Campus Confessions: You Might be my Campus Celebrity

“Guess who I just saw!”

A text I’ve received countless times since the start of the semester and an indicator for me to check Life360 — a friends and family tracking app — to figure out where my friends are and who they might have run into.

I have a much bigger mouth than my two closest friends and can’t help but overshare the people who never fail to capture my attention — my campus celebrities. 

The phenomenon of campus celebrities appears to be growing. It feels as though most people have one — whether they admit it or not. Some people keep theirs to themselves, others may share them with friends, but campus celebrities govern a part of most students’ thoughts nonetheless. 

Campus characters become regular dining hall dinner discussion topics and are searched for in crowds at the crosswalk, only to be forgotten until they’re seen again. I’ve always tried to understand what compels me to obsess over a stranger like this.

More often than not I’m the recipient of the, “Look who’s here!” text, given that I talk about my campus celebrities so much my friends have adopted them as their own. 

I have two categories for them — “I want your life” or “I want to be your friend.”

In the first category, my campus celebrities operate far outside the realm of reality. I don’t perceive them as real people, but rather elusive caricatures and whenever I see them, I assume they have the best life. 

Maybe they’re on their way to get coffee or hangout with friends. But they never have homework or exams, and backpacks are a mere fashion accessory. Never once have I thought of them struggling in school or being unable to make friends. They’re superhuman.

A part of me knows this isn’t entirely true. But I can’t help but envision their lives as perfect. I use them as a strange form of escapism to project my fantasies of a relaxed, unstressful academic life onto a real person. I follow these people’s lives like I would an influencer on social media, pretending they never have worries or problems.

In the other category, some campus celebrities are the people I look up to. They’re the people whose outfits I’m eager to see every day or the people who always know the right thing to say in class. They’re the people I want to be friends with, but am too scared to talk to because they’re too cool for me.

Taking a step back from my delusions, campus celebrities allow me to connect with my friends. They give us something to deliberate over, to share with one another. They make this new campus feel less vast and more familiar.

My celebrities have noticeable confidence and swagger. They allow my friends and I to pretend that being a first-year is easy, because look at how well they’re doing it! 

Swept up in my own storytelling, I now struggle with pedestalizing people I don’t even know. The people I watch or pass on the street have real lives. They struggle and work just like I do.

I’m teaching myself to appreciate them as they are — human. It’s still OK to like their style or admire their intelligence but normalizing these standards of comparison prevents me from being truly fulfilled with myself. 

There’s nothing wrong with having a campus celebrity. For many, it’s a fun, entertaining way to make sense of campus life. But these are real people, not standards to meet. They don’t live in some alternate, perfect world where there are no problems and school is no big deal. 

They have bad days and get splashed with puddles by cars. They fail tests, oversleep and miss a class. They make mistakes and, as much as I like to other myself from them, we’re probably a lot more alike than I care to admit.

Despite all this, I know myself too well, and I love living in delusion. I know I’m going to continue obsessing over these strangers, but at least now I can do so with peace of mind.

Featured image by Hanna Houser / The Phoenix