It’s plagued me since my first day of classes at Elon University. Walking into McEwen, I was concerned a lot of things would make me stand out — my clothes, the way I walked and the wide-eyed innocence of a freshman, to name a few.

Little did I know, what made me different wasn’t anything external. It wasn’t even my personality. It was what I carried in my book bag. No, it wasn’t an embarrassing binder or book cover. It was my Lenovo ThinkPad. A PC.

Yes, I, a student in the McEwen School of Communications, do not own a Macintosh computer. The burden of this first world problem weighs heavily on my shoulders, literally, every single day.

For the majority of my freshman year, I would say, “I love my PC,” without a tremor of doubt or regret in my voice. It wasn’t until I got heavily invested in my communications classes that I began to notice the sleek, durable black laptop I had was a shadow of the splendid Jay Z-less Holy Grail that are Macs. As Aladdin and Jasmine would say, it’s a whole new world. I only wish I could find a magic carpet to take me there.

If freshman year was spent in blissful ignorance, sophomore year was tinged with self-denial that my PC was just as capable as a Mac. My feelings toward my PC are of begrudging tolerance. I know I need it to survive the school year, but I think of it as more of an external hard drive in which I store my work to later be put on a Mac. As much as I like to complain about my chunky Lenovo, did it ever hinder my work? Not at all … at least not until this semester.

Junior year has been tough, to say the least, on my PC inferiority complex. On the first day of my Web Publishing class, my teacher asked how many of us had PCs. If you guessed only me, then you are right. I was the only one. Not only that, but I picked up a new nickname because of my individuality — “PC Guy.” I only wish it were due to my astute political correctness, rather than the black box of death I carry around.

As many of my friends would tell you, I am a firm believer in not having a nickname.

Thankfully, my professor seemed to forget about “PC Guy” during the weekend. I lived in a blissful, nicknameless state for a week, until the professor decided to give me a new nickname after the fact I was the only PC user — Darth Vader.

This was even worse than the first nickname because “Star Wars” brings me back to the whininess of Luke and Anakin Skywalker.

This past weekend, I received shocking news. When telling my dad about my topic for the column this week, he said something that threw me into the pits of despair from which I have no hope of climbing out. Apparently, when I was looking at laptops prior to freshman year, I had the choice of getting my Lenovo or a Mac. Whoops.