Daily Editor and Creative Writing Major Josh Tate finally comes clean about everyone’s favorite superstition.

Coming to college leads to plenty of discoveries for the young and impressionable masses of students able to do so. Some discover profound truths about their heritage and identity or come to terms with their personal biases in order to grow as human beings. Others find new passions, pursue new avenues that completely alter their trajectory in life, or find out about marijuana. Perhaps more confusing than any of these life altering discoveries or teachings dolled out by Columbia, college taught me I was an Aquarius, but never told me what that meant. I meant to ask earlier, but at this point I think I’m in too deep.

Growing up in a southern household with a mother who was raised Pentecostal and a father who’s a fifth generation pastor, Astrology just wasn’t a thing for me and my siblings. They didn’t crack down on it or treat it like a taboo, it just never came up. Sure some people around made jokes about the future in the stars, but my literature oriented ass chalked that up to Shakespeare or John Green. And a couple of rebellious kids claimed that Jesus wasn’t nearly as interesting as balls of gas millions of light years away, but I wasn’t concerned. It just wasn’t a relevant thing in my life and the lives of my friends, but now that I’m here it’s everywhere.

I have friends asking me about my costar predictions, classes where you have to state an interesting fact about yourself AND your star sign as the ice-breaker, even that horrifying fountain outside of St. John’s that just stares at you like some eldritch abomination. To top it all off I’m now in two classes with the astro poets (would highly recommend) and everyone in the class knows way more about astrology than me. My professors write popular horoscopes on Twitter and I freeze up when the word retrograde comes into the conversation. I’m an AQUArius for God’s sake and yet I’m an air sign? Who made the rules? Who writes the horoscopes? What’s going on? Where am I?

Maybe it’s because Astrology seems like superstition with too much Stem. Maybe it’s the protestant guilt that’s piled up over the years. Maybe I just don’t see how you can follow the advice of the stars when you’re living in a light-polluted hellscape like Manhattan. Regardless, I don’t know where to start with astrology. All I know is apparently February is supposed to be a good month for an Aquarius, and that’s good enough for me for now. 

Image via Bwog Archives