I’m 3/4 of the way to my survey goal and I’m begging you to take 2 minutes
I’m sitting at that wobbly small table by the outlet in the campus Starbucks right now, the one that has a ring carved into the side from a thousand old coffee lids. My oat latte’s been sitting so long it’s got that weird rubbery skin on top, and I just brushed a crumb of blueberry muffin off my laptop keyboard that I spilled ten minutes ago. I’ve been refreshing the survey dashboard every 90 seconds for the past three hours, and I still only have 76 usable responses. I need 100 by tomorrow at 5 pm. So here I am, doing the thing I said I’d never do: begging random internet strangers for a favor.
It’s for that stupid 3-credit sociology gen ed I put off till my senior year, the one everyone says is an easy A but this prof’s a stickler for original research. I picked my topic because it’s actually something I’m dealing with—my rent went up $185 this fall when my lease renewed, and all of a sudden I started noticing every single dollar I spent on groceries. I stopped buying the good vanilla Greek yogurt that’s $5 a container and switched to the store brand that tastes like slightly sour skim milk, I only buy bananas when they’re on sale for 49 cents a pound even though I eat one every morning, I started skipping the chocolate chip cookies I used to throw in the cart just because they looked good. I wanted to see if other people were doing the same little, unspoken cuts when housing gets more expensive, right? It’s not like anyone posts on Instagram “I had to stop buying toothpaste that isn’t the dollar store kind because my rent went up”. It’s all just small stuff you don’t talk about.
I’ve already tried everything. I spammed my Instagram stories three times, my mom sent the link to her entire church book club, my roommate sent it to all her coworkers at the campus daycare, even my cousin who I haven’t texted back since last Christmas sent it to his fraternity group chat. I got a ton of responses, but 11 of them are garbage—one guy answered “pickle” to every single multiple choice question, another just wrote “I hate surveys” in the open response box, one person put they’re a 72 year old retired teacher in Florida which is cool but I’m only looking for current undergrads, so I can’t count those. That dropped my total back down from 87 to 76, which is why I’m panicking again.
I spent 20 minutes hanging around the student union mailroom yesterday, just standing there holding my phone with the survey pulled up, trying to work up the nerve to ask people walking by to take it. Most people just look right through you and walk faster, right? One girl thought I was recruiting for a sorority fundraiser and gave me this whole icy side eye before crossing to the other side of the hallway. I only got four responses that whole time, and my calves were killing me because I wore those new platform boots I bought at the thrift store that are cute but they dig into the back of my legs if I stand too long. I ended up going back to my dorm and eating cold mac and cheese out of the box and feeling like an idiot.
For what it’s worth, I get it. I hate when people spam me for surveys. If a random friend posts their survey link on their story, I usually tap through, think “I’ll do that later”, and then completely forget. I know I’m being that annoying person right now. I posted this to r/college this morning like my prof suggested, and I got downvoted so fast it’s at negative 12 right now. People called me a leech, someone said I should just pay for responses on Mechanical Turk, which would be great if I had an extra $20 lying around to do that. I’m the one doing a survey about how I can’t afford groceries after rent, remember? That’d be pretty ironic.
The survey’s literally 12 questions. It’s totally anonymous. You don’t have to put your name or your email or anything unless you want to be entered into the raffle for a $25 Amazon gift card. That’s coming out of my coffee budget this week, so it’s real, not a scam. I’m actually gonna draw the name tomorrow night as soon as the deadline hits, I promise. It’s all just multiple choice except the last question which is optional if you have a little story to share, you can skip that if you want. It takes less time than waiting for your latte at Starbucks, less time than scrolling through TikTok while you’re waiting for your class to start.
I’ve been thinking this whole week that I could just fake the rest of the data, right? A lot of people in my class probably do that. I don’t even know if the prof would check. But I don’t know, I’m too much of a coward to cheat, I guess. And also, I kind of care. It’s weird how all these little cuts add up, and no one’s really counting how many people skip the meds they need or cut out fresh fruit just to pay for a dorm room or a tiny off campus apartment. I think that’s worth actually getting real data for, even if it means I have to make a fool of myself begging for it.
I know you’re busy. You’ve got your own papers due, your own rent that went up, your own dumb school projects you’re panicking about. If you keep scrolling, I won’t be mad. I get it. But if you’ve got two minutes to spare right now, it’d mean more than you know. I’m gonna go dump this cold latte and get a new one if I hit 100 responses by dinner. If not, I’m just gonna save the four dollars and make coffee in my dorm microwave, like I do most days. Either way, thanks for reading this anyway.
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