I’m sorry, but our study abroad stinks. I want to do an unapproved program that actually fills my interests instead of a pre-approved one and everyone at study abroad makes me feel crazy, or stupid for even trying. I really just wish they would be supportive, like this whole process is stressful enough, why are you making me feel alone and isolated (my friends echo this feeling). I’m paying a lot of money to be at this school and as I go through my time here more and more I realize I’m just consistently getting let down. Anyway, I just wish I had more support, their job at study abroad is to support our interests, open our eyes to new worlds, and have us study abroad but at least in my experience they are hard to get in contact with, don’t support my interests, and belittle my ideas because they don’t match a pre-approved program. Sometimes I truly do wonder what I’m paying for. –Anonymous

I HATE how Pitzer students always want to be marginalized, or to have some sort of struggle in life even if they grew up white and rich! Like PLEASE toughen up and exist in the real world. –Anonymous

It is so hard being a BIPOC student on this campus. We have to do so much work just to feel safe. I think a lot about how white kids here can spend their free time doing shit like surfing club meanwhile a lot of our time is spent creating and maintaining affinity spaces we can feel somewhat normal in. I’m so tired, I wish I had the privilege to simply focus on school and friends but I can’t. I feel like Pitzer uses us to seem “woke” and attract more liberal rich white people but doesn’t actually care about us. –Anonymous

able-bodied people keep parking by the outback because they don’t realize it is disability permit parking only. Pitzer’s way of getting these able-bodied people to not park there is to put up billiards on the service road that keep disabled people from their spots. its bullshit and more people should be angry about this. –Anonymous

Picture this: A blue and orange streak flies by the Mounds, so quick you don’t know if it’s a tropical bird or a phantom of Pitzer’s past. No… a Pitzer-themed plane flying concerningly close to McConnell? No, that’s not it either. Oh! It’s an almost-grown man blasting Lil Pump on a glorified segway, bleach blonde hair blinding any innocent passersby’s poor little eyeballs. 

With that anecdote, I have a truth that I must share for the sake of full disclosure between you and I, dear reader. This truth might be hard to swallow for a specific demographic, though I doubt that demographic religiously reads creative nonfiction pieces published in The Outback, but here goes nothing. Electric skateboards look so silly. I’m sorry to say it, it’s truly just the truth. Please don’t cancel me P-Pers. It’s just… we’ve normalized them too much. The serious look on a sporty fellow’s face as he leans backward or forward so awkwardly, trying desperately to maintain his center of gravity, is just too much for me to stay silent any longer! It’s funny and I think we all know it’s true, and dammit I’m proud to say it no matter the athletic wrath I may face. Boys—I’m sorry for the politically incorrect generalization, but you know that it’s true— just go back to the old fashioned way! How do you think the poor guys nailing crates to wheels in the 1930s would feel about this cop out of a skateboard? And yes I did research the invention of the skateboard, thank you very much (and it was terribly mundane). This is a pointless piece, but I saw a silly little lad on a silly little electric skateboard as I sat and willed an essay to be written, so I had to get this feeling out somewhere. -Willa Umansky PZ ’27