Staff Writer Lauren Thomas tweeted at a UNC varsity athlete as part of The Daily Tar Heel's Bucket List for UNC students. She documented her experience here:
I think I speak for a lot of us here at UNC when I say that I follow some of my favorite UNC varsity athletes on social media.
Well, if I’m being completely honest, I basically just follow the basketball team.
Twitter is my go-to source for their latest whereabouts, the most recent happenings or Marcus’ next trip to Chipotle. If you’re serious enough to find the athletes’ Instagram accounts, you can see some more personal pictures — visuals are even better in my opinion.
So I guess I’ll admit, at times this “following” is more of a “stalking”…but I just can’t help it! They’re just so…amazing! Like why can’t I be friends with J.P. Tokoto? Why won’t Justin Jackson talk to me in my math class (I see you Justin!)? It’s just not fair! But what can I do about it? Sit back and complain? No. I decided to take to social media to catch their attention.
Laugh at me all you want, but the afternoon I tweeted J.P. Tokoto remains a great memory during my time here at UNC. It was the day I mustered up enough courage to finally hit send … and he favorited my tweet! Yes — a favorite! He acknowledged my existence, and that was enough for me.
Maybe the tweet was a bit extreme, and maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned marriage, but after pondering my exact wording and staring at the computer screen for too long, enough was enough.
At the end of the day, UNC varsity athletes are human beings like you and me. Well, they do have superhuman athletic capabilities that I will never be able to achieve in my lifetime, but aside from that I shouldn’t be hesitant to tweet at them...right?
Maybe next time I see the basketball team hanging out at the Bottom of Lenoir, I’ll go say hey. Or maybe I’ll ask Justin Jackson for his phone number in math class, so we can help each other with homework, of course; the professor did say it was a good idea to have a few friends in the class to consult with.
Okay, who am I kidding? For now, I’ll stick to Twitter and maybe a comment on an Instagram post every now and then. Major shout out to Tokoto to favoriting my tweet that one time, maybe a follow back next time? #teamfollowback
I can officially check this item off my UNC Bucket List — a successful task completed, in my opinion. But honestly, it shouldn’t have been so difficult. I’m just abnormally enamored with our basketball team, with good reason to be! Those guys are amazing — all of our UNC varsity athletes are. Shout out to all of you for being you and keep up the good work.
And feel free to hit me up on Twitter @laurenthomasx3.
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