The Five People You’ll Meet in Heaven Canadian College
Heaven is a place where the tuition’s cheap and the poutine’s squeaky.
By Alina Shaikh, University of Toronto
These are the friends who’ll help you get through the most excruciating four years of your life, right before you realize that diploma ≠ career, and right after you get your shit together on LinkedIn for all those coffeehouse gigs.
They also happen to go to school in Canada.
1. The Activist
You don’t really know them that well, but you do know that they’re always inviting you to rallies, protests, boycotts and every other thing imaginable on Facebook—and that you should most definitely go for all the free food.
Whatever gender identity they may choose (and they will let you know via the thousands of pins on their bag), they’re probably the only ones on campus cool enough to own a megaphone and get away with it.
You’ll find them in the general campus-park area, wearing tees with bold impact fonts that have words like “SLUT” or other fun slurs scrawled on them for awareness events.
You guys will chill during those free vegan breakfasts every Friday, and they’ll help you avoid bagged dairy and enthusiastically purchase almond milk for you every so often. MMiH.
2. The Barista
Stumbling upon a cute, insta-worthy café on campus will undoubtedly bring you to meet the infamous Barista. Whatever beanie they choose out of their collection, it’ll somehow always match their “good vibes” script and pastel koi pond tats.
They’ll be the proud owner of several iridescent Zippo lighters, and even though they might smell like an ashtray, their passion for composting will be pretty endearing.
Their dorm room will consist of cacti of every type of species (as is legal), and a pretty hefty wad of “oregano” displayed artfully in various mason jars around the room.
Their rants about LPs from Urban Outfitters that “you’ve probably never heard of” will force you to sit them down and educate them on how mainstream culture is OK and will probably not hurt you.
3. The Fratboy
You meet him at a party your friend dragged you to that’s deep within the abyss of a greasy lil frat house dubbed named “Skulls” for some reason. His room is full of machismo bullshit, most notably a flashing neon sign in the corner that reads “Sex Dungeon,” or something equally subtle.
You’ll hate him at first of course, but soon his obnoxious behaviour and rampant swagger will make you shake your head and roll your eyes, and you’ll bond over holding each other’s hair back from the toilet that’s shared by the seven other fratguys.
You can find them around your campus throwing on open, loose tanks outside their battered res on the way to Business Management classes (or something equally pleasing to the folks back home). In any/all conditions, they’ll probably have some choice earbuds in to protect their innocent little ears from your advances, but that’s about as far as they go protection-wise.
4. The Commuter
These perpetually tired grads are known for having bags under their eyes and textbooks under their arms at all times. You can rely on them to pretty much always have a coffee on hand, and to be the only millennials in the world who still unironically call that coffee “a cup of Joe.”
They meet other weary little students when you manage to convince them that they need to get out more—even though they insist that the route to and from uni is their “me time,” whatever that may consist of.
Oversized everything and sweats are the only way they dress, but their groutfit somehow matches the adorably overworked vibe they have going.
If they do manage to catch a workout with you and a bite to eat afterwards, they’ll count it as a step towards becoming a responsible adult, no matter how shitty their time management skills are.
Catch em on the subway leaning up against you like a rotten corpse, or falling on the bus when their hands slip off the grips during their casual standing-up power nap.
5. The Freshman
There’s always that high school kid who can’t seem to adapt to a relatively normal sleeping schedule, the one who shows up to lectures with sunglasses and hoodies like they’re basing their lives on uni memes from the internet.
They’ll be the ones who update their snapchat story at four in the morning with rants about the legal drinking age and the overload of papers they’re going to have to write (4) in the next six months of class.
After years of just looking over notes and breezing by that way, you’ll help the poor guy out by learning together how to actually study for college. With motivation from the library’s caramel macchiatos and a ‘50s diner visit from time to time, they’ll eventually be alright. You’ll have the time of your life convincing them to do crazy shit no one else would do after their first year, but it’ll make for one hell of a montage sooner or later.
