Pimps 'n' hos fraternity party.
McDonald's.
www.Ratemypooh.com.
These are all places I've never been.
Honest!
I don't do that kind of stuff. Never have.
Instead, I've spent my collegiate days innocently cooped up in my bedroom, checking e-mail and scanning news Web sites for stimulating information.
And recently, I found something that made me shudder.
This month, the FDA approved a tiny microchip designed for placement under customers' skin, usually in the triceps muscle. The VeriChip, which is no bigger than a grain of rice, stores thousands of pieces of information, including complete medical histories, for those willing to shell out a couple hundred to get one.
According to VeriChip proponents, the device will allow emergency room staff to save lives by quickly learning a patient's medical information through scanning the chip and transferring relevant data to a computer.
In reporting on the VeriChip, the media largely portrays the device as a technological miracle. And a few sources even vaguely allude to the grim reality that the chip may eventually allow governments to monitor citizens.
But becoming government slaves is really the least of our problems.
More importantly, the spread of the VeriChip could deprive Americans of arguably the best part of growing up in such a self-centered society: the college adventure of self-discovery.
Think about last weekend.
If yours went anything like mine, you probably acted like a spaz at some point, saying and doing some things you really shouldn't have.
Now think realistically about yourself a few years ago. Calm down; try not to cry. In the cobwebbed attic of your brain, you've boxed away those times you actually went to College Library to pick up a date. That time you looked at campus maps for Library Hall because you thought Mall must have been a typo. Or that time (OK... those times) when you shook your barely-clad thang on a rickety wooden platform at a sketchy basement party and were convinced life simply didn't get any cooler.
Oh yes, we've all gone through some humiliating phases. But the best part about being a college student is the implicit privilege to dismiss these uncharacteristic experiences as necessary detours on our personal journeys of self-discovery.
But what if you had to admit to your kids you experimented with emo in college?
Holding ourselves to high moral standards of honesty is one thing. But literally wearing our histories on our sleeve puts some facts out in the open that even a priest on confessional duty wouldn't want to hear.
Though not the \intended purpose,"" if this microchip catches on (and some say it already has), the device could leave eager college students afraid to make the embarrassing mistakes it takes to develop into individuals.
So until they pin me down and force a microscopic computer under my skin, I maintain that I've never patronized abusive, money- hungry chain restaurants, seriously considered joining the circus, or gone skinny-dipping in the murky, disease-infested waters of Lake Mendota at bar time.
Not ever.
Emily Winter's column runs every Tuesday in The Daily Cardinal. She can be reached at ewinter@wisc.edu.
