Outside Miami Dade College’s student body “Go Sharks!” is just another school motto for cheering on school pride. However, there isn’t much of that going on at the country’s highest enrolled college. You’ll find that it is usually quite the opposite.
You’ve seen it as the caption on many of MDC student’s social media posts. Usually in the form of in-traffic snaps, pre/post-test reactions and other follies of the average MDC student.
The phrase may seem simple. It’s almost shallow, but it swims much deeper in the depths of underhandedness.
If you have never uttered the hallowed words, perhaps you might have felt the sensation of “Go Sharks!” without even knowing it: sitting and watching life pass you by like a time-lapse video while sitting in the financial-aid queue, calling Academic Support Services and being able to recite the automated on-hold script while your arm has been locked in place due to the atrophy of holding the phone for so long or a chain of people one-upping each other over whether they have had the worst experience at MDC.
“Go Sharks!”
It has become the face of the passive-aggressive nature of those who call MDC “home” and at the heart of the two-year experience of studying here.
Throughout the years, MDC has become a diverse and innovative institution. Yet, there still lies a fog of mundaneness which blankets the College’s students with a sense of dejection. It’s overwhelming against MDC’s restless attempts to brighten our spirits— it is as indecipherable as it is undeniable.
We were not born with this. it has been built into us through pure shock and despair. From the ever moody WI-FI to the DMV-esque appeal of student services, the loathing builds up inside each and everyone of us and it comes back out in the form of a new-found thirst for sarcasm.
It’s the South Florida equivalent of the now de-funked “Thanks Obama!” We utter it in moments of failure.
However, there is more substance in “Go Sharks!” Where “Thanks Obama!” was met with laughter, “Go Sharks!” is met with despondence and the triple-threat combo of sighing, looking to the sky and thinking “where did it all go wrong?” or my personal favorite “May 5, where you at?”
Ultimately, it’s a coping mechanism we use to get us through our first steps of seeing the unforgiving and fathomless open ocean of adulthood beyond the safe coral reefs of our youth.
“Go Sharks!” will always stay with us. It is like our associates degree, a symbol of growth in a time of great change in our lives. A scar we wear proudly as though we too have been attacked by a shark.
