Tuesday, July 10, 2012

How To Survive College


            “Oh, there goes that crazy, gay kid.”

            “Who?”

“Bradford something. He literally made a girl cry in my class last semester because she was sitting in his spot.”

“Oh yeah, him. I heard that he went to Disney World and when he came back he just lost it. Like, he’s failing all of his classes and I heard he’s run over five cats with that super bright gold car. Oh, and I heard he’s dying of AIDS.”

                This is how I imagine my classmates talk about me. To be fair, I don’t kill animals with my car, I dissect them in my basement and save them in Welch’s grape jelly jars. And I’m the worst student in the entire world. THE ENTIRE WORLD. Thank Jesus Christmas that I am done with school. One time, my teacher threatened to move me to a different part of the classroom because I was so disruptive towards everyone. And I was like, “That’s not going to do anything! I’m just going to have to talk louder so they can hear me!” I am 22.

                I was basically the devil. I did everything in my power to escape class time. In the beginning of my college career I would just not show up to class. It turns out that is a bad idea. Like, I thought my absence was going to go unnoticed when I’m always raising my hand, lecturing someone, or falling asleep. And then, when I would get lectured at I would say, “Girl! I’m sleeping because I spent all night reading your stupid book!” “Girl! Lady Gaga is completely relevant and topical to this discussion!” “Girl! You know we’re best friends.” It’s extra effective if my professor is a man.



                So eventually I figured out that if I go to class but I just leave early that 90% of the time I would still receive attendance points. Then, if the professor would bother to ask where I was going I would say one of two things. 1. “I have an interview at three so….” Or 2. “I have to poop….” Both were extremely effective. THEN, just this past semester I created one of the most amazing things. I just Google image searched “Doctor’s notes,” opened Adobe Illustrator, and then designed my very own doctor’s note!



Thank you for your signature, Dr. Roommate. Oh, what illness did I pretend have you ask? That’s actually very personal. 

Oh, I did this just the other day and it worked like a Charmander. So let’s say that you have a paper that you have to submit online to your professor. All you have to do is search “notepad” in the search bar under the Windows icon. I don’t know how this works for a Mac but you can just find yourself a nice school computer to use. Then, open Notepad, and click File, Open, and use literally any document in the world. When it opens, the screen just looks like a bunch of symbols. Delete a chunk of the symbols, then save it under the same name and submit it! If you try to open the document, a little screen will appear that says something about how Word is unable to blah blah blah. Then, your teacher will e-mail you and simply ask that you resubmit the paper. It buys you at least 24 hours to finish.

                If I actually had to be in class, I would do all that I could to disrupt the lesson plan. It’s really easy. You just have to shout the following sentences to avoid assignments or class time.

    "I think I speak for everyone when I say that we should leave early.”

                “Let’s watch Avatar!”

                “It’s soooo nice out. Nobody wants to be here. You don’t even want to be here.”

                “Isn’t it time for your cigarette?”

                “I wanna watch Charlie Bit My Finger.”

                “With all due respect, we’re so over it. I mean we’re over all of it. We should just go. Like, now.”

                One semester I had two classes with the same professor. She has chronic pain in her legs and her medication makes her super loopy. So not only is she slow but she couldn’t even teach because her head was all fuzzy. We used to play this game where we would count how long she would pause in the middle of her sentences. This is how it would go, “So a Press Release is really about… (46 seconds later) …giving information to the public about the client.” 46! Count to 46 right now. Imagine waiting that long for a completed sentence. I can’t even wait 10 seconds for the You Spilled My Coffee video to load.

                So since she couldn’t walk too good, she was always late to class. One day I logged on to her computer, turned on the projector and the speakers and started playing Youtube videos. Nobody stopped me, but nobody was encouraging me either. So we watched Otters Holding Hands and Boom Goes the Dynamite and by the second video everyone was having fun and laughing. Then, Old Miss Legs Don’t Work Too Good walked into the classroom and everyone got very quiet. So I played another video. She was so high that we just got to watch Youtube for the first half hour of class! And then I said, “Can we leave early today? We’ve basically covered everything.” Forty five minutes early! BOOM!

                I tried all of these tricks for my 21st birthday and nobody was falling for anything because I already missed too much class so I had to go to all THREE of my classes on my birthday. I was pissed. So I decided that if I had to be in class I was going to be inebriated. I went home between my second and third class, filled up a Pepsi bottle with vodka, threw it in my trunk, and drove back to school. Then, I chugged it in the hallway and arrived singing Paparazzi probably louder than I realized.

                So I’m in class, and I’m feeling good and I think to myself, “This is great! I should do this all the time! Nobody even knows!” And as I’m thinking this, the girl next to me leans over and says, “Are you drunk?” And I was wha-?! But in my real life I probably sounded like Scooby Doo. “I can smell it on you. You reek.” And as she’s saying this, my professor goes, “Oh, Brad since you missed class on Tuesday, why don’t you do your presentation?” Um. Welp. I don’t remember exactly what happened but I do know that I stood up and then the next thing I remember is everyone clapping and my teacher telling me how “interesting” my presentation was. I received an A.

                What can we learn from… (count to 46) …my academic dishonesty? I don’t know. It’s like whatever, man. Life, you know?