is that there is an extremely attractive fella sitting in front of me.

 

And by attractive, I mean attractive attractive. From my seat (two behind and one to the left), I can tell he is the whole nine yards – messy hair, bright eyes… and the t-shirt he’s sporting is of one of my favorite bands. This is more than okay.

 

Craning over my Mac laptop, I can tell he has a Delta something Phi keychain. Maybe I should get to know more frat guys if they’re all gonna look like this.

 

There’s another cute guy three desks to my right, slumped down in his seat with his feet propped up on the back of the chair in front of him. No backpack, just headphones draped around his neck.

 

Why did he even come to college if he wasn’t going to work?

 

Shouldn’t I be working?

 

And that hottie over there – he’s gotta be a football player. Never in my eighteen years of living in Kansas City did I think I could’ve made it to what I like to call “the big leagues,” or “going to a huge college away from home with football players and other various male athletes and stuff.” Ugh, sometimes I wish I could’ve gone to high school with football players. Life now as a college kid would be a breeze.

 

And can somebody PLEASE tell me why I wore my unwashed auction pant from 10th grade to this class?

 

Don’t get me wrong, St. Teresa’s readied me for a ton of important experiences (tough classes, the real world) and challenges (not eating the entire container of puppy chow because other people might want some too). The problem is that my “premier college preparatory school for young women” forgot to prepare me for one thing – boys in the classroom.

 

Your all-American, cheerleading-at-the-football-game sort of teenage girl understands how to participate in an average college classroom after her high school career. But, nope, I don’t.

 

It’s not my fault I didn’t have a chance to talk to good-looking teenage guys at school every day. The only guys I had to talk to were the highly intimidating members of the bromance and the Bistro Boys. Neither were my type.

 

So what am I, an average STA grad, supposed to do about all of these distracting guys in class?

 

I’ve got two choices: a) to actually raise my hand and say something witty that leaves the professor speechless which will make all the cute guys turn around and look at me and experience love at first sight, or b) to chat up your “average Joe” and maybe make a new friend.

 

Well, since we all know Plan A isn’t gonna happen, I’ll go with B. The worst-case scenario would be that the guy is a weird creep and he sits next to me every day for the rest of the semester and annoys me until I am forced to skip class. But that only happens in the movies. Or the bad ones, at least.

 

I can’t imagine the struggles girls from other high schools had by being forced to talk to the other half of our species every day in class. Guys are great, but I don’t know how I could have lived through every school day worrying about the amount of hair on my legs and every little word I uttered. I’m sure those girls had a blast rooting for their own school at football games and crying when they were voted Prom Queen 2k13.

 

There were times at STA when I wished I could have gotten those experiences for myself. But I wouldn’t have changed my four years as a star for anything. It’s okay STA didn’t prepare me for a classroom full of boys. In fact, I loved chanting “boys gotta go” when one was spotted on the quad. And as for the distractions, I’m working on feeling comfortable in this new kind of classroom.

 

And I’ll do it in my unwashed, 10th grade auction pant.