What a time to be alive. Autumn, changing leaves, fall drinks, cute outfits, good movies, and, of course, seeing campus celebrities.
Would you look at that? It’s time to go back to 7:00 AM alarms, hundreds of pages in readings, crisp fall morning walks to campus, and almost stopping in your tracks because you see your favourite campus celebrity! At this point, if I have seen someone more than once, they are now a campus celebrity in my books. You are a familiar face who I have crossed paths with three times? You might as well be Michael Cera or Sabrina Carpenter.
How do students find their campus celebrities? I would say this changes from celebrity to celebrity, but it can form as easily as seeing someone wear a top with a niche reference you love, and now you refer to them as “Lana Del Rey.” Maybe you saw a really cute guy who plays a sport, and now they are called “(insert whatever sport you choose because I am not trying to expose myself) boy.” There could even be a food service worker at your favourite place to eat on campus who is always smiling to everyone, and now they’re a definite campus celebrity to you. These individuals stick out to us for several reasons, and they make our university experience extra personal.
I believe the interest in having a campus celebrity is rooted in the unknown. This generation loves to grasp onto something and keep it secretly “protected.” Campus celebrities are protected in some way because they will never know. Whether it is that one cute guy, the iconic professor who kept you and your friends entertained in class, that person who lived on your dorm floor in the first year, or the girl whose outfits you really admire but have never told, they will never know the space they take up in your mind. You could be reading this right now and be completely oblivious to the fact that you are someone’s campus celebrity. Seeing these individuals can be a spark of joy in your day, where you can have a little laugh and, of course, jump to your group chat to text your roommates, “Guess who I just saw,” as they all rush to text back their guesses.
“Guess who I just saw…”
Canon event of having a campus celebrity.
The other side of this conversation is the obvious fact that having a campus celebrity makes coming to campus more fun. Every day is a mystery when you get to ask yourself who you will see that day. It never hurts to have a little motivation to come to campus, even if it is to see a random person who has no idea you exist. When seeing these personalities around, it is hard not to create your own life story for them that’s probably completely false in every way possible. Simply seeing someone on campus and assuming who they are by (kindly) judging them based on their appearance and aura is inherent storytelling, so you should just call yourself an author!
When we try to escape our own lives because we do the same thing, day in and day out, we might as well look at what is around us. We see the lives and experiences of our favourite content creators and celebrities that are portrayed to us on social media, making us feed into this false narrative of perfection. This cycle then comes back to us, where we expect more for ourselves even when this is no one’s true reality.
In the same way, we do this for our campus celebrities. This character we create of these individuals leads us to think that those around us are doing better or hold themselves to a certain standard that we do not. It can be fun to subconsciously feel connected to our “celebrities” to detach from our own minds.
In some odd and creepy way, I think campus celebrities unify our campuses. What would we do without these pockets of excitement these days? It is fascinating to think that a person’s brief presence could affect us so much. The delusion of our everyday life is what keeps us going. While this article has now forever put in writing how strange it is that I have odd connections and attachments to people who may not know the first thing about me, I know most reading this can relate.
This article might have you thinking of your own campus celebrities, and now you cannot wait to go to school tomorrow because you are hoping to see them! Now, not to sound like Carrie Bradshaw, but I couldn’t help but wonder… could I be someone’s campus celebrity?