Now, I wouldn’t call myself a geneticist or anything. Although I have seen the various X-Men movies to an absurd degree, so I might have the same expertise as Patrick Stewart.

Who am I kidding? I’ll never compare to Patrick Stewart.

And I wouldn’t call myself a psychologist. Although I did get a three on my AP Psychology test in high school — a performance my teacher called, “pretty much what I expected from Christian.”

However, I would call myself a chronic observer of a specific animal. I’m like a less pretty and more neurotic Jane Goodall.

Take chimpanzees. I pretty much know what I’m going to get out of them. They’ll eat some gross things, and then maybe they’ll fight or have sex (it’s honestly hard to tell the difference sometimes).

Like chimpanzees, college students have very predictable behaviors.

But this is where my adequate understanding of high school psychology and X-Men genetics comes into play. I’ve observed that characteristics which lingered under the surface in high school seem to bubble up in college.

For example, say your name is Brian, and in high school you said to yourself, “I kind of like lacrosse.” A reasonable underlying trait to have in high school, but an absurd lifestyle choice for anyone above the age of 18. Does anyone score? Why can’t I see the ball? It honestly just looks like a bunch of guys standing around in a field wearing suits of armor. Like they lost their way to the “Game of Thrones” convention.

Or say your name is Claire, and in high school you always kind of liked cute animals. Well now college Claire has an internship at the Cute Animals Have People Problems Division at BuzzFeed.

But truthfully, I’ve been hiding my true self for way too long. I might as well come clean.

I’m Christian Unkenholz, and I’m a recovering hipster. Admitting it is the first step.

I know. It shocked me, too. But the more I thought about it, the more I always saw that I had that hipster inside of me all along. I mean, even as a child I shunned mainstream music in favor of experimental jazz. Which I claimed “said more” than pop music ever could.

For the record, I now view experimental jazz as mankind’s greatest folly.

I constantly tell my friends to check out things that I know they’ll never check out, all to make myself feel only slightly superior. I mean, how can you honestly tell me that you’ve never seen “The Wire?” It perfectly sums up the plight of the poor.

See! Isn’t that simply obnoxious?

I’m trying to get help, but there are so many relapses along the road to recovery. We can’t even serve coffee at our Hipsters Anonymous meetings because that elicits way too many opinions.

One of the worst relapses was during the summer when I took a trip down to the hipster Mecca of Bonnaroo. So many ironic mustaches. So many white people with dreadlocks. So many people saying, “I wish they had played more of their older stuff.” It was honestly two steps back on the metaphorical tight rope between two trees. Yeah, I know it’s called a slack line, but I refuse to acknowledge that awful hobby.

Seemingly the more I try to run from my hipsterness, the more I end up listening to bands like Cerebral Ballzy.

But maybe that’s the point of college. It’s finding the purest distillation of yourself, even if that self wears an absurd amount of flannel and wool hats in the summertime.

But that’s okay. We’re all bound by one simple truth: We’ll never compare to Patrick Stewart.

Christian Unkenholz is a sophomore public relations and political science major. He can be found taking up an entire table at Starbucks writing his “novel.” His column appears every Thursday in Pulp. He can be reached at cdunkenh@syr.edu.

Published on September 12, 2013 at 12:41 am