The Five Things No One Tells You About College

One week left to go of sophomore year, you guys. One more week. And then I am free to be unemployed and poor in the comfort of my own home instead of unemployed and poor at college

Hoo-rah.

So, as of next week, I will personally be halfway done with my college education with a degree in journalism/telecommunication/advertising/graphic design/criminal justice/sociology. (Mostly criminal justice, but hey. I've majored in all of those things, so whatever.) So I think I'm a credible source so far as college and stuff goes. I'm part of that culture, or whatever you want to call it. I'm cool, I'm hip, I'm part of the target audience that the Twilight movies tried (and failed) to market to.

(Mostly, the Twilight movies ended up being marketed to 13 year old girls and middle-aged women unsatisfied with their marriages. I was an advertising major for nine days. I know these things.)

Anyway, I was bored and thinking about college as, you know, a concept. I came up with five things that I really wish someone would have told me before I came here and my life got all screwed up.

Without further ado...

The Five Things No One Tells You About College

1. The Monopoly Money Effect

Unless you are one of the lucky few with rich parents who are also generous, you will be paying for college yourself. Just, an FYI...college is stupid expensive.

I know I'm probably the first person to tell you this awful, awful fact, but it's true. I could sell all of the organs in my body on the Taiwanese black market and still be in debt after college. I know. I checked.

(My debt adds about 75 cents a day in interest to my rather impressive running total. So...there's that.)

I'm paying for my degree with stupent loans (which is a combination of the words "student loans" and "stupid loans" because they are both things. Stupid, I mean. And also for students.) It's pretty cool because I just sign a piece of paper and them I get all of this money. Money for books! Money for food! Money for netflixs!

Money that I, eventually, am supposed to pay back. That part, the whole "this is not my money to have for keeps, this is my money to use right now and then give back later" doesn't really seem all that important right now. It's like monopoly money. It's not like real human money that I need to pay back. It's colorful paper money that charges interest in fun not in dollars.

That's a lie. It does charge interest in dollars. So now I have negative dollars Which is, like, the opposite of fun.

But, right now, it's hard to visualize the pile of money that I owe my school. Instead, I visualize the pile of xbox games I could buy with the money I owe my school. And v-neck tees. I look awesome in v-neck tees.

So, yeah. Monopoly money. Except, in this scenario Free Parking is actually $2,000 per semester parking and the Community Chest gives you free rape whistles instead of cash.

Like I said...college is weird.

2. Motivation is Hard

In high school, there was always someone there to tell you to get your shit done. Be it your parents, your teachers or your guidance counselor, there was always someone there telling you that you had to do your homework before you were allowed to take naps and eat pizza.

I mean, you could ignore them if you tried hard enough, but there were always around. Like gnats. Or very over-involved prison wardens. It was really hard to not do things in high school because there was always someone there to give you shit about not doing it.

But in college, you can do what you want. Want to sleep through your 11:00 class? That's fine! Whatever, bro...we know you have other things going on. No one is going to come remind you that you have a test you didn't study for or an essay exam that you're currently sleeping through. That's your business.

You have to make yourself study and make yourself go to class and make yourself not eat ice cream and pizza rolls for every meal. And it's really hard. Why would I go to class when instead I can stay in my dorm all day, not put on real pants and play xbox for literally fourteen hours without stopping?

That's one of the many reasons why college is awesome. And why so many people flunk out.

3. Graduating is Confusing

Have you filled out forms w, 92, button and a² + b² = c²? Have you taken all your classes in perfectly sequential order? Have you filed out a zoning permit for the ground you are currently standing on? Have you slaughtered a goat to the the old gods? 

Oh, you slaughtered it on a Tuesday...yikes. I'm afraid only goats sacrificed during full moons that fall on Wednesday are admissible. 

So sorry, but it looks like you aren't going to graduate this year! Try again next time. 

This is how it feels. This is exactly how it feels. It is way too complicated to graduate. In high school, people were always hounding you and making sure you had the right credits and all the other stuff you needed to graduate. Here, they just kind of shrug and say "everything will probably be okay, probably." 

You know what? They are probably lying to you, probably.

As someone who had majored in a stupid number of different things, I am well acquainted with the guidance office and the people who work there. Their favorite things to do are to put you on hold, transfer your call and "accidentally" loose your paperwork. 

Sometimes, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be in college forever. Literally. 

4. Be Yourself (Plus a Million)

For many people, college is the first time they've really been without adult supervision. They are free to do whatever they want and nobody can tell them no. Little Jimmy can dance if he wants to, he can leave his friends behind because his Dad isn't there anymore to tell him that he needs to stop dancing and go outside to play with the other kids.

Every little bad or annoying thing about a person is magnified by, like, a thousand in college. In high school, I was sort of antisocial and I was kind of into video games. Now, I very rarely leave my dorm and spend a good three hours a day xboxing (that's the verb form of playing xbox not, you know, boxing with the letter x).

Kids who sort of liked photography? Yeah, say goodbye to their faces because they will be hidden behind a lens for the next four years. Kids who had a lot of boyfriends or girlfriends? They will become straight-up prostitutes. Kids who occasionally partied? They will likely never attend a class. Kids who liked going to the gym? They will never stop exercising! 

Girls who were snarky and kind of liked to blog? They turn out awesome. And sexy. And awesome.

Yeah, well...I fully support people taking happiness where they can find it, but it is, just, really annoying sometimes. People become themselves in college. But...like to an extreme degree. A disturbingly extreme degree.

5. The Bubble

College is not like the real world. Not even a little bit. In the real world, you cannot wander around at four in the morning just because you feel like it, order a pizza and them sleep until noon the next day. In college, no one judges you for that behavior. That behavior is expected. If you get up before nine in the real world, you are a normally functioning human being. You get up before nine in college, you either have a class or are still awake from the night before.

College life is a bubble. People can see you on the inside of the bubble and they sort of understand what you're doing, but something about it is off and you can't really see all that well past the soapy exterior.

The bubble is pretty cool when you're inside. Everything is pretty colors and you get free sandwiches sometimes and everyone understands the references on Glee. But when you leave the bubble, like to go home or to leave campus, everything seems sad and depressing and nobody wants to debate philosophy with you, they just want you to order your damn coffee and go. This leads to a bubble-cling effect where the people inside the bubble want nothing to do with the people outside the bubble.

The people outside the bubble are weird. They wake up too early, they don't read the same books or listen to the same music as you and it's scary because they used to be in the bubble too, didn't they? Then you start to panic about the bubble popping and what on earth you'll do when you are forcibly ejected from the bubble and are no longer allowed to ignore the people on the outside.

And that's where graduate students come from.

That's my list. Do with it what you will. I need to go see if I can score a free sandwich from some guy on the corner. Later, all.

The Five People You Meet During Finals Week

I hate everything. 

I should probably clarify that...

It's finals week, I'm stressed and the best I have to deal with my stress is to convert it into rage and then direct that rage at people I don't know. It's perfectly healthy, probably. 

Well, now that we've gotten my trademark negativity out of the way...it's time for another list-based post! 

Yay! 

Here it is...

The Five People You Meet During Finals Week

1. The Substance Abuser 

The Substance Abuser is easy to spot. They'll usually be dressed in sweatpants, a backwards baseball cap and sunglasses, no matter what time of day it is. Colloquially, they're also known as douchebags. They probably have a low GPA and a parent willing to pay for them to screw around at college.

 And I guarentee that they will spend most if not all of finals week drunk of their ass. They may or may not come and actually take their finals and if they do, they will either be drunk or hungover. Avoid these people at all costs. They tend to be persuasive enough to make you think that drinking an entire bottle of vodka totally counts as studying for your chemistry exam. 

2. The Insomniac 

The Insomniac should be avoided at all cost. Not because they pose any significant threat to your own finals week performance, but because they're really, really annoying. At 8 AM on the first day of finals, the Insomniac has already gone three days without sleep and is already seven cups of coffee deep. And why, you ask, do we know this? Simple. We know this because they WON'T FREAKING SHUT UP ABOUT IT. 

It's finals week. Everyone is tired. Everyone is dealing with less sleep...we really don't need you demanding that we compare sleep schedules with you. If the Insomniac spent more time actually studying and less time chugging espresso, they would get done studying with plenty of time to catch a nap before their first final. 

3. The Media Maven

Thankfully, most of us manage to buckle down and shut up during finals week. Not the Media Maven, oh no. They are determined that absolutely everyone in the entire world must know all the intimate details of  what they're doing to prepare for finals. When they start studying, they must post about it on facebook. 

And twitter. 

And their blog. 

They may even take a picture of their notes/study guides/computer and post it on instagram with a caption like "studying loll! #YOLO" Why do they post that they're laughing out loud about studying? I like to think they're laughing because they know we all know that they aren't actually studying because they're too busy posting about studying to study. In actuality, they are probably just programed to types "lol" after every single thing they post. 

4. The Super Nerd

We all know and hate the Super Nerd. Not only have they turned in every assignment and every extra credit assignment and aced every test, they probably have published articles in whatever field they're studying. They're the kids who have terrible glasses, un-ironic kitten sweaters and headgear. They're also the kids who will likely be your boss someday. 

They live for finals week...finals week for them is like hanukkah for Jewish people. It's the one week a year that society acknowledges the thing they're good at (be it knowing the answers on tests or knowing all the words to the "Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel" song). The Super Nerd is ready to kill it this week...they have their study guides color-coded and prepped for action. 

They're going to get 100% on every single one of their finals and ruin the curb for the rest of us. 

5. The Black Hole

We all reach this point. You've studied and studied and you just can't take it anymore. No matter how much knowledge you pour into our brain, it all just seems to leak out. You, my friend, have become a Black Hole. Nothing can escape the soul-sucking despair that has come over you. Not study guides, not sparknotes, not even time. The last few hours before your final slip past and all of the sudden you're stuck in the exam room staring down at a test that you know none of the answers too. 

You do the best you can and go home where you'll sit, sucking up all the joy. After a few comatose hours spent drooling on the couch and watching cartoons, the Black Hole will stop sucking up joy and become a normal, underacheiveing college student again. Finals week will be over and, while you probably failed half your tests, at least you don't have to do it again for a while. 

So...there's that. Be on the lookout for these kids...they'll make an already hellish week all the more hellish. 

Good luck on your finals...and also on hanukkah, Jewish folks...