While wandering through your local grocery store, looking to buy some berries or perhaps a sweet treat, you’ve likely been assaulted by the pungent smell of the soap aisle. The soap aisle gets some kind of magical quality from the smells of lemon verbena, lavender, coconut and so many unidentifiable scents all mixing together to form one, oatmeal-infused, squeaky-clean blast. But it typically goes unnoticed by Computer Science majors due to the scent of their Ultra Glacier Rush 72-hour long-lasting sweat-resistant deodorant.

One CS senior came to the conclusion that he could cut costs by not wearing deodorant, potentially saving tens of dollars. But it had been nearly two weeks since his last shower, so while he was in his local Safeway, the powerful amalgamation of scents that is the soap aisle was able to overpower his own distinct smell and lured him in.

“It was magical,” he said. “There were green soaps, red soaps, soaps shaped like animals and soaps for animals. There were even soaps with normal scents! Not ‘Extreme Canyon Winds’ or ‘Mystical Cosmic Scream,’ they had scents like orange and honey.”

It’s clear that this excursion to the soap aisle was transformative for this Computer Science student. Maybe the excitement of soap will encourage him to take more than one shower a month. It may potentially even encourage CS majors, at Whitman and beyond, to plan a visit to the soap aisle. But the least we can hope for is that they’ll start using soap. Someday.