10 Things That Cal Poly Students Do

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Each and every college campus is unique, and they are unique because of their students. Here at Cal Poly, we definitely are unique. Here are 10 things that Cal Poly students do, because we simply can’t help it.

1. Wear sandals in any and every type of weather.

Rain or shine, we refuse to put on normal shoes. Our feet will freeze off before we stop wearing our beloved Birkenstocks/Rainbows/Tevas.

2. Add “slo” into every word we can.

“SLOmies!” “SLOme!” “SLO excited!” and it goes on and on.

3. Hate Cal Poly Pomona (AKA the fake Cal Poly).

I once ran into a guy from my high school who was telling me about how he was going to Cal Poly Pomona and he said, “yeah so we basically go to the same school.” WRONG, everyone knows that SLO is the real Cal Poly.

4. Wear North Face/Patagonia jackets in 70-degree weather.

We’re spoiled by the beautiful warm California weather, so the second it so much as dips below sunny and 75, it’s jacket weather.

5. Scream “WOWIES!!!!!”

This is personally my least favorite thing that us mustangs do, but like I said, we can’t help it. We yell it at freshmen during WOW week, we yell it at random fourth years in the middle of winter quarter. It happens.

6. Use both NorCal and SoCal slang.

With half of the school population being from NorCal (more specifically, the Bay) and the other half being from SoCal, Cal Poly students have developed their own special tongue. Once your sentences start including the words “hella” and “dude” in the same sentence, you know.

7. Put stickers on literally everything.

I didn’t think that this was a Cal Poly thing until I started visiting my friends’ campuses and suddenly felt super flashy with my stickers-covered laptop and hydroflask. 99% of Redbubble’s customers are probably Cal Poly students.

8. Drink an inhumane amount of Starbucks.

When you have two (or three if you count the truck) Starbucks conveniently on campus, it’s hard to resist downing their coffee every day. At this point, that stuff is coursing through our veins.

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9. Make learn by doing jokes.

Learn by doing is our school motto, and we are not afraid to own up to it. Get lost on the SLO transit system? Learn by doing. Eat at Tu Taco twice in one day and get extremely sick because of it? Learn by doing. Partake in wine Wednesday with an 8am the next morning and suffer immensely? Learn by doing. It’s all just a part of the learning experience.

10. Walk- here, there, everywhere.

Campus is pretty big. The hills are plentiful. A half-hour walk has become nothing. That’s how long it takes to walk from PCV to class, anyways.