I’ve tried. Pretty hard, actually.

I’ve tried to be politically correct, inspiring and, in principle, not entirely alienating.

I scrapped my multitude of catty complaints, got off of my snotty little high horse and, in a last-ditch effort of vanity, attempted to please everyone.

I basically started thinking like the all-too-typical Northwestern prototype: too nice, too P.C. and, well, so boring even I couldn’t take it.

Not my original goal of course.

But in the interest of maintaining equilibrium, I restrained myself.

It turns out, though, that equilibrium is, by definition, just plain dull. Nice is overrated. I want to be disdainful, sassy and a little bit haughty.

Now there’s nothing wrong with being a nice person. But please. Nobody likes everyone. And if you do, you’re worse than I thought.

“How can you genuinely like every person you meet unless you’re lacking the part of your brain that forms opinions?” my friend Emily Shih, a Weinberg junior, asked me.

And since I’m assuming that most of you have at least a shred of attitude, this demeanor of sappy amiability has got to be a lie.

So stop faking it. Just hate already.

Now I’m not talking about the kind of hate that was smeared all over the walls of the College of Commerce and Industry and Bobb and McCulloch halls last year. I don’t mean targeting groups of people, ideologies or races.

This is all about the individual. You hate that girl who walks down the street every day wearing leg warmers and electric-blue booty shorts — because she’s not a dance major!

You hate the characteristically pretentious comment some theatre major made in your history class (which, by the way, you hate him for being in).

You hate the fact that one banana at Norris University Center costs more than a whole pound of bananas at Jewel-Osco.

And most of all, you hate having to stare at my terribly annoying picture every Thursday.

You also hate anyone who would be dumb enough to accuse you of being apathetic, because, of course, everyone knows that haters are too busy bitching to be apathetic.

Now you can think, if you’d like, that such a negatively charged environment could lead to nothing other than a bunch of bitter, dyspeptic smartasses.

But if you ask me, that beats being a bunch of apathetic, dispassionate dullards.

Hate, as they say, is a very strong word. Here at NU we could use some of those.

Not only do strong words tend to be infinitely more interesting than all things passive, meek and annoying, but also they tend to suggest opinionated opinions, thoughtful thoughts and active actions.

And you won’t get that kind of muscle by going to Sports Pavilion and Aquatics Center.

Unless, like me, you hate everyone there.