I can only imagine that 180 students at Hill would call October 3, 2019 the best day of their lives. This is because, on that day, the woman, the myth, the legend – myself – sent 180 follow requests on Instagram, or the Gram as the kids like to call it. On the first day of my third form year, I extended many follow requests to Hill students to try and assimilate into the school community, but that was pretty much the extent of my gramming. But over the past couple of months, I had often wondered what my life would look like if I had followed everyone at Hill. Would students carry me up the stairs on my way to class? Would people at buffet meals dodge out of my way so I could avoid lines? Would underformers line up outside of my door in hopes of getting the chance to possibly do my homework for me? There was only one way to find out – to follow everyone at Hill. 

This plan seemed easy enough– except for the fact that I did not know everyone at Hill. So, I decided to follow everyone with an Instagram bio that contained some mention of Hill in it. All and all, I followed 180 Hill students. Additionally, I followed about 30-something students from The Haverford School, because their abbreviation is “THS,” which I thought stood for “The Hill School.” But, let’s give credit where credit is due: Haverford is the best all-boys school in Haverford, Pennsylvania. 

My goal for this project was to see how many people would follow me back and how my life would correspondingly change after becoming so much more connected with members of the community. I am not going to lie; the first night stung a little bit when only 42 students had followed me back. But after a week, approximately 94 percent of students followed me back. I have to say, that is a pretty good statistic considering that 94 percent of students probably do not show up for chapel talks. 

Did my life change? Not at all. Not even a little bit. Same Taylor, same problems. I had wasted a solid 30 minutes of my life sending follow requests to people for literally no benefit. There are so many better uses of 30 minutes of study hall. These include coming up with a cure for cancer, writing your local congressman or congresswoman encouraging the drafting of legislation that would ban puppy mills, or even just studying. If you want to become involved in the Hill community, I suggest something along the lines of picking up trash or starting a rumor about yourself. Listen, I am not going to tell you to not follow people on Instagram – I came here to fill space in the newspaper, not to give life advice.