Something else: while Emilys understand injustice, their relationship to it tends toward the theoretical, while a Sarah’s is more animal, and gets personal more often than is perhaps attractive. (Karens don’t care about injustice in any visceral way unless it’s about women in the workplace.) Emilys are drawn to Sarahs because they crave excitement, they are also drawn to Karens for the same reason everyone is: Karens dispense shame, but also power.

I would have liked to tell you that First Emily and I stayed best friends forever. But then she chose to go to a college that might as well have called itself Karen College. Imagine 2,000 Alpha Karens descending on you with their Psych 101 texts, their favorite song from “The Joshua Tree,” their green and white striped rugby shirts.

Emily stopped returning my calls and disappeared into a sea of Karens. I was devastated, but perhaps this was the only condition under which I would find my first Alexandra.

My own college was teeming with Karens but not overrun with them. There were Sarahs everywhere, and Emilys too, but what I really wanted was a best friend of an entirely new species. I saw them all around me, walking like prize horses, never looking to the side. Only forward, went the Alexandras!

How would I ever get one to see me, especially since I lived in a dorm that could very easily have been called Karen Hall and which smelled of beer, Anais Anais, Paul Mitchell leave-in conditioner, and the sweat of those who did not belong.

The Rich Karens of college amazed me by being pretty much exactly like the not-so-rich Karens of high school. Their handwriting was smaller and less rounded, but of the same font family. They had better versions of the same stuff; Calvin Kleins instead of Jordache Jeans, Clinique instead of Cover Girl, real cashmere instead of the lambs wool-angora-nylon blend. Karen Hall’s Alpha Karen was a sexy, rich, pre-med chipmunk. Every single girl in my dorm was desperate to be friends with her, and had literally no interest in anyone else.