-Teaching Assistants. Now there’s a fucking joke. When was the last time a TA was actually helpful? Never! That’s because the only requirements to become one are that they took the class three years ago with a different professor and different material and didn’t fail. That and they don’t give a shit about the students that come to see them because they’re too busy studying for their own exams. One time, I went to see a TA and she actually charged me because I went to see her outside of office hours. What kind of bullshit is that?

-This ever happen to you? You’re wearing a bunch of layers because it’s pretty cold outside. You’re sitting in class and you start to get a little warm so you take off your sweatshirt – only the shirt you’re wearing underneath comes off as well so now your sitting in class half-naked and you can’t even tell that everyone is wondering what the fuck you’re doing because all your clothes are inside out around your head.

-Does anyone know how they come up with course numbers? Like how come Sociology 237 isn’t Sociology 238? Who decides that? Just curious.

-I love pre-med kids. They’re fucking nuts, especially when it comes to the MCATs. Those crazy bastards won’t go out for five months just to study for one test. I think I’m going to have to study medicine alongside my pre-med friend Shermdog, just so I’ll be able to administer first-aid when he gets bombed out of his mind right after the test is finally over.

-Don’t you love trying to sneak out of a class early? You gather all your books so they can be easily grabbed and you move to the edge of your seat. You scan the aisles to see if there are any backpacks or sleeping kids that might block your path to the exit. Then, you wait for just the right moment when the teacher turns his back and starts to write on the board. It’s your chance – you grab your shit and tiptoe to the door, making sure to close it very quietly so as not to get the professor’s attention. You made it! Freedom! On to Happy Hour at the bar! College, ya gotta love it.

-Isn’t it funny how you can’t show your parents any of the pictures that you took at school because you’re wasted in all of them? When my parents ask me I always have to be like, “Um, they’re not developed yet” or “Oh, I left them at school, but they weren’t good anyway.” Meanwhile you have a stack of panoramics depicting you funneling beers like it’s your job. I had a friend who needed a photo for a grad school application who had to cut out her head from a picture of her holding a drink in each hand because that’s the most sober picture she could find.

-Here at Penn it’s time for Rush and oh what a great time it is. The freshman girls are putting on their finest black pants and having fake conversations with sorority girls they will eventually backstab. Later, the sororities will utilize the accurate process of scantron bubble sheets to determine which girls are best suited for their house. Meanwhile, the freshman guys are realizing that free beer does taste better and getting so wasted they don’t even remember which frat boys they were talking to. Later, the frat boys will attempt to figure out which guys they want even though they were so wasted they didn’t even know Rush was going on in the first place. It sure is a good thing that the next three years of a person’s life are being determined in such an efficient manner.

-In this new century, I think there is going to be a greater effort by schools to cut down on the amount of drinking done by their students. I also think these attempts will fail miserably. This is because administrators think that kids drink because there is nothing else to do. Therefore, they are trying to come up with more sober social options for students. The problem is, kids don’t drink because there’s nothing else do, they drink because they like getting bombed! If anything, we need more drinking options. If schools want to cut down on their students’ consumption of alcohol, they should try coming up with something else that makes you forget all your worries and makes ugly chicks look good.

-Quote of the Month. Here is a prime example of why alcohol education won’t work. I was listening to two University of Michigan girls talk about how one of them repeatedly gets absolutely trashed. One said, “Your problem is that you don’t know your limits.” The other girl responded, “I know my limits, I just choose to ignore them.” I thought that eloquently summed up the college experience.

-Perhaps the only thing that limits students’ drinking is the almighty hangover. Every college student will eventually experience the effects of a killer “morning after.” For those that haven’t, here are some of the common symptoms: the victim insisting, “I’m never drinking again.” This is of course a blatant lie. Then there is the repeated vomiting, sometimes consisting of things the victim didn’t even eat. This mystery has yet to be solved. After a few hours of these symptoms, the victim might even become religious, asking if there is a higher power, and if so, why did he create alcohol? Don’t worry, this is normal. The best medicine for a hangover is, of course, more drinking. This is known as “drinking through it” or “boot and rally” and works like a charm. Hey, maybe I should teach Hangovers 101. Or should it be Hangovers 102?

-At Penn, many kids go abroad first semester, so now they’ve all come back, which means the rest of us have to hear all their stories. After a while, you don’t even have to listen anymore, you can just fill in the blanks: “Yeah man, I just got back from [insert European city here] and it was fucking [insert foreign slang meaning “great” that the person is using to show off]! The beer there is so [insert “cheap” or “expensive”] and we got so wasted! And I hooked up with [insert blatantly untrue amount] girls there! I also met up with [insert name of other friend who already told you this story] in [insert Amsterdam/Oktoberfest/Prague] and we got bombed all weekend.”

-And now that everyone who was abroad came back, we can tell them about the fucking shady subletters we had to live with. What kind of fucked up tradition is that? You prance off to Europe for three months while I have to live with the first slob off the street you could find to give you 200 bucks a month? I was lucky because the subletters I lived with weren’t too bad. But I’ve heard some horror stories. My friend’s subletter made a list of every single piece of food of hers that the other people in the house ate, demanding compensation. The list included “3/4 jar of relish” and “2/3 brick of cheese.” I’m not making this up! Of course, I don’t know what’s scarier: that she kept a list like that, or that someone in the house actually ate 3/4 of a jar of relish!

-One problem I have is that, for some people, I have no idea if they were abroad or not. I’ll be like, “So, how was France?” And they respond, “Karo, I had a class with you last semester.” Oops.

-And, finally, this is a little embarrassing, but what the hell. At one point last semester I was feeling a bit, well, backed up. I emailed my mom to ask her what I should do. She replied with some advice as to how I could, well, get things flowing a little better. I’m reading the email and I start to notice that everyone in the computer lab is looking at me and snickering. And that’s when I looked up to see that my computer – and the embarrassing email – were being projected onto a huge screen in front of the entire lab. Fuck me!

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