Let's face it, I'm not the best at giving advice. It's not because I don't have tons of life experiences; my life experiences just don't match up with the normal experiences of everyday people. Let's be simple and just list things that happen to me that no one can hopefully relate to: I've won multiple syrup races, I've woke up on the Fourth of July and walked 12 miles because the buses weren't running on a holiday...in a thunderstorm*, I was once picked up by the police for walking dressed up as a Mexican and had to call for a ride at 2:30 because the police thought I was an "at-risk individual", and just to top it off I was evicted in a snowstorm and wrecked my truck just to top my sundae with a $150 cherry. Today, I will try to relate to everyone with simple words and a few jokes, because I'm bored as hell and one can only play Mass Effect 2 so many times.**
*About 10 miles in I broke a sandal and just kicked the other one away and walked barefoot. Yes, I was doing this in sandals, and I had a backpack on.
**I'm at four, because I had to play with all of my Mass Effect 1 characters. I need a "life."
Six Rules of College Etiquette
Editors's Note: Yes, I am my own editor. Certainly there are more than six rules, but here's a start. These rules generally can be filed under the subtopic of "How to not be a douche in an academic setting"
1st Rule of Etiquette
If you want to join our conversation, join it.
Life is not one big Twitter for you to share your crappy two cents. My video group partner for my Shakespeare class and I were talking about the writing process. We shared our thoughts on it: how we loved writing spontaneously, but couldn't see it as a job. We shared some ideas, and I talked about how I really hate letting people see my serious writing before its completion. Then, some dude just walks up and starts talking about how he's written two novels. Now, this is perfectly fine, I would invite him to join our discussion, but he is just kind of jittery. I ask what he wrote about, and then upon his answer (something about Arthurian legends in a modern era) and my partner gave the usual "Oh, like this and that."* We weren't judging his writing, but trying to relate to it and he seemed put off that we would try to understand. I'm one of those guys who can't picture fantasy in its own right, my creativity is in language not in imagination. You'll never get a terribly novel idea from me, but you'll certainly get it in a new way. So if the guy wanted to fill me in he could have tried, but instead just kind of hijacked the conversation and then disappeared to an non-extradition country to scrap our conversation for parts.
*I have a horrible attention span, and don't really absorb conversations unless they can be used
a)to blackmail or insult someone later
b)they are important
c)generally, anything a woman says (for multiple reasons)**
**They might care or call you on it, they're attractive so you might need to feign attention at least, and it never hurts to learn more about women to shove it in their faces when they say you know nothing
2nd Rule of Etiquette
Don't Be That Kid
We get it: you're smart and so socially awkward that this might highlight your day (No, I'm not going to rant about myself). Please don't answer every question without raising your hand in class and generally, don't be loud in any way. The correct procedure is to meekly raise your hand as if you are unsure; the teacher being an asshole will pick you*, then wow the class with the brilliant answer that you obviously knew because you are obviously brilliant. When you were in second grade, the teacher loved you blurting out answers and laughing aloud to their shitty jokes. When you are 20 years old and the teacher is trying to teach a class to thirty other students who dropped a grand on the class, you're a douche.**
*Not because they are really an asshole. It's just a normal reaction, you pick the least eager student who seems to want to participate.
**Is douche a gender neutral word? I've always used it as a male-only noun (the subject who caused this rant is female though), but generally because more men are douches. This may be because women are more generally referred to as bitches or sluts (generally female to female slander), but I still think being called a female dog or whore is far worse than a feminine hygiene product. Douche is also my go-to word, and probably the most used noun (person), action noun (douchebaggery), and adjective (douchy) on this site. I may have used it once or twice as a verb (douching it up).Therefore, its usage is of great concern to my musings.
3rd Rule of Etiquette
Professors: Make Class Interesting and Act Like You Give a Damn
Now, here's a novel idea. I've had a decent semester. My teachers have done a fine job presenting classes that are harder in nature in a fun way so as to keep my attention peaked. I had a teacher in Rolla who actually made the French Revolution boring...seriously. You know political upheaval, arguably the first "World War," and beheading galore and she made it sound like Pride and Prejudice.* Mostly, act like you became a professor to teach. I understand high school teachers being disgruntled and unhappy, they get paid nothing and most high school students are rat bastards with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement because their parents didn't raise them right.*** Professors, even the ones just starting, get paid reasonably well to teach at most ten hours a week, keep maybe 4-6 office hours, and work on research to further themselves and their university for a reasonable amount of time. Figure in maybe two-four hours of grading and lessons plans, and you have a twenty hour week of teaching and then whatever time you spend on research and staff meetings. Teaching, as one of my professors said, was the fun part; he'd do that for free. If you spent six-ten years of your life learning about a certain subject, you should have the enthusiasm to give your acquired knowledge back to others seeking the same satisfaction. I always believe that teaching a willing student is not a job, it is a pleasure and a privilege that few people will ever experience.
*I like Jane Austen, but the only way anybody of the next generation (not raised by my sister) hears of it, is if Michael Bay does a version where Darcy goes crazy and blows shit up. Nothing like a story where the main male character is a dick, on occasion has no personality, has a family of dicks, and the female lead still wants this guy who she most obviously despises. Nothing like powerful women who lower themselves to be with dicks.
**Apologies, I was writing about a Detective, a bird, or a dude named Richard.
***Oh, I was a rat bastard as well, but not due to any failing of my parents.
4th Rule of Etiquette
There is no need to Brag About a College Party; We Were There and It Sucked
College is defined in American culture by the party, in particular those held in fraternities. Now, I'm a fraternity man, but I agree wholeheartedly with my Korean professors sentiments on attending his first college party. Our parties are depressing. Two problems: We don't understand what fun is and secondly we have no idea what individuality is. Think back to your best moments in college. Were they done in large groups or small ones? Did they involve close friends or strangers? If you answered, large groups and strangers, you are either a serial rapist looking for anonymity or possibly the one guy who fist pumps to Miley Cyrus which the douchy DJ was playing ironically. It's the whole aura of kids sitting around drinking their worries away, but simultaneously creating more worries. Have you ever looked around at a party and noticed that no one is really having a good time? It's because they aren't.
5th Rule of Etiquette
Women: Don't go to Previously Mentioned Parties Alone or Abandon Your Friends There
Men: If you cross that line, you get what you deserve
A kid from American University caused a stir a couple weeks back when he said women who go to parties to get wasted are asking for it. This isn't a new position, as a female columnist wrote for a school newspaper last year the exact same opinion. I think the guys involved still should be castrated. Sadly, we are all right. This isn't a judgment on women only, nor fraternity parties either, but college students need to understand the consequences before they take actions. Date rape is a serious problem with two obvious sources: idiotic, reprehensible males and idiotic, careless females.* Drugging a woman is obviously a straight forward discussion, where prison is the most obvious solution. However, I think taking sexual advantage of a drunk woman no matter what her slurred speech might say is just as awful, but it's a gray area that no DA would want to cross. Trying to prosecute a rape charge on a man, who was probably also heavily inebriated** and did not cause the mental state of the victim, is not something that can be easily done. Rules: 1)Buddy System 2)Don't Bring the Douche Buddy 3)Don't Be A Douche 4)Tape Recorders 5)More dancing=Less Drinking=More Awkward Sober Sexual Advances
*The Female initiated date rape is either an urban legend or just accompanied by shameful feelings of regret by men. Usually reserved for fatties and ugos. (I swear it's not me talking, it's Bob Kelso You'll need to fast-forward to 1:20)
**If you are sober and you have sex with a drunk person who you are not currently or previously sexually active with I would advise: 1)Putting a retainer down for an attorney 2)Video taping consent or the entire thing 3)The Sex Contract.
6th Rule of Etiquette
College is Not a Job, Don't Make It So
College can be the best 3-15* years of your life. Go to class, then occasionally drink a martini and pretend you have some. Don't worry about B's, worry if those are the biggest boobs you've seen lately. Don't fight for attention, fight the guy disrespecting women at a party. Don't take advantage of people's weaknesses, find use of their strengths. Most of all, just take a deep breath and look at yourself. Don't ask what can I do to get money, women, power, or whatever you think is cool. Do something that makes you happy in the moment, and plan to do something that will make you feel fulfilled later in life. Life is a shitstorm of multiple dimensions, and the only way to glide through it happily is to find your calling, not your job. On the other hand, I wouldn't advise doing it my way; take it serious enough that one day you don't find yourself as a career student, because hell even Van Wilder graduated someday.
*By the time I'm done:
I will have certification to deliver: horses, babies, nuclear weapons, and sermons.
I will be able to marry you, divorce you, bury you, and claim your assets after death to pay back taxes
I could teach you Calculus, European History, Theology, Shakespeare, Creative Writing, and Jujitsu.
(Sadly, I could do all of those first five seriously as of now.)
I will have had class with your parents, you, and your children.
THERE WILL BE NO PAPER...OR TREES!!??!??!!?!!!?!!!!!
Bonus:
Short and simple phrases without explanations or use
No shirt, no shoes, why pants?
Class before 8AM is unacceptable
Alcohol before 8AM, Only If Breakfast Drinks are Involved
Caucasians are Mestizos
Breakfast, The Meal of Overachievers
Lunch, the Business Meal
Dinner, The Meal of Friends
Midnight Huddle House, the Meal of Stoners and Drunks
Mountain Dew and Cheetos, the Official Meal of LAN parties and WOW
Pizza is Not a Food Group, But It Is Five Out of Six (Bread, Cheese, Meat, Vegetables, Fat)
Regular School+Nursing School=More Hot Chicks
Nursing School Students+School-Hotness=Nurses in Real World
It's not Chinese unless it's a buffet and followed by a overpowering sense of gluttony
If your English class teaches you nothing else, hopefully you learned "rain on your wedding day" is just shitty and not ironic
If you sit through a Calculus class as a non-Math major and think "I hope I can use this practically in the real world," getting your head start on eHarmony and possibly any sort of roulette (the game, Russian, Chat is in your future).
Philosophy is the major for people who don't know what they want to do with their lives, but want to explore why they feel that way.
Psychologists make you pay them to repeat that exact same experience.
History majors either like History or just douchy enough to like stating their opinions on anything and listening to themselves.
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