Often considered one of Whitman’s biggest selling points, its warm, friendly atmosphere was an idea driven home at this year’s convocation. Walking onto campus is like being handed a Prozac, a lollipop and one giant dose of euphoria. One student even went so far as to challenge conventional wisdom by stating that Disneyland was not, in fact, the happiest place on Earth: Whitman was. Aside from disillusioning the world’s population of children, this idea is apparently one that has students from around the country (although, admittedly mostly the Pacific Northwest) clamoring to join the ranks of current Whitties.

In my case, however, that wasn’t what drove me to apply, or even make the trek up the western seaboard and eventually settle down here four weeks ago. Personally, the idea of being anywhere more cheerful than a place that plays polka music 24/7, has grown men and women parading around in costume-wear designed for preschoolers, and virtually requires that you plaster a smile on your face no matter how many times you’ve had your foot run over by an overzealous adolescent trying to get to the front of the teacup line makes me want to sit in a basement playing opera music until I’ve cried enough to restore the natural balance of the world.

In June, I got my first taste of the Whitman spirit: I ran into a current Whittie at a friend’s graduation party, and after my college plans had been revealed the conversation quickly exploded into a great profusion of ecstatic exclamations and exuberant gesticulation. I had never met someone so  unabashedly  enthusiastic about a single topic in my entire life.

I wouldn’t label myself as an entirely pessimistic person, and in fact, I am generally quite delightful to be around, but something about such excessive displays of felicity make me suspicious. One can’t be that excited about that many things all of the time. Sometimes it’s fun to hate the world. Sometimes it’s uplifting to tear apart a picture of a puppy because it makes you feel better. Or at least that’s what I find. So when I arrived at Whitman for orientation four weeks ago and found a campus essentially comprised solely of students imploding with enthusiasm, I naturally assumed I would never be able to fit the archetype.

I wanted to take each of them aside and tell them to please take some of their happiness and save it for their post-graduate years when they were working at McDonalds to pay off student loans and rooming with a struggling musician whose gigs kept mysteriously being canceled so he could never actually pay his half of the rent. I was convinced that that much cheer was as unnatural as the manufactured brand of ecstasy they dolled out at Disneyland. But, four weeks later, try as hard as I might, I just can’t not be happy.

I don’t know if it’s being constantly berated by the sunshine exuding from my peers, or if it’s having root beer delivered to my door for no discernible reason, or if the entire campus is some sort of government experiment that’s testing a new brand of anti-depressants on the entire Whitman community by serving it to us in our food, but the more I’m here the more I find this enigmatic elation to be entirely inescapable. And I find that I don’t particularly want to escape it.