Everyone gets sick in college. We all know it — heck, we’ve all been it. It’s an inevitable fate when you’re sharing a room, a bathroom, cups and various smoking devices with other people.

Traditionally, when someone gets a cold, it usually goes away in a week or so, then that person is back at it and ready to party, right?

Wrong!

Here at Syracuse University, it seems like anything goes. The mumps waltzed onto campus in August, and stuck around until December. A flu is contracted in October, and it hangs out here until the following semester. I get a cold in January, and I STILL have a cold six weeks later! What on earth is this madness?

I know what you’re thinking: “Wow, a cold for six weeks? She must have a terrible immune system.” What I have to say to that is one — please don’t talk about my immune system like that, he’s really sensitive. And two — I’m very confident that I have discovered a different, much more likely cause: All of the other flu-ridden people are getting me sick!

Whenever I start feeling a little better, as if my cold has finally left me, it feels like a bat signal is sent out inside SU Health Services so that they release their most prized, sickly flu patient to sit next to me in class. That person then fulfills their duty to eject poorly-covered coughs from their mouth every 10 seconds or so for the entirety of the period.

And this doesn’t just happen in class. When I’m at the dining hall, I always run into at least one sneeze. Or at the gym, I might slowly jog into one.

These common occurrences have led me to question what I’m doing to deserve this. Is this some weird form of karma? Do people have a bet to see how long they can keep me sick?

Or maybe people just like coughing on me. There’s definitely a group of kids sitting at Health Services right now saying, “What are you guys doing after this?” “Nothing really. I might go cough on Annabeth. Wanna come?” “Oh, hell yeah! That sounds like so much fun!”

The thing is, I don’t know how to handle myself when someone starts coughing on me or my things. I’ve tried slowly inching away, but that doesn’t work. And I can’t tell if it would be rude or not to just get up and switch seats.

I would say something, but, quite honestly, I’m really bad at confronting people. So, I have decided to put my thoughts into a poem:

Dear people who keep getting me sick,
Stop coughing on me; it really makes me tick!
You may think that you are kind for giving me your flu,
But if you give it to me, then that day you will rue!
Your noses are filled but your hearts are not,
And @healthservices, I’ve caught onto your plot!
You have pushed me to my edge, and I’m all out of NyQuil
So please, listen to my speech, and within you let it instill:
Stop sneezing on my food,
Stop coughing on my face,
Stop not washing your hands,
For my name is Mann, Annabeth Grace!

Annabeth Grace Mann is a sophomore film major. Her column appears biweekly. She can be reached at agmann@syr.edu.

Published on February 18, 2018 at 11:37 pm