Aunt Izzie: How to handle the slackers and free-loaders in your life
Dear Aunt Izzie,
I’m so tired of the lazy people in my classes not turning in their homework and napping in class without any consequences.
Sincerely,
Surrounded by Slackers
Dear SBS,
I’m right there with you. Every time I see someone who skipped class earlier in the day at Servo I want to kick them. Whenever I notice someone adjusted the margins and triple spaced their essay to fulfill the length requirement I want to pull my hair out. I want to yell at people who fall asleep in class. Don’t they realize they’re paying thousands of dollars a year to drool all over their woefully blank notebooks?
But I don’t kick them, I don’t pull my hair out, I don’t yell. I take a deep breath and follow the two important steps for dealing with people like that.
I don’t technically recommend the first step. It’s not very nice and can turn you into a jerk really quick, but I’ll tell you anyway because it is definitely effective. Allow yourself to be a little bit smug. There’s at least one kid in every class who somehow manages to be hungover every day and loudly complains about it so everyone knows he has a phenomenal social life. You know he’s smug. Fight smugness with smugness.
Remind yourself that you have a work ethic and the drive to succeed, and someday that will make you a valuable member of society. Society has enough people who are hungover every day.
The first step is very internal. Please don’t go around bragging about the advice column you read telling you to be smug; literally no one will be impressed.
The second step requires a bit of personality adjust. You’ve got to stop caring about these people, because they will follow you for the rest of your life. Even if you work your way up until you’re the CEO of a major company there will still be that girl who charmed her way to the top, or the guy who doesn’t know anything but never gets fired.
Keep your smugness internal and let go of the violent tendencies these people give you.
Izzie Gibson Penrose, class of 2016, has 18 years of advice to give. She loves telling people what to do (but doesn’t take offense if they don’t listen) and lives as strange a life as possible so she has plenty of anecdotes to share. Izzie also enjoys making jokes and baking cupcakes. Email her with questions, concerns, or anything LITERALLY ANYTHING that’s on your mind at gibsis01@gettysburg.edu. She promises to read every email she receives at least once, probably six times.
