Pet Peeve # 1

The word: "like."

When did it become impossible to finish a sentence without using "like" at least twice?

My class schedule this semester is pretty great aside from my Tuesdays. On Tuesdays, I have all four classes between 11 AM and 9 PM with one one-hour break at 5 PM. Yesterday was the first day all the classes ran their full time. I had Communication Revolutions from 11 to 12:30, Media Relations 12:30 to 3:30, Stats 3:30 to 5, break 5 to 6 and Mass Communication Research 6 to 9. This schedule is pretty brutal.

The people in my first class are all relatively literate. People started grating on my nerves during Media Relations. The class runs for three hours, which in-and-of itself is pretty difficult to stomach. Since it was only our second class of the semester, the professor made us each introduce ourselves by answering six questions:

1) What is your full name, including middle name(s)
2) Who/what were you named after
3) Where are you from
4) What PR experience have you had
5) What is your dream job
6) What is an interesting "factoid" about yourself.


.... I hate stuff like this. Seriously? Who cares who I was named after? What a waste of an hour and a half.

One girl pranced up to the front of the class wearing an outfit that didn't match and exposed parts of her body I did not want to see.

Girl (who's real name is not as follows): Hi!! OK! My name is Sarah Jenna Lee!! I'm not really like sure like where exactly my name came from but like I think my mom named me after like my great grandma or something like that. I'm from like this little town in Connecticut.

Umm, I like haven't had any like reeeeeal PR experience but I like helped plan this party cuz like one of my friends' dad's was like my boss last summer so like he just kinda gave me the job. It was so fun.

I'm like not really sure like what I reeeeeeally wanna do. But I think I wanna be like an event planner or like do something for famous people where I can like travel a lot and like meet a lot of famous people or something.

What else? Oh yea. Umm. Something interesting about me. (Looks up while crossing one leg over the other. Her eyes bulge open.) I've been tattooed on like nine times!! It's like a passion.


Twenty-five "like" sprinkled stories later I had a throbbing headache and felt dumber than when I entered the classroom.

Later that night, the same stories spurted from the mouths of my fellow classmates in Mass Com Research.

Random girl: I like think polls are good because they like really give you a good chance to like find out what people think about stuff and like you can ask a bunch of different people and like all the different genders and stuff.

I wonder how many genders she thinks there are?

I really wish I could taser people every time they used "like" unnecessarily. I know my dad used a similar method to make sure my brothers and I never picked up the habit. HEY! Verbal tasering is still abuse.