Freshman Information Technology major, Jamie McGuirk was more than overwhelmed trying to remember names of fellow freshmen she met during her first week here at SU. “I honestly just can’t do it anymore!” She exclaimed. “At first I introduced myself to everyone I met, even at the orientation events. After a dozen or so people, I found that I couldn’t even remember the names of the girls on my floor. Now they all think I’m a douchebag.” Jamie lamented. “I started calling all the girls on my floor ‘hey you’, ‘tiger’ and ‘chief’. I mean, they seriously hate me. I can’t even say names they’ve been calling me in the hallway in this interview.”
Slight anxiety slowly developed into full on phobia for young Jamie as her Syracuse career gradually came to a halt before the end of her first week. “It just started to consume me…Out of fear of offending more students, I just stopped talking.” confessed Jamie. “I avoided social interactions by sitting in my room building card-houses and eating Easy Mac. I got lost on my way to my first class and instead of asking someone for help, I turned around and just stopped going all together.”
Other freshmen have found themselves having similar problems with remembering the names of their classmates but have dealt with it in a more constructive manner. “Yeah, she’s honestly just really weird,” confessed Jamie’s roommate, Erica Lavigne, a Psychology major. “I tried being nice to her and including her in what the whole floor was doing, but she kept calling me ‘champ’ and avoiding eye contact. I even woke up with my name written on my hand in sharpie one morning, I’m pretty sure she tried to ‘label’ me. It’s hard remembering people’s names, but all you have to do is just ask again if you forget. Jamie’s got some serious problems to work out.”
“I’m beginning to think maybe I just have some particularly bad memory problems.” Jamie responded upon being informed that she was actually a Le Moyne University Junior and infact, not a Syracuse Freshman. “Yeah, we thought it was kind of inconvenient that between my 2 roommates and myself there were only 2 beds for 3 people, but it is a pretty large freshmen class this year so we just dealt with it. This really explains a lot. So, wait, who are you again?”
