As Trinity students, we have a lot to be proud of. Our women’s basketball team has been almost National Champions for several consecutive years. Our tower is the second highest point in the seventh largest U.S. city and we boast not one, but two companies that created pocket businesses through our entrepreneurship program. Not to mention, we can organize a town hall or open forum to talk about any and every emotion we feel at a moment’s notice.

Our university has won awards for being one of the best small, undergraduate, private, red-brick campus, starts with the letter T, has a tiger mascot, liberal arts schools in the state. In fact, we earned a coveted spot on the Princeton Review’s Best 379 Colleges list. Can you say #TigerPride?

What makes Trinity so great? Some may say it’s the students. The Tigers are some of the best and brightest young minds around, but their success doesn’t come without a price. Our students often sacrifice experiences, like the weekly free lectures and the majority of the school’s sporting events, in order to make time for their studies. However, if you think that Trinity students are all work and no play, you are mistaken. A quick glance at the Trinity Snaps account will show that Tigers love illegal drugs and reckless debauchery just as much as the next person. Even those who graduate can’t stay away. Alumni who are well beyond the appropriate age to still be friends with college students can regularly be found at the local bar, Bombay Bicycle Club, or, as most Trinity students know it, Bays. It is almost as if they have no life outside of reliving their college years on Thursday nights.

But behind every great student is an inspiring professor, spurring the young minds to reaching their full potential. Trinity professors are the foremost experts in their respective fields; no other scholars’ works are ever on the reading list because the professors’ own books and published research fill the syllabi. Despite such prestige, they work to be relatable and approachable for students by making off-color jokes, but then reminding their classes, “It’s OK for me to say whatever I want, I have tenure,” behind nervous laughter. Though many have won awards and recognitions, nothing elicits as much pride as getting away with saying a curse word or a sex joke and earning the laughter of a room full of 20 year olds.

Though we have so much to be proud of as members of such an innovative, progressive and intelligent community, we must never take ourselves too seriously. Sometimes, we just have to laugh at ourselves.