Hopkins Fun Is a Matter of Style By Mike Gluck It's gotta be the name. Johns Hopkins. Not John. Johns. With an s. Johnsssssss. Not that it bothers me. Well, maybe once in a while. Like when I'm flying home for Thanksgiving and the guy in the next seat asks where I go to school. "I'm a senior at Johns Hopkins." "Oh, John Hopkins. That's in Baltimore, right?" "Yeah. Except that it's Johns Hopkins. With an s." "Sure, whatever. So, are you going to be a doctor?" Resisting the urge to stuff my pack of complimentary peanuts somewhere that would require him to receive medical attention, I calmly explain, for about the four-thousandth time since I became a freshman, that yes, it is Johns Hopkins, and no, I am not going to be a doctor. Hopkins is stressful--no one denies that--but much of the stress comes from having to deal with the stereotypes that people have about Hopkins. Consider the recent survey conducted by Inside Edge magazine. The editors of the magazine ranked the most and least fun colleges in America based on pseudo-scientific factors such as "student attractiveness" and the ever-ambiguous "happiness quotient." How'd we do? Not bad, at first glance. We made the top 100, albeit by the narrowest of margins. According to the folks who write for the Edge, Johns Hopkins is the 100th most fun school in America. Too bad they only ranked 101 schools. My first instinct when I heard the survey results was to run up and down the Gilman Hall steps screaming, "We beat the University of Chicago!" which, for the second year in a row, was named the worst place to go to school. But I thought that might be too much fun, so I decided to just go to the library instead. That's a joke, people. Smile. It's OK, honest. Here at Boring U.--which is what a writer for The Baltimore Sun called us--we are still allowed to have some fun. We just choose not to, seeing as how it's easier to make Dean's List. To have fun, you have to be relaxed. And most Hopkins students don't know how to relax. We're an intense bunch of kids. The computer lab is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So is the HUT, the undergraduate reading library. When I found out that Baltimore's nickname was "The City That Reads," I just assumed, being a Hopkins student, that they forgot to add "All The Time." The midnight oil never runs out at Hopkins. Somewhere, somehow, somebody is always studying more than you are. Like I said, we're intense. Remember Jack Nicholson in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"? Put him in a pair of sweatpants and give him a backpack and he'd fit right in. Of course, not all the blame for our funless atmosphere lies with the students. Professors who assign 250 pages of reading per week don't leave students too much time to just hang out and watch MTV, especially when students decide to take classes with (gasp!) other professors as well. The administration won't let us have kegs of beer on the Beach, the grassy lawn overlooking Charles Street. And, of course, I personally find it difficult to kick back and relax when I realize that, for the price of one semester's tuition here, I could buy a really nice stereo system, plus about 400 CDs to go with it. Having fun at Hopkins is not like having fun at other schools. In fact, there are only two Hopkins events that are really any fun at all. Well, three if you count sitting around telling Post Office Lady horror stories, but that's another column altogether. Most students, if you ask them about fun and Hopkins, will laugh so hard that they'll forget which level of the library they're on. But when they're done, they'll probably mention Spring Fair. What's so great about Spring Fair? Fried dough. Pit beef. A couple of hundred 5-year-olds with lemonade stains on their T-shirts running around campus. Reminds me of when I was a freshman. The second fun thing at Hopkins is the biannual event when we wake up while it's still dark out and use flashlights to find our way to Garland Hall. Then we drink hot chocolate and munch on muffins for five hours until it's time to hand in our pre-registration forms for the next semester. Sure, it's only fun because no one gets more than four hours' sleep the night before, but it's the best we can do without a 60,000-seat football stadium. But that still doesn't explain why we were ranked below the U.S. Naval Academy (#91) again. There have to be other reasons, explanations buried deep within the brick and marble, that justify our dismal reputation. Which brings us back to the name. It may be 200 years since Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins named their son for his great-grandmother, Margaret Johns, but the philanthropist's name still causes problems today. Think about some of the schools that beat us in the survey. Most are named for cities or states. Florida State University (#2). Boston College (#27). University of Illinois (#33). Being named for a city or state gives a school an instant reputation, an image that, for better or worse, is tied to the geography. Something solid. I say Iowa State University (#66), you think "corn fields." I say University of Colorado (#16), you think "skiing." I say University of California Chico (#52), you think "which one of the Marx brothers was he?" Whatever. You get the picture. The picture here at Homewood, however, is a bit fuzzier. Johns Hopkins? Who was he? We have an identity crisis, stemming in part from the fact that we have to share our name with the country's best hospital, and aggravated by strangers who can't understand that his name really was Johns. To be a Hopkins student is to be confused. I've been here three and a half years, and I still don't know why half the library is underground. Or why Homecoming is during lacrosse season. But even more puzzling to me is the insistence on calling it The Johns Hopkins University. My theory is that whoever's in charge of naming things around here just wants to make sure that no one mistakes us for, say, A Johns Hopkins University. After all, if there were another Johns Hopkins University, the students there might not care if it's John or Johns. They might not want a library that's open 24 hours a day. They might realize that it's true what they say: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Now how much fun would that be? ----------------------------------------------------------------- Mike Gluck is a senior in The Writing Seminars. -----------------------------------------------------------------