Episode 4, Part 1: College Doubts

"Better to die than to live on with a bad reputation" - Vietnamese Proverb

In my opinion, this episode was fairly boring. It seemed as though not as much happened as usual in a Gossip Girl episode. Both Serena and Blair are having doubts about college, but basically for opposite reasons. Serena says she wants to “find herself” before she goes to college. Blair, on the other hand, obviously knows who she is, but wants others to know who she is.

Blair, who still wants to be Queen Bee, actually talks about wanting to rule over other students at NYU. This is almost comical how ridiculous it is! One of the things about a big university is that no one knows who you are. Just like here at Chapel Hill, for better or for worse, you realize that it is so different from high school. In high school, you had a certain reputation or were categorized based on who you hung out with. But, in college since no one knows who you were in high school you can be whoever you want to be. The popular people in high school may be no one in college, while the geekiest kid may be a huge partier. I already have friends from high school who have done things here at UNC that I never would have expected.

Serena tells her mom and Rufus that she wants to wait a year to enroll in Brown because she needs to find out who she really is. She tries to get a job working in publicity for Tyra Banks, whose name is Ursula, in this episode. This was so weird to me and Tyra looked kind of scary in this episode. Anyways, Serena gets fired for doing the right thing and Lily is still pushing her to go to Brown. I think a lot of this has to do with Serena trying to find her dad. She doesn’t feel complete until she knows her dad loves her. It is understandable how Serena feels but she can’t let her family’s past affect the decisions she makes in the future. In the end of this episode Serena packs her bags and says she is leaving, but not for Brown. I wonder if she will try to find her father again.