Every time I walk from class to class I follow the same protocol: head down and headphones in as loud as they can go.

If anyone tries to talk to me, my response without hearing their question is, “Sorry, I’m an atheist.”

This works for me just about every time until the time of year I dread: Girl Scout Cookies season.

These girls are like fleas: if you get too close they jump on you and bury their mouths in your skin, causing you to itch in discomfort.

You might think calling 8-year-olds parasitic fleas is harsh, but what they do to my wallet is harsher.

Every year they pull me back in solely for Thin Mints and I just don’t know how to stop.

I truly don’t have the self control to stop myself from buying a box of Thin Mints at 11 a.m. and another at 5 p.m., but truthfully, I blame these little girls for enabling my addiction.

Despite my constant interactions with Girl Scouts, I never tasted any of the cookies other than Thin Mints.

What can I say, I’m a creature of habit.

For 22 years, I stayed faithful to the cookie of my dreams, but now I’m forced to dive back into the cookie dating scene.

The first Girl Scout cookie I decided to taste was the Lemonades.

Pretty simple – it’s a shortbread cookie that is supposed to taste like a lemon.

Believe it or not, I had never tried any lemon-flavored candy until the age of 16, and to be honest, your guess is as good as mine – yellow candy just seemed odd.

Six years after my fear of yellow-colored sweets, it was time to take a bite of what I hoped would turn out to be a soft lemon blanket.

This cookie didn’t even taste like lemon.

I felt as if I was just eating a cracker, which would be fine if it were called Girl Scout Crackers, but it’s not.

Moving past the bland taste of yellow, I decided to try the two cookies advertised as peanut butter flavored. As someone who consumes more than 10 PB&Js a week, I like to consider myself a peanut butter connoisseur.

With that said, Tagalongs are a disgrace and shouldn’t have peanut butter in its name.

It’s a chocolate wafer. That’s all.

I had such high hopes because this little patty resembled my beloved Thin Mints, but it could never hope to be as special.

The Do-si-dos, however, piqued my interest.

Honestly, it didn’t look like anything special.

Resembling a miniature apple pie, it’s instead filled with peanut butter, which is basically God coming down from heaven and making it 100 times better – which it was.

The cookie is a rip-off of the famous Nutter Butter. However, buying a Nutter Butter doesn’t help little girls go on a trip to Disneyland, so I guess I can chalk one up for the Do-si-dos helping a good cause.

Now that I’ve talked to you about the mediocre crumbs I consumed, it’s time to break the real news.

I officially and wholeheartedly think Thanks-A-Lot cookies are better than Thin Mints.

At first, I didn’t like it.

Yes, it was a very polite for the cookie to thank me in multiple languages on the top of each one. It is very progressive, but nothing about the taste stood out to me.

I’d stare at the “Thank You” imprinted on the top and feel my thumb dig into the bottom of the moistly-spread milk chocolate which slowly melted the cookie in my hand, only to be disappointed by the bland flavor.

However, after about 10 servings of the cookies, things changed.

I got bored eating the cookies as they were originally intended and decided to flip the cookie upside down so the chocolate would face up while I ate it. Much like the cookie, my world got flipped upside down.

What was once bland was now beautiful.

And where there was once disappointment in my tummy, there was now happiness.

I can proudly admit I ate an entire carton, and plan on eating another this week because my craving cannot be satiated.

I came into this cookie tasting expecting to be let down, falsely assuming that nothing could rival Thin Mints, but in the end I’ve moved on and maybe it’s for the better.