If you’ve read me before, odds are you felt like you saw a Chicken Rico column coming when you saw me staring back at you in the paper today. With a heavy heart, I’m going to forego eulogizing my favorite restaurant and instead focus on a bigger problem: Though we profess to be open-minded, free-spirited college students, most of us are full of shit.
Maybe this is me still moping over Chicken Rico like I just got dumped by my high school girlfriend again, but hear me out: Our college years, as we’re reminded all the time, are when we should get out of our comfort zone and try new things. What percentage of college students do you think are actively doing that on a daily basis? One in 10? Zero in 10? Less than zero?
Think about your friends. Are they new and exciting personalities, or are they carbon copies of kids you were friends with in high school? There’s a reason everyone laughs at the college brochure with a bunch of ethnically diverse friends hanging out on the quad. It’s because that doesn’t exist, of course. The only thing is, it could. But no one’s going to extend that particular olive branch. All of my friends look like me, talk like me and think like me. Maybe I’m just a narcissist. But it’s more likely I’m just lazy.
Think about orientation, when university President Dan Mote told us to walk down the street with our chins up and say, “Hello,” to strangers. Do you do that? Does anyone? I don’t. I keep my eyes fixed on the ground just like everyone else.
It’s like no one’s in college to try new things — not like I have room to talk. When I was in high school, I wrote a column called “Ramblings.” So you see how far I’ve come. A lot of kids are just using college to get more ingrained in their beliefs instead of challenging themselves. Do I mean to say you should feel bad about getting Chipotle last Wednesday for the eighth time since the semester started, instead of crossing Route 1 and giving Chicken Rico a try? Yes, that’s exactly what I mean to say.
It would almost be fascinating, if it weren’t such a waste of time, energy and money. How many kids do you know have totally reinvented themselves in college? Any? I don’t. And I’m just as guilty as any one of you.
Maybe this is my requiem for a Peruvian chicken restaurant, in which I try to find meaning in the senseless closing of my favorite establishment in College Park by digging too deep for a hidden message. But you can’t deny I’m at least sort of right. The whole comfort zone thing is bullshit. For way too many people, college has been an exercise in building the best comfort zone possible and then becoming a hermit crab.
It’s just a shame we put these blinders on ourselves, because I think as a whole there’s so much going on that we miss. People generally don’t stop and look around anymore; maybe the grass is greener on the other side.
Maybe even on the other side of Route 1.
Rob Gindes is a senior journalism major. He can be reached at champion at umdbk dot com.
