A strange phenomenon has been ravaging college campuses lately. Otherwise known as the "two-strap" phenomenon, this trend is evident at most major college campuses, the University of Central Florida.
We all remember back in middle school and high school when our parent would beg us to wear our backpacks on both shoulders. "You'll hurt your back," they'd say. Or "you'll develop scoliosis from carrying all those book on one shoulder."
If you were like me, you fought vehemently against this parental advice that was so clearly an infringement on the style of the day: wearing your backpack by one strap. No matter how heavy it got, how many textbooks you had to cram in it for all seven classes, we refused to use the backpack as it was designed.
Flash-forward to college and you won't see a single person engaging in this from of rebellion. Perhaps it's the crushing weight of our student loans. Or maybe its because we've consumed so much coffee that we no longer have a physical body.
Whatever the actual reason, our parent's two-strap desires have been fulfilled in our college days. Walking around UCF is a great introduction to this "two-strap" phenomenon. Not a single student can be seen carrying their backpack on one shoulder. Instead everyone, myself included, uses both backpack straps, just as our parents had been pressuring us to do from the time our backpacks started to weigh as much as we did.
Its completely strange especially considering mere months ago many of us thought wearing our backpacks by both straps to be the height of social faux pas. There seems to be no solid reasoning for the mass switch over; I can guarantee it's not actual backpack weight as my college backpack has never been crammed full of multiple textbooks. But the switch over certainly has been mass. 65,000 plus students carry their backpack with two straps now, leaving the only explanation to be brainwashing or a hive-mind.
I joke, but this two-strap phenomenon really is strange. For thousands of students to so quickly adjust to the two-strap phenomenon when for years our lives has been ruled by the fashion of the one-strap is almost alien.
Has your school been infected by the two-strap phenomenon? Have you?
