Raise your hand if you are one of the millions of victims affected by sugar lips, silly bands, and of course, acid wash jeans. Don’t worry, this is a safe space. You can come clean. All of these unfortunate trends found themselves in the hands of almost all 6th grade girls, but quickly landed a spot in the back of a drawer, forgotten immediately once they went out of style.

Just as certain trends go in and out of style, so do personalities. Now, let me explain myself by starting with a very accurate timeline, created solely based on my personal knowledge of chick flicks and intimidating 5th graders.

When our generation was kids, it was cool to be mean. The TV shows and movies put in front of us always showed the mean, popular students strutting down the hallways in slow motion, as all the others swooned and wished to be in their position. If you tell me that you’ve never practiced your dramatic strut down the New Trier hallways, you are lying. Unless that’s just me, in which case we can move on. Let’s just say, if you see me in the hallways with my hips swaying from side-to-side, you’ll know why.

Mean Girls was released in 2004, right around the same time we began watching TV. Although a movie like this showed our protagonist as seeing the flaws in the “Plastics”, we still saw these mean characters as the ones with the most popularity. That resonated with the audience, and many girls cannot deny wishing to be in Regina George’s shoes at least once while watching the movie.

However, once the initial hype of this movie began to die down, the trends in personality took a turn for the better: it was now trending to be nice. I remember when I was in 5th grade, and the most popular, well-liked girl in our school was the one who was always close friends with our peers who had disabilities. It was “cool” to be tolerant, accepting, and genuinely nice.

Jumping ahead a few years, our timeline now reaches the start of our high school career. Around this time, feminism burst open and was a driving force in our culture. Our society now entered what I like to call the “Boss Ass Bitch phase.” Being a “savage”, having sass, and being very goal-oriented was the new trend. Basically, it was cool to be a boss ass bitch. This trend is still one that is present in our society, and I am definitely not mad about it. I believe that this has had many benefits, such as driving girls to be empowered, speak their mind, and be more involved in feminism.

Unfortunately, a new personality trend is taking over our generation, and it has proved to be much less beneficial. In the age of netflix and scrolling through numerous memes, it has become somewhat of a competition to see who can be the greatest procrastinator. Being a procrastinator, being lazy, and being unambitious is now the new cool.

It’s no longer embarrassing to say that you were at home binging The Office on a Saturday night. It is no longer frowned upon to laugh as you admit you did the entire project in one night. And it far from unheard of to overhear friends jokingly contemplate dropping out of school, just because studying for the math final feels like too much.

What does this say about our society, that the new trend is to basically be a lazy pig who half-heartedly scrapes by? I can answer that question for you. It’s not good. Of course, I am far from above this, and can definitely attest to committing many frightening methods of procrastination. On one very late night, I made an elaborate music video with multiple outfit changes, applied to be an extra on empire, and choreographed a dance to “The Boys are Back” from High School Musical 3. So I get it. But it’s still not good.

Although we may not be able to do anything about this now, I encourage you all to hold onto any last ounce of motivation and ambition you have. And who knows, maybe in a year or two it will be cool to be a super driven vegan who threw out their TV in order to find their inner zen, most likely at a hipster coffee shop. That last ounce of motivation could come in use.