Artifact2

The host discusses the myths and traditions surrounding Georgia Tech, focusing on the academic rigor and how it affects the student body. They explore the concept of dark academia and how it romanticizes studying and libraries. The host also mentions a popular Georgia Tech student who presents an aesthetic and romanticized version of school life on social media, but emphasizes that Tech is still challenging and stressful for everyone. They mention the Week of Welcome and the myth that it is the only fun week at Tech, highlighting the intimidating attitude towards schoolwork. The host also mentions the myth of only one person graduating from Georgia Tech and the myth about touching the rambling wreck before finals. Hey guys, welcome to this episode of Mental Strength through Myths in Media. I'm your host, Caroline Mundt, and basically, throughout this episode, I'm going to be talking about the myths that surround Georgia Tech and how I feel like a lot of them are kind of based in academic rigor of the school and not necessarily in quote-unquote fun traditions and how I just kind of really think that affects us as a student body. I'm a Georgia Tech student myself, and so a lot of these myths, not only have I like seen online, but I've heard of a lot of these myths through word of mouth, and I've lived through some of them even myself, so I'm really excited to be talking about this kind of stuff. I want to go back to academics and how I feel like the myths at our school kind of fall under, of course, like an academic umbrella, and under that umbrella, we can also mention dark academia, which is, of course, the purpose of the course, and so basically, I want to kind of introduce what dark academia is. I mean, from what I have seen online, it's an aesthetic that became like super popular online during COVID, and it kind of glorifies a more preppy slash vintage aesthetic, whether that be in like fashion or even in like hobbies, such as art and music, like I remember I was looking it up one time online, and I saw this like, I saw like people painting, I saw a girl like playing piano, so it's not even just that, but the main thing that I kind of want to focus on is how it romanticizes like libraries and studying a lot, because of course, academia is in the name of it, and this aesthetic really lives online, but it gives a prep school vibe that I feel like a lot of people aspire to be, especially, I feel like when COVID hit, and people weren't seeing each other face to face, people kind of were able to take like the liberty to kind of present themselves however they wanted on social media, because no one was able to tell them like, oh, that's not you, because they haven't seen each other in so long, and so that's kind of something that we weren't able to do before, and this aesthetic kind of created an online community where people could like connect and share their ideas with each other, and through the hard times of the pandemic, it really created this bond for people who really wanted to kind of like identify with this aesthetic, and I think this is kind of a parallel, more or less, to Georgia Tech, because if you really think about it, I feel like our academic rigor is kind of like the hard times that we're kind of going through, but some of these myths and traditions that we decide to follow is more or less kind of a way that we decide to cope with the stress, and how I feel like that can really bring us together. I do have some critiques about this, but I really think at the end of the day that these myths and these traditions that we have really bring us together as a student body, so let's get started. Okay, so to start, I feel like a lot of the time when people think of like college traditions, of course there might be a couple of academic-based ones here and there, especially in colleges such as like Harvard or any of the other Ivy Leagues or anything like that, but in general, I honestly feel like a lot of the traditions that college campuses have here are either sports-based or more social-slash-fun-based, if you will. For me personally, the first example I can think of is the rolling tradition that they have at Auburn University, because the reason I can think of this is because I grew up an Auburn fan, and so of course it's like the first thing that comes to mind, but anyway, I remember even doing this like as a kid, if we would go down to visit with my parents after their home football games, basically the tradition is if they win the home football game that they go to, everyone goes down to the trees in Toomer's Corner, which is kind of just like the center of campus and stuff, and they throw toilet paper over the oaks trees, and even though it sounds silly, at the end of the day, it was a lot of fun. However, at Tech, when I think of like myths and traditions here, all the ones that first come to my mind, they are like all academic-based, and none of them seem to have too much of a base in like a social aspect necessarily, which is kind of sad, and because of this, I think this like really reflects on the Georgia Tech student body as a whole, not necessarily in the fact that it's sad, but just with the just kind of our habits in general, and how that can kind of lead to, I don't know, how we maybe cope with the high levels of stress that we face here. For example, okay, I know this one girl, and she is actually probably like the most aesthetic person that I have ever met in my life. I see her like content and stuff all on my Instagram, and like on my social media all the time, and it's so pretty, and she loves to make videos about like, oh, a day in my life at Georgia Tech, where she's basically just, of course, recording a day in her life, and it's so cool, and it's so cute, and she's very talented, and like honestly, like she could probably be an influencer if she wanted. On the flip side, however, I also see her working all the time, and like I will literally see her, it'll be like two or three in the morning, and she's like still working, and I still see that she's stressed. So obviously, like the social media, like it's not necessarily real, and like it's like this isn't all rainbows and butterflies, and even though she certainly adds aesthetic and romanticizes her school life, at the end of the day, Tech is really hard for everybody, no matter how much fluff you've tried to put into it. Also, just to get more insight on what romanticizing schoolwork at Tech looks like, I decided to create like a Google form, and send it to just a few of my friends, asking about if they had ever tried to create some sort of aesthetic or vibe to their studies in order to keep them more motivated, and even though not everybody said yes, there were still a good bit of people, and I feel like enough to mention, who said that they enjoy going to places like coffee shops, and setting up the materials all neatly, so that way they feel more productive, or even posting on social media to kind of quote keep them accountable in a way, more or less, but that's just kind of one example of the romanticization of schoolwork on Tech's campus. So how do our traditions really tie into that? Where do our myths kind of glorify the stress and rigor of our institute? And honestly, how is a student's body do we react to it? Okay, so to get more into the specifics of what I mean by like, how does our student body like react to the romanticization of schoolwork, or just kind of our stress in general, there's a couple things that I kind of want to mention, and the first thing is kind of starting with the entirety of the idea of Week of Welcome. So for a lot of colleges, I mean like it is usually typical for students to kind of get there a couple of days before, especially students who are like thinking of joining Greek life, or rushing, or student-athletes who have to attend practices earlier, stuff like that. However, all Georgia Tech students had moved into their dorms like a full week before classes started, and my friends who went to like UGA, or Georgia College, they kind of moved in like the weekend before, and they kind of just got to the campus, and their classes started that Monday, and that was kind of it. And everyone of course like noticed this, because like all of their Georgia, I mean not their Georgia Tech, their UGA friends, they were kind of all experiencing this, and so it kind of became like a running joke between the students that I met, that they were having us move in so early, because this was going to be the quote, only fun week we have in college, and that kind of became something that was said around campus, and it became kind of a myth, especially to a lot of the first years during our first week here. And of course this isn't necessarily true, of course, I've definitely, and everyone else has definitely had fun here since like that started, but I think that does really like speak to the attitudes Georgia Tech students have about their schoolwork, and it honestly can be really intimidating. Another thing that I also want to mention is that during Week of Welcome, even our president acknowledged that Georgia Tech apparently people used to say during orientation, look to your left and look to your right, only one of you will graduate from Georgia Tech. And so I wanted to double check this to like see, I was like oh my gosh, like is this true? So I decided to double check with my roommate, since both of her parents actually went to Georgia Tech, and yeah, she confirmed with me that her parents like went through college, was kind of not like lingering over their heads when they were here. So even though like, thank gosh, the statistic really isn't like real anymore, because Tech has taken the measures to kind of improve students' quality of life here, I did think like, when I did hear about it, I was even a little like, wow, that's really intimidating. So instead of a school being known for cool traditions or something like that, Georgia Tech is more or less known for just how difficult it is, and how you might not even make it out, you know? And so I feel like that can be really stressful, and kind of just like stay in the back of students' minds, whether they're thinking about it consciously or not, you know what I mean? And also another myth that I kind of want to brush on, is that if you touch the ramblin' rep before your first year finals are over, then you'll fail your finals. And even though that's all fun and games, like it's not that serious, they do check and ask if you're a first year, because I remember when I first did the first time, they were like, wait, are you a first year? I was like, no, no, no, it's fine, it's fine. But yeah, I just think that like, it's really interesting how students here are paranoid about their grades, and are more than willing to more or less kind of rationalize getting good grades with superstitions. And I just think that's really interesting. And of course, we do have certain myths and traditions, such as like the freshman cake race. But at the end of the day, I feel like these kinds of traditions are the things that really like embody the spirit of Georgia Tech, you know what I mean? And so that's just kind of like, something that I wanted to cover that I thought was really interesting, and kind of just ties into how like, we have these traditions that kind of tie us together as a student body. Even though it is a stressful time, we kind of are able to connect over that stress. Okay, so because of the myths that surround Georgia Tech, like I mentioned earlier, and some of our traditions, many students have certain traditions. So that not only we create like this sense of community, but also to kind of deal with the stress that we face at the school. And of course, this is a good thing that we have like kind of a support system. But I think we also need to keep in mind that we need to create a call to action, and kind of look at some of the history of our traditions in this and to see why we do them. So that way, you can just kind of be more mindful of our own mental health and our peers. And like how I want to tie this back into social media and like the dark academia aesthetic as a whole. I mean, that's a great way I've done it myself to like kind of create an aesthetic so I can stay motivated. And obviously a lot of other students do as well. But also, we do have to keep in mind that social media isn't real life. And at the end of the day, even though it's important and a critical way that we kind of like share our lives or kind of create an aesthetic that we want to show to the world. At the end of the day, we need to kind of be checking in on people face to face to see how they're doing. And just kind of create a better community at Tech for everyone. And yeah, I think that's how I'm going to end this episode. Thanks so much for listening. Transcribed by https://otter.ai