2,023 Things I Learned in 2023

Okay, I lied! I will not be sharing 2,023 things I learned from this year. I will be sharing only 23 things I learned, in no particular order. 

I had a crazy year, and I feel that I should impart my wisdom onto my readers so that they do not have to learn all these things from experience like I did. 

Anyways, the title of this article leads me to the first thing I learned this year:

1. Clickbait! 

2. It is no longer cute for me, as a college student, to neglect separating my lights and darks while doing laundry. I used to justify this decision on the grounds that I would not be discriminatory towards my clothes, but now I am 22 years old and all my white shirts are gray. It’s time to make a change. 

3. Apparently, it is not good practice to rub together your wrists after spraying perfume on them. I’ve seen this action occur a million times, both at home and across popular media. Much to my chagrin, it is not what you should be doing, no matter how chic it looks. While the wrists are good places to apply perfume, rubbing them together can dull the scent notes and accelerate evaporation. Don’t waste your expensive scent, do what the experts say, and dab instead! 

4. I learned how to quote The Godfather in Italian: “Gli ho fatto un’offerta che non poteva rifiutare.” 

5. You should definitely untie your shoes before taking them off. I have ruined many a pair of shoes by sliding them off and on without untying the laces first. All the heels on my shoes are absolutely ruined. 

6. If you don’t know how to read an analog clock, you absolutely have to learn. My friend revealed that she could only tell the time on digital clocks, and I was terrified for her and for all future generations. 

7. If your man is impossibly fast and strong, has skin that is pale white and ice cold, has eyes that change color, speaks like he’s from a different time, doesn’t eat or drink anything, doesn’t go out in the sunlight, and has the skin of a killer…that’s not your man, that’s Edward Cullen. 

8. This year, I learned that it is in fact acceptable to eat an Oreo cookie without first deconstructing it completely and eating each element separately. Lean into the discomfort. 

9. Don’t put an open water bottle in the same bag as your laptop. 🙁

10. Put a screen protector on your phone, and a phone case, preferably. 🙁

11. I learned that, unfortunately, “Cold Opens” and “Weekend Updates by Michel Che and Colin Jost” on Saturday Night Live are my main sources of information surrounding current events. This probably should not be the case for me or for anyone, and I have recently purchased a subscription to the New York Times in order to remedy my behavior.

12. The phrase, “Beer before liquor, never sicker. Liquor before beer, never fear,” is just a myth. You can get sick no matter the order in which you consume your substances. 

13. Michael Cera and Aubrey Plaza almost got married a decade ago just to get a divorce and be able to call one another “ex-husband” and “ex-wife.” 

14. Apparently, soy sauce does not need to be refrigerated and will not spoil if left at room temperature. Of course, this is due to the high levels of sodium present in soy sauce. Nevertheless, the soy sauce, like all of us, will begin to lose quality with age regardless of what you do to it. 

15. “The good of the scorpion is not the good of the frog, yes?” 

16. Do not leave your car in a faculty and staff parking lot even for one millisecond during business hours on Connecticut College’s campus. Campus Safety will hit you with parking tickets so expensive that it makes your student loans look affordable. 

17. I learned how to operate a small manual kiln for firing ceramics. I don’t want to explain it to my readers here though, so if you are interested in learning then I guess shoot me an email. 

18. Don’t start watching a new show on Netflix with upwards of five seasons during midterms and finals week. This one was kind of obvious to me even before I did it, but oopsie. 

19. If you tell your parents that you are good at cooking and that you frequently make yourself meals in college, you should be prepared to demonstrate your skills with more than just scrambled eggs, toast, and chicken noodle soup. 

20. If you are wearing a t-shirt that has the name of a band on it, you should probably know the name of at least one of their songs lest your professor asks you about them. 

21. When the song originally came out, people speculated that “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” by the Beatles was actually a metaphor for LSD. However, John Lennon steadfastly denies this association. 

22. The koala takes first place for “World’s Sleepiest Animal,” spending 20-22 hours a day in slumber. In second place is, of course, me. 

23. One of the best marketing ploys in the history of American capitalism was the development of Cheez-It Brand Extra Toasty Snack Crackers. They were able to create and sell an entire line of snacks that would have otherwise been discarded and wasted. Cheez-It Brand Extra Toasty Snack Crackers are my favorite kind of Cheez-Its, and I think this is the perfect thing I learned this year to end on. You can always rebrand. 

Happy New Year!

• growing
• learning
• New Year
• reflection