By Marissa Massare, Arts & Entertainment Editor
If you walk into your local CVS, Walmart or even Target during this time of year, there no doubt will be a friendly reminder sign that it is time to get your flu shot. Most locations that offer flu shots can do them for free or at a low cost based on your insurance coverage.
Susquehanna students, like other college students, experience the highs and lows of flu season. It comes with the change of weather and typically starts in the fall when summer fades away and all we’re left with is the miserable cold.
At Susquehanna, students don’t just have a cold, or even the flu. No, what they have is even worse. They have the Susky Plague. If you have this you might as well forget about graduating because it’s essentially synonymous with death.
Except it isn’t. What so many Susquehanna student’s think is the Susky Plague is often just your run of the mill cold. This type of cold or flu can involve chills, fevers, runny nose, cough, aches and pains, etc. However, it is not the plague.
By definition, a plague is a “contagious bacterial disease characterized by fever and delirium, typically with the formation of buboes (bubonic plague) and sometimes infection of the lungs (pneumonic plague).” Ancient plagues killed millions of people throughout history. The black death was a plague that killed an estimated 25-30 million people in Europe from 1347 to 1352 CE.
The cold you have is not a plague. There’s no need to be over the top and make your friends and classmates feel even worse for you.
If you’re feeling a little under the weather, go to the drugstore, get some over the counter medicine and take a nap. Most likely a little rest and medicine will have you feeling better in no time.
You’re simply just worn out from the school work and stress that comes with the end of the semester. You don’t have the plague, you just feel like crap and need your last final to be over as soon as possible.
It is understandable that Susquehanna students at one point in time started joking about being sick, and then it turned into the Susky Plague, but in the four years I’ve been here, it’s been a little over the top how many times I’ve heard students say that when there’s absolutely little to nothing wrong with them.
Once you’re on campus and officially a student, it doesn’t feel like you truly belong among the smelly ginkgo trees if you don’t say you have the Susky Plague at least once in your time at Susquehanna.
However, someday we’re all going to be in the real world outside of the Susquehanna bubble we’re so accustomed to. Outside of that bubble there’s no Susky Plague. Just a cold and people willing to give you a flu shot. Take that into consideration the next time you’re sick.