Honors kids can fly, you know. It’s just one of a bevy of superhuman abilities we possess. Osborn Cottage wasn’t demolished – it now hovers in the clouds above central campus, and when no one is looking we soar toward our haven, high above the normals.

Don’t be alarmed. We use our powers only for good and the advancement of intellectualism. Last weekend hundreds of us gathered to discuss our mental superiority over the normals on campus – those just plain not good enough to get into our elite society.

Oh, pish posh. Honors kids don’t seriously consider themselves among a secret, elite rank of students. They are like any other student, and they realize this, yet to admit you are in the Honors Program is like having some ghastly pock on your face, some big red “H” stapled to your chest.

There is an odd curse attached to being in the Honors Program.

It’s evolved slightly from being among the “gifted” in grade school or high school. Being in the highest reading group was often an invitation for wedgies and mud in the face. Who knew grasping literacy wouldn’t go over well with the playground bullies?

Near the end of high school the attitude toward having a high GPA shifted slightly, as my classmates and I were piled into rows – tech school, trailer park, Ivy League, state university.

But here I am again, facing the quasi-curse of being in Honors. I’ve generally managed to escape the “nerd” treatment in college; but instead I’m a snob for my involvement with the program. Attaching an “H” to the end of any course invites odd looks, as if it stood for “Hell with you, you moronic dolt,” as if my mere enrollment in the course means I consider myself smarter than those taking the non-Honors course.

Being in Honors isn’t about rubbing academic achievement in others’ faces. Vice versa, not being in Honors shouldn’t be about pointing out how we must all be horribly full of ourselves if we’re willing to meet extra requirements just to graduate with honors.

The Honors Program is just like any other community on campus – students banded by involvement in the same organization. We do not gather at a secret campground to plot our next move against the non-Honors students. We do not barricade ourselves in the library guffawing in glee at the thought of term papers, complicated calculus equations and 14 chapters of British Literature.

Most of us do not, anyhow.

Ironic as it may be, my involvement in Honors, among other organizations, has stripped away the layers of nerdiness that were tossed onto me in junior high when puberty was “in” and being a smart kid became pass‚. I didn’t realize this until about a week or so ago, and not fully until I found myself taking a job on a team of students helping at the Freshman Honors Retreat.

I ran around from 3 p.m. Friday to 8 a.m. Saturday among 360 freshman Honors students, helping out with activities, talking to strangers, trying to lend a hand whenever I could.

At some point during the night, I realized I had become one of those perky people that used to annoy me when I was a shy, scared freshman who died a little on the inside every time somebody screamed “Time for another icebreaker.”

It made me feel all fuzzy to watch the freshmen running around from the other side of the table – as someone who’d been through the process before . though I suspect the fuzziness can be chalked up largely to the Red Bull I was chugging all night.

The Freshman Honors Retreat – something experienced by nearly all of the 749 members of the Associate or Full Honors Programs – went off without a hitch. It was not Dork Camp in a secret hideaway where we discuss our special powers.

Anybody who really wants to can get into the Honors Program. It is not about segregating the student population into the brains and the fools. It’s also not solely about maintaining a 3.35 GPA or “jumping through extra hoops” to graduate with Honors. Honors students simply strive for the GPA and want to put in the effort the program requires.

The X-ray vision and optional invisibility are just bonuses.

Cavan Reagan is a junior in journalism and mass communications and English from Bellevue, Neb. He is the research assistant for the Daily.