Sassy Sage is Ubyssey humour’s satirical advice column, written by Selena Sallay. You can seek her misinformation disguised as heartfelt counsel by writing to her at advice@ubyssey.ca. Letters will be edited for brevity, clarity and to make them funnier tbh.
Dear Sassy Sage,
Girl. Campus life is borrriinngg! Everyone keeps to themselves and never wants to do anything! No one ever talks to anyone! I once tried to start a conversation with a classmate in EOSC 114 and they looked at me like they just found out the planet is dying and/or like I just cursed their entire bloodline. When I want to go out somewhere and post about it on Reddit, everyone complains about assignments and tells me I deserve to be lonely. I know we’re a Top40 university but come on, it’s not that deep. Hop up out the library and turn your swag on, people. What should I do? Find me friends,
Lesa Mingle
Dear Lesa,
With the amount of events on campus happening all the time, plus the freakish inhumane UBC student workload and the need to have at least four jobs at once to make it in this world, how are you bored?
Have you tried smiling? Based on your message alone, you seem to have an extremely bitter outlook on life that I’m guessing causes people to clutch their quartz, palm stones and hematite towers a little tighter to repel your energy like it’s the next outbreak of frat flu. Have you considered that people do not want to flunk out of school? You’re clearly not locked in like the rest of us. How dare you ask me to put aside my CPSC 121 problem set for two hours so I can “grab a drink with you” — I mean, if you wanted to go to a “social school,” then go to Queens where your best college memories can consist of puking your guts out on St. Patrick’s Day, or Western where you can make wearing purple your sole personality trait.
As for no one talking to one another, have you seen MacInnes Field when a single ray of sunshine comes out? People are playing games, laying on the grass and emanating good vibes. Maybe that would serve you well — start looking for actual sunlight instead of absorbing the blue light from your computer (stop getting advice off strangers from Reddit and get advice from this stranger by supporting physical media). While you're at it, throw a quartz at that lame person from EOSC or even hire an Etsy witch — it’s what I’d do, and I obviously have tons of friends and am certainly not just observing those field-goers from my lonely desk in The Ubyssey’s office.
The way I see it, you have two options. First, you can’t base all of your experiences off of one convo with one person — look at lecture halls as friendship speed dating goldmines! If someone is boring, move on. If they have bad breath, move on. If they watch a little too many crime documentaries, call the police. The “benefit of the doubt” is for chumps. Second, to find people who match your freakwency, try bringing the Queens/Western/east coast party energy to UBC yourself. The best advice I can give to all my beloved readers is to have no shame. If you want to meet people, start a conversation with them. You can compliment their shoes, say you love their eyes and if they say they are wearing contacts, then say that you like plastic too and paper straws suck! If the whole “conversation thing” doesn’t work out, you can always go straight for classic moves like handing out trays of rainbow Jello shots to your peers (if you get caught say you’re résumé-building for your VP student life job application) or sneakily connecting to the AV system of your lecture hall to blast your 365PARTYMIXHOTGIRLSUMMER Spotify playlist. If you still walk away with no friends, then it's not your playlist.
Finally, if you’re feeling bold, go straight for the whole puking-on-a-classmate's-shoes move to channel your inner @canadianpartylife to dispel the whole socially dead reputation Vancouver has going on, once and for all. Be the change you wish to see in the world!
Shamelessly always,
Sassy Sage
