1. The Monopoly Man isn’t just the mascot of a classic board game, but rather the face you avoid at all costs if you’re roaming the halls without your assignment notebook.

But lowkey, if you befriend him, he’s a true homie.

2. You’re used to having your name pronounced incorrectly, because you, and the whole school, have heard it throughout the loudspeaker. Every year. For four years.

Also, why are they congratulating us for having a birthday?

3. You are shocked when other people don’t wear Nike midcalf socks with any/every type of footwear, and horribly offended when people make fun of you for sporting them.

Converse? Midcalves. Boots? Midcalves. Adidas slides? Midcalves.

4. The relationship process goes like this: talking. DL-ing. dating. That is, if it gets to dating. Usually just stops at DL.

But usually those DL’s aren’t so DL.

5. You’re confused when people talk about 36 ACT scores being absolutely impossible and unheard of, considering nine of your classmates scored it in one school year alone...

Seriously. Must be in the water.

6. Yet they still haven’t completely motivated you to excel with the workload that comes with being a Hinsdale Central student.

But you do thank Central for your learned study habits in college.

7. Going out all the time is a unique phenomenon that comes with college; you’re used to waiting until someone’s parents are out of town to throw down.

And we all went to that one person whose parents didn’t care, and pestered them until they gave in.

8. However, you appreciate the novelty of knowing everyone at a party. It’s weird looking around at a frat party and not being able to take a “math class!” pic with classmates that were almost consistently at the same party you were.

Not knowing who was going to hook up with who at a party nowadays is so much less fun.

9. You really start to appreciate how Central didn’t have a “popular crowd” when people from other schools describe the cliquey-ness of theirs.

Anywhere you went, someone you were friends with was there. And that’s something not everybody can say.

10. Walking a lot in college is nothing to you, because at home you could literally walk from anywhere, to anywhere.

Walking to Hinsdale town from school as a freshman was the only way to do it.

11. People look at you like you speak a different language when you use “mort,” “craig” or “good spit.”

But people in the South say “y’all” and “fixing to,” which is also incredibly confusing. So I’ll stick to my Central vocab.

12. You’re not fazed by the size of college textbooks, considering your yearbook was bigger than an encyclopedia.

We literally featured every single student in the 2014-2015 issue, but ours also won nationally-acclaimed awards, so...

13. You find it hard to be impressed with someone who brags about a certain state championship they won at their high school, because you don’t quite know how to tell someone without sounding like a conceited jerk that your school LITERALLY WON EIGHT IN ONE YEAR.

Anything less just isn’t worth mentioning.

14. You still shudder at the mention of “NHS,” considering Central, per usual, made it harder to stay in than it was to get in.

It was literally the WORST.

15. You’re still kinda sad your new student section doesn’t come as together as RDN did, and you’re really starting to miss the “Bananas,” “Winning Team, Losing Team” or “I Believe” chants.

Usually instigated by Wes Berger at the big games. If he was there.

16. And you’re so used to going to Portillos after every sports game, and these new restaurants just don’t cut it.

You simply didn’t go to Portillo's without seeing the entire basketball team there after a game or at least a few fans in red and white striped overalls.

17. Coming home from college to the Hinsdale area or visiting the school again just makes you relive all the happy memories associated with being a Red Devil.

Except did you notice they changed all the room numbers on the doors?? And every student in the school now looks like they’re infantile?!

18. Oh. And you still have an excruciatingly severe hatred for LT.

Even if you’re friends with them in college now, it’ll always be an underlying roadblock in the progression of that friendship.