NASHVILLE, TN – With the start of a new school year comes the shocking revelation made in a recent study suggesting that everyone else had a better summer than you. The study, conducted by researchers in Vanderbilt’s Department of Psychology, has proved that your summer was statistically worse than those of your classmates.
Though this has been theorized by fringe members of the academic community for years, there has been little evidence, until now, that your summer was worse than that of your friends to a statistically significant degree. Researchers said of the study, “The entire community is stunned by the findings. Though some had speculated as much, the literature up to this point had been so scarce and underfunded that we weren’t fully able to grasp the scope of how lame your summer was.”
Researchers scoured social media to demonstrate that your FOMO was entirely reasonable. Data from Instagram and Snapchat proved the most conclusive, with 92 percent of your friends posting destination vacation pictures of places cooler than you have ever been, and 80 percent posting updates on internships at hot-button companies like Deloitte Government & Public Services, or Deloitte Financial Services.
The study also determined that the recent rise in service trips to exotic locations combines the joys of traveling abroad with the self-congratulatory feeling of helping people in need, and is utilized primarily by white upper middle-class students to pacify their white guilt. Between the ever-increasing voluntourism and your friends’ continued participation in Maymesters that you could never afford, you are statistically more and more likely to observe your friends’ exciting exploits via Facebook while you lay on your crumb-covered futon at home, eating leftover Chipotle.
Further examination showed that during the required back to school small talk conversations you will have with all your friends, you are the most likely of any student to feel pangs of crippling depression – 9x more likely than anyone else.
With regards to future studies, the lab’s researchers remained optimistic, “With the findings here today, we have justification to continue this research, as well as expanding our thesis to research how everyone else will eventually be more happy and successful than you.”