If there’s anything longer than Washington University’s full name, it’s the line it takes for me to get to our auspicious, historical Olympic bleachers on a Sunday. Before I began studying here, I was enthusiastic about being in an environment that placed schoolwork above all else. But I have found myself terribly mistaken. Between the peer pressure to have to attend Tuesday afternoon’s tailgate for the track meet at Fontbonne University, and the isolation I feel from not being on one of our DIII teams, I have been massively disappointed.

Let me just take you through the average tailgate situation here. Picture it. Monday morning’s water polo match. Me. In traditional housing. 6-foot- 2, green eyes, Capricorn. I am awoken not by the song of my alarm, “Accidentally in Love,” but instead, my roommate shaking me awake asking about whether or not he can borrow my foam finger. Everyone is running around the halls and communal bathrooms, getting to know each other of course, and I’m sitting there wondering whether or I should join them or start the essay due in two weeks that I’ve been putting off. And if I decide not to go, then I’ll sit in the library doing my homework with about as many students who were admitted into the second presidential debate.

If you want to have a social life, or a life at all at Wash. U., then it somehow has to be affiliated with a sport. The best parties are the tailgates or the track ones where they chug beer and run as far they can until they find someone they know who isn’t on the team. Do you know why no one talks about the football game last Sunday? Because everybody gets so drunk that no one can even remember it.

And that’s just the surface. Don’t even get me started about all the merchandise. A groutfit is not complete without those gray “WUSTL Athletics” sweatshirts that do not specify which team people are on. It’s like the administration knows how much the athletes dominate the campus. Placing any specification on their clothes would be like Beyonce walking around with a nametag.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the athletes here. I love Beyonce, too. But it’s a lot of pressure being at a school so dominated by athletics. I see the Snapchat stories of my friends from other schools take of their library with a 3:07 a.m. filter on a Friday, and I just feel left out. It’s like I’m missing out on the typical college experience. If I want to go to the library to do work, I can’t concentrate over the noise of the cheering fans from the football field. Or the sound of drilling.

We’re lucky to be at a school that has everything. Good food, Tempurpedic beds, Bear Cuts, a meme page, Holmes Lounge and a nonsectarian chapel. Why do we need to add one more thing to that list? I just wish our Division III sports teams could be more low-key and less disruptive to my daily life here at Wash.U. Except our Division I rugby team. They can stay.