To those who know me well, it is canonical knowledge that I want to be Spider-Man. When I was a kid and my parents put me in a pee-wee soccer league (because apparently staring at a wall and picking my nose wasn’t going to qualify as a “sport” or lead me on the path to “college”), I would run around in circles pretending to shoot webs at people who I decided were villains. My soccer career somehow only lasted one year, but my Spider-Man dream carried on well into my teen years, and some days I still give spiders a suspicious look wondering if that one could be the one.

What I didn’t know, however, was that I am already Spider-Man. And so are you. In fact, every college student is pretty much Spider-Man, save for a DNA mutation and some plot holes.

1. You and Spider-Man are given more “power” and “responsibility” than you ever asked for or were ever ready for Peter Parker was just a kid who wanted to talk to a girl and maybe become a scientist. 

Then one day, some radioactive spider couldn’t find a Wendy’s or 7-11 nearby and decided instead to munch on poor Peter’s skin, and the next thing he knows, his miserly uncle is dead. Now he is faced with “great power”, which apparently gives him the responsibility of defeating superpowered weirdos who want to kill him, everyone he knows, and a fair amount of the screaming population of New York City. This is sort of a micro-sized version of what YOU went through. You were probably a high schooler just looking to get laid and find a good TV series on Netflix, but one day a high school counselor told you that you have the power and responsibility to choose what the rest of your life is going to be like, which required about 10,000 times more thinking and effort than you were ready to put into the next few decades, let alone the next few years.  

2. You and Spider-Man have mysterious lives outside of your home life that you have to keep hushed.  

Let’s just say the college lifestyle probably inherently has very different habits than those of your household. Take that to mean what you will. But there has likely been one point being home since you’ve been a college student when your parents asked what you were doing at a certain point in time and you told them you were watching a movie. You were not watching a movie. Maybe you were on the side of an Albuquerque freeway with nothing but a diaper, an empty shotgun, half a donut, and a hitchhiker’s hope in hell, I don’t know. But much like Spider-Man, you couldn’t tell your poor aunt (screw traditional family structures) that you were doing something that caused you cuts and bruises that you discovered the next morning and a crazy scientist to want to kill you. So you essentially lead a double life, and the “you” you present at home is in fact a secret identity, your Peter Parker

3.You and Spider-Man don’t know how to spend your money. Look at your bank account balance.       

If a number greater than $20 appeared, congratulations, you are the Warren Buffett of college students. The rest of us are worth the grand total of about two and a half Chipotle burritos. And as much as that has to do with life being expensive, it also has to do with the fact that college students buy things we don’t need. Did you really need three Pearl Jam posters and a Chia Pet for your dorm? Damn right you did. And now you’re broke. Spider-Man has a similar mindset when it comes to money. This kid lives with his unemployed aunt and for himself makes nothing more than the salary of a pizza boy. Sometimes. Next to him, Charlie Bucket in his pre-Wonka days would seem like he pisses gold. Yet Peter spends his few dollars on an incredibly beautiful, high-tech costume with intricate stitching and technologically advanced eye windows that allow him to see out without anyone seeing in when a simple ski mask with eye holes would do the trick. You and Peter have the same exact financial savvy--none. 

4. You and Spider-Man don’t sleep. 

Remember that showdown between Andrew Garfield Spider-Man and that CGI Lizard (which ended up looking more like what I expect Godzilla’s sperm to look like...but I digress) that took place at noon? Neither do I. Because whenever something really important happens in Spider-Man’s life, it happens at night. Usually deep in the middle of the night. If you’re a college student, that should remind you of yourself. Whether you’re planning an illegal midnight picnic in the local zoo or watching the Lion King on your laptop for the 9th time by yourself, you’re doing it at night. No matter how much sleep you recognize that you need, you will never get it. Spider-Man has important things to do at 2 am, and so do you.  So take comfort in knowing that everything you go through makes you not only a hero, but a superhero as well. But watch your back for former role models with robotic arms.