Overheard Around Campus

by Erin Bartynski – University of Minnesota

It’s the first week back to class for us Gophers.  We slip, slide, and stomp our way to class through the un-shoveled sidewalks to sit through the same boring talk five times in a row.  Our professors hand out our syllabi.  They tell us all the books we need to read (which we won’t.)  And they tell us to turn off our damn cell phones before coming to class.

It all would be enough to dampen anyone’s spirits after a month long break, but fortunately we get to come back to another Golden Gopher standard – the Minnesota Daily and their live saving Sudoku and crossword puzzles.  The paper should really reorganize its layout, considering everyone, even the journalism students, grabs a copy before class and goes straight to the back page where all the distractions are.

Now there’s a new diversion in the lineup.  Network, which used to be an anonymous digital voice who talked smack to anyone who actually wrote to it, has now been replaced with Overheard around Campus.

Overheard is almost like Texts From Last Night, except instead of silent texts, these are obscene, outrageous and usually sexually related conversations that people overhear while walking around our vast campus.  People submit awkward or hilarious conversations that they heard other people say, without any names, and where on campus they overheard it.  For example, the best of today’s issue was:

Girl 1: “I got tested on Wednesday, so if I don’t get a call by Wednesday, I’m all good.”

Girl 2: “Aren’t you scared?”

Girl 1: “Nah, I have been too drunk to have been worried.”

– Campus Connector

There has been a Facebook group for these awkward statements since 2008, but it hadn’t really caught on to the masses.  Now that the Daily is publishing it, however, I can only imagine it will soon rise to the top of the Minnesota Daily distraction hierarchy.  Now all the loud, one-sided phone conversations about last weekend’s wasted shenanigans you’ve had to listen to on the campus bus can be put to a good use.

U of M students – join the Facebook group, “Overheard at U of M” and post what you hear!  I, in the meantime, will be watching what I say.