Returning to campus this week, second-year student Eoin Steffens has struggled to re-adjust to living with people he actually likes after spending his winter break at home, clashing with his family.
“Look, I love my family,” Steffens said. “I just don’t like them very much, ok?”
Steffens said relationships with his parents have been strained ever since he decided to double major in Art Education and Gender & Women's studies, and that he doesn’t get along with his younger siblings when they’re all living in the same house.
“By the time break was over, it was just tension all the time,” he said, “and now I just can’t shed that energy, even though I’m back in Madison.”
“It’s like, you ask him to do anything and he’s immediately snarky about it,” said Geoff Mathews, one of Steffens’ roommates. “He’ll imitate your voice, like, three octaves up, or mutter something about how glad we should be that he understands the importance of men doing chores as a key step to achieving true equality and dismantling the patriarchy. Then he’ll, like, look up, kind of apologize, and do it again five minutes later. It’s a weird vibe.”
Henry Neidig, their other roommate, concurred.
“Look, Eoin’s usually a pretty cool dude,” he said, “and he’s chill about chores and shit. But it always takes him a while to remember he likes us and we like him and that’s not, like, obligated. Until he remembers that, there’s just this adjustment period of aggressive passive-aggressiveness.”
“I’ll get over it,” Steffens said. “I might have to get blackout drunk a couple times to forget how annoying the fam is, but I’ll come around.”
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