So we lose by six points. The feeling settles in the pit of your stomach as the final buzzer goes off. The houses are empty and the streets are spotted with aimless fans who didn't think our night would unfold like this — the bleaker of two realities. But the feeling subsides as the night wears on or we adapt. The next morning, we still wake up in Chapel Hill, and they wake up over there.
In my unenlightened youth, I took a prospective student tour at Duke University. From the moment I stepped on campus, I knew it was the opposite of home. I could see myself hating the place for the next four years. The certainty of that intuition was magical. I hope everyone experiences a moment of utter clarity like the one offered to me on my Duke tour.
These are the 10 most unsettling things that a member of the Duke community said to or near me that have stuck with me all these four long years:
10. “Flunch.”
My tour guide pitched an exciting Duke opportunity — faculty lunch. You amble up to your condescending professor after class, mumble through an invitation to lunch and the two of you eventually eat on the university’s dime. I was excited to learn that Duke invented lunch and having a nice time. Only, I would have chosen a different portmanteau. Lunculty. Or, Facunch.
9. “This is my favorite spot to cry.”
Of course, we’ve all told jokes that don’t land. But this was the only attempt at a joke that our guide made during the tour.
It didn’t have the tone or wry smile of a joke either. “I’m serious," she added.
