One brave soul sacrifices her dignity to endure a week of humiliation

This past week I somewhat half-heartedly attempted to embarrass myself in front of the Princeton community. I say “half-heartedly” because beneath this rock-solid, emotionless exterior, there lives a quivering little girl with a healthy fear of humiliation. I am no stranger to being made fun of; when I was in fifth grade, my friends and I rode imaginary horses on the playground. We named our horses, jumped them over invisible hurdles and cantered to our hearts’ content. Unsurprisingly, this earned us beat-downs by the kickball kids. Like, literally, that happened.

In middle school, I didn’t fare much better. Gym class became an exhibition of my lack of athletic skill. We reached the volleyball portion of our physical education, and our gym teachers landed on the idea of pitting the teams against each other tournament-style. My hand-eye coordination crumbled under the pressure. Prepubescent boys screamed at me for missing prime spiking opportunities. I was 4 feet 11 inches tall, so that was some bullshit. I moved onto high school, hardened to the world and vowing never to embarrass myself in front of my peers again.

Of course, between freshman year of high school and sophomore year of college, embarrassing myself has become less and less earth-shattering. In fact, I learned to laugh along with everyone else when I got hit in the face by a basketball or slipped on an icy patch of ground. Since I’ve become so strong, when I was presented with the opportunity to embarrass myself for an article, I leaped at the chance. It wasn’t until I started brainstorming my humiliating activities that I realized I wasn’t as immune to mortification as I had previously thought. The following events made up my week from awkward hell.

Somewhat Embarrassing:

I started out my week by flaunting a pink T-shirt with the words “I’m Not Easy, But We Can Discuss It” written in rhinestones. I passed through the first half of my day with very few stares; sitting in lecture is not conducive to showing off ridiculous attire. However, walking up and down the aisle in the Rocky Dining Hall earned me more than a few double-takes. By the end of lunch, I was avoiding eye contact with all passersby. After lunch, I hit my 12-person seminar with a zip-up hoodie in tow. I had planned on being done with humiliation for the day, but the room was warm, and soon I was sweating. I battled to keep the hoodie on, but my pits won out, and I had to remove the jacket. Even then I attempted to slouch behind the table, but the words “I’m Not Easy” were still perfectly visible. The girl directly across from me looked pretty horrified by my wardrobe choice. I was sufficiently embarrassed for Day One.

Not That Embarrassing:

I have never asked a question in lecture. I never wanted to be that girl. So it was obvious that my next challenge would be asking one in ECO 100: Introduction to Microeconomics, the largest lecture on campus. I’m enrolled in Micro, and the lone time I saw a girl try to raise her hand I actually felt anxious for her. I walked into lecture feeling terrified. Our professor was discussing risk aversion and gambling. My roommate elbowed me and whispered that now would be a good time to ask about risk aversion versus income. I tentatively raised my hand.

The instant I did, I regretted it. My face got hot, I had trouble swallowing and I could feel my heart thumping in my chest. I watched as the professor walked back and forth across the stage, not noticing my lone hand quaking in the air. After a while, I lowered my arm and awkwardly rested my hand on top of my head. As soon as the professor looked at me, I shot it up.

“You have a question?” he asked.

“Does risk aversion change with a person’s income?” I replied.

He proceeded to answer my question, and it wasn’t a big deal at all.

Pretty Embarrassing:

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This one was unintentional, but embarrassing nonetheless. I fell down the stairs outside Witherspoon on my way to the gym and landed sprawled out at the bottom. The girl walking down the stairs behind me passed, asked a quick, “Are you okay?” and kept walking. I was actually thankful that she didn’t care about my well-being at all, because I would have preferred to act like it hadn’t happened. But of course, another girl had seen the incident, and she came over to ask if I was all right and explained that she had run all the way over here because she had seen my fantastic fall from across the courtyard. I mumbled a few thank-you’s and I’m-all-right’s and walked speedily away.

The next day I found out I had sprained my ankle. So that sucked.

Incredibly Embarrassing:

Last year I was sitting with my friends at dinner in the Rocky Dining Hall, when I looked up and saw a girl across the aisle sitting and weeping at a table. My first reaction, I’m ashamed to say, was: “Couldn’t she find a more appropriate venue for this?” I haven’t cried since I was 16, when I accused my mother of only loving me when I got fives on AP exams. (This turned out to be only partially true). Possibly because of this innate aversion to tears, I never feel more uncomfortable than when I see someone crying in public. Naturally, I decided to use this for my grand finale.

I went to the U-Store and bought eye drops. I decided to hit the Rocky D-Hall at 5:45 p.m., when there are a significant amount of people in the hall, but not too many that I wouldn’t be noticed. I went into the dining hall, calmly filled my plate and sat down at a table of my friends to apply my tears. I poured eye drops in each eye, dribbled them down my cheeks, and was off. I sat down at a table near a group of freshmen, placed my head in my hands and started crying.

At first it began with uneven sniffling. Then I added in the shoulder heaving, as if my body were racked with sobs. I kept my face in my hands so as to avoid drawing notice to the fact that my eyeballs were not producing new tears. It took about five minutes of this before a girl from the freshman table walked over.

“Are you okay?” she asked me sympathetically.

“Uh huh,” I responded, looking up at her while wiping at my wet cheeks. “I’m just going to finish eating and then get out of here.”

“Well, you can always come and sit with us,” she said.

Wondering why this offer would ever be appealing to some overemotional, crying chick, but appreciating it nonetheless, I politely declined and speed-walked out of the dining hall. I’ve run into that very sweet girl at least three times since the crying incident, and I feel super awkward every time.

What I learned this week is that most people actually don’t care what you do. If you feel you’ve just humiliated yourself in front of everyone, just wait five minutes, because they will have forgotten all about it. Unless you’re that crying girl from the dining hall last year — I still remember you.