Eva Jaber ’28 (she/her) is a prospective English or international relations major. She is a member of the Cleftomaniacs, an a cappella group, an ESL tutor and hopes to encourage peace-minded advocacy on campus. Contact her at ehjaber@wm.edu.
Adam Jutt ’25 is old and irrelevant and spends most of his time reminiscing about about his Flat Hat days.
The views expressed in the article are the author’s own.
Anyone who’s a real reader of The Flat Hat — or, you know, the Bible — knows that before Eve, there was Adam. If you’ve ever taken a good look at the graphic for my column, you would realize that before “Eva’s Apple,” there was “Adam’s Apple.” This is not, as you might assume, because my column is akin to a religious text (although that’s true as well). I am simply the second writer in what will hopefully be a long line of satire advice columnists at the great Alma Mater of the Nation.
With that being said, I had a secret dream when I began my tenure as a satire advice columnist that I would one day lap Adam Jutt, who wrote nine glorious Apples in his prime. I have promised you for the past few issues that something incredible was coming, and this is it. I, Eva Jaber, with my 18th Apple, have officially lapped Adam Jutt. I would tell Adam to read it and weep, but he’s actually a really cool guy, and that wouldn’t be nice, especially considering that he’s come back to write the 18th issue with me. Whatttt?!? You heard me. This is a special co-written issue of “Eva’s Apple.” It was originally titled “Eva’s Apple #18: I Lapped Adam Jutt,” but such a generational issue calls for a generational title. Welcome to “Eva’s Apple #18: Return of the Jutt-i.” Boom. Write it and weep, Adam. The question of the week is as follows:
“What if I peaked in college?”
Adam here. It’s not a particularly well-posed question, in that it’s not particularly clear what it actually means. What is being asked? What do they want to know?
One possibility is that they want to know how to identify whether they are someone who peaked in college. Presumably, the asker is now post-college, hence the use of the past tense “peaked” instead of the present perfect “am peaking.” Such a distinction is critical because the answer to the identification question depends on the stage of life in which one finds oneself. A middle schooler, for example, would struggle enormously to know whether their peak will be their college years, while the elderly — cursed with the clarity of a more dispassionate perspective on the various chapters of their life — will know whether they peaked in college simply as a matter of fact, in the same way they know their address and name.
An altogether different question would be, “I peaked in college. Now, what should I do about that fact?” Because I have no way of knowing which question was meant (“what if” being, as it is, a far more popular interrogative structure among toddlers than lawyers), I will answer both. Conveniently, the second is a very natural follow-up to the first.
We begin with the notion of identification. In the past, I regaled you with lists of ten or more steps. A whole, proper staircase of steps, one could say. The process of identifying a college peak, however, takes only two. More like the couple of awkward little steps it takes to get inside your house from the front porch or garage than any meaningful change in altitude.
A peak is defined by two qualities: it is a high point, and it is higher than the points around it. The first step of the process is about identifying whether college was a “high,” and the second is about identifying whether the post-college period is a comparative “low.”
1. Did you run a tremendously successful, cult-classic advice column in college? If you did, then the first quality of a peak is met in spades. A student newspaper advice column has always been a one-way ticket to “that guy” status. Everyone wanted to be your friend. You had an invite to every party, and let’s just say you were never paying for your own drinks when you went out. Why do you think “column-boy” has emerged as a slang term for cool and hot? To be clear, running the advice column is not just a sufficient condition; it’s also necessary. If you didn’t have an advice column, you were a nobody. Every day was agony. No self-esteem. No accomplishments. No one proud of you, least of all yourself. Why’d you even go to college?
2. Do you now (in your post-college life) find yourself aimless and purposeless, with such aimlessness and purposelessness entirely because you no longer run a critically acclaimed, universally beloved newspaper advice column? Do you find yourself growing continually more jealous of the woman who replaced you as the runner of the column? It used to be your column, and now it’s hers? She took your name and picture — your legacy, your identity — and replaced them with her own as if you never even existed. Do you despise her? Do you despise her because she gets to live the life you once lived, a life you would do anything to return to? Do you resent the fact that her version of the column is more loved by the campus than yours ever was, and that she has written twice as many articles as you ever did? Have you begged, prayed and pleaded for the opportunity to once more — just once more — be the man you were? To taste the Apple — to be the Apple — just once more? When you somehow, miraculously got the opportunity to do exactly that by the very person who you hate so much, did you latch onto the possibility with a primal desperation you didn’t know was within you? Did your hate for the person nonetheless multiply as you were forced to confront the fact that they are a far kinder, better person than you? For you would never have offered to share the Apple as they have. And are you terrified to finish writing your part of this article, because you know that once you send it in, you will return to being a nobody, most likely forever?
Whew. Okay. This is Eva again. I agree with Adam in the sense that life is composed of exhilarating highs and comparative lows — perpetual failure punctuated by brief moments of success, if you will. Another point of consensus is that my time as a satire advice columnist has certainly been the most important thing I have ever done and, from the looks of Adam’s grim post-column perspective, will ever do with my life. With this in mind, I aim to break the cycle. I know I have reached my peak, and I refuse to step off this summit. The moment I stop writing Apples is when my life will begin to unravel. I mean, look at Adam. Ever since he stopped writing, he’s been filling his life with abstractions that resemble his former column. He moved to the Big Apple. He’s getting a Ph.D. in economics. What does economics have to do with? Money. What can you buy with money? A crap ton of apples. Boom.
I found some website called econguru.com that defines “unlimited wants and needs” as part of the “fundamental problem of scarcity that has plagued humanity since the beginning of time.” Peaking in college, then, is essentially a problem of economics. Since the beginning of time, it has been foretold that two pioneers would change history forever in their pursuit of wisdom — through their satire advice column. Still, the darker side to this story is that giving up the Apple means giving up any modicum of happiness either of us will ever achieve. Once someone has held the power and felt the bliss of being an advice columnist, they begin to embody the concept of unlimited wants and needs. They are forever plagued by an unquenchable thirst for influence and validation. We may move onward, but we will never move upward.
Adam’s words have shown me what a post-Apple future would look like. Wasting away in a doctoral program at a prestigious institution. Leaving behind a legacy that gives a student who looked up to you the chance to try their hand at satire writing in a space that your creativity created. Living in what is arguably the world’s most famous city. Sounds like hell. I refuse to meet the same fate.
Let me spell this out for you, dear readers. If you want my column, you’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands. With that, I thank Adam Jutt for his collaboration and the clarity he has given me about my post-graduate plans. I’m going to go celebrate the achievement of writing my 18th Apple by purchasing a lifetime supply of food and barricading myself in a closet somewhere in the Sadler basement, where I will spend the rest of my glorious life writing Apples. Did I peak in college? No. I deliberately plateaued at my highest point. And that’s a beautiful thing.
See you in two weeks.
Editor’s Note: careful readers will soon notice that Adam never goes on to answer the second question. That was not a creative question or clever bit. He wrote his part in an airport and was forced to board the plane before he got to it. He feels bad about this and acknowledges that Eva would never make a similar one.
