-The University of Pennsylvania is very gracious.  A few weeks ago, they gave us Friday off for Fall Break.  Friday?  What kind of bullshit is that?  What college kid has class on Friday?  Next thing you know, Spring Break will be a long weekend.

-Along the same lines, how come after all these years my mom still thinks Sunday through Thursday are school nights?  I’ll be telling my mom about a party I went to, thinking nothing of it, and she’ll be like, “But Aaron, its only Tuesday.”  She doesn’t understand that the only reason a college kid doesn’t go out on a Tuesday is because they’re too hungover from Monday night’s festivities.

-This is something I have always wondered about.  Why does Microsoft Word have all those fonts that are nothing but gibberish?  You know, you’ll be playing around with the fonts, trying to make a fancy cover page instead of actually writing your paper, and you’ll get that font that isn’t letters, just weird symbols and shit.  What the fuck is that?

-Who are those shady kids that wear backpacks to parties?

-Ever notice that the amount of reading you actually do for a class is inversely proportional to the amount that is assigned?  Think about it.  You sit down to do some reading and see only six pages or so are assigned, so you read it all.  But if you see that you have fifty pages to read, you’re like, fuck this, I’m not reading any of this shit!

-How come when you were in high school, your parents said they didn’t care what other kids did?  “But Mom, Brian’s parents let him go out on a school night!”  The response: “I don’t care what Brian does, you’re not going anywhere.”  But in college, it’s reversed.  “Yeah Mom, I’m not sure what I’m gonna do after graduation.”  The response: “Why can’t you get a good job like Brian?”

-Ever realize that you have never actually used speakerphone?  That’s because every time you try to use it, the person on the other end is like, “I can’t hear you, take me off speakerphone!”

-I have been making a lot of road trips lately.  One weekend, I went to visit my friend Seth at Brandeis University.  Brandeis is not really known as a party school.  But the weekend I went there was drunken and awesome.  I even got to see a fight where one kid hit another kid in the head with a chair!  Four days later, I flew out to the University of Michigan.  Now I know I ripped on Michigan a bit in Ruminations #6, but I take it all back.  That place is fucking ridiculous!  I had great timing, too.  Half of the students at UM are from New York and the other half are from Michigan, and I was there the day of the Michigan-Michigan State game and the Subway Series.  Needless to say, everyone was out of their minds.  Oh, and right before I left to fly home, there was a huge fight and someone got hit in the head with a chair.  Road trips, gotta love ‘em!

-Isn’t it strange how kids avoid sitting in the first few rows of a lecture hall?  It’ll be the professor, twelve empty rows, and then the entire rest of the class jammed in the back.  Kids walk in late, see there are no seats in the back, and just leave.

-Ever meet these people that talk about their cars in code?  They’ll be like, “Yeah, I drive a 525i but the other day I saw the new A4 Turbo, which looks just like the VX3 but it’s a little faster than the 750.”  I’m always like, what the fuck are you talking about?

-Why on earth do grilled cheese makers and George Foreman grills have no on/off switch?  Ever use one of these things?  You have to yank it out of the wall to turn it off.  Of all the appliances in the world, the ones most likely to be found in disgusting, beer-soaked dorm rooms and plugged into 4 interlocking surge protectors should definitely have an off switch.

-Quote of the Month.  I was in Penn Station in New York last week and was riding the escalator.  As you go up, an automated voice says, “Escalators are for passengers only.”  What the fuck else can be riding an escalator?

-This one is for all those studying abroad right now.  When traveling in a foreign country, there’s always that kid who thinks he can force others to speak English.  When I was in France my friend would go to the ticket window and be like, “Two round trip tickets, please.”  The dude would say something in French that we couldn’t understand, so my friend would scream back, “Two round trip tickets!!”  Like yelling is going to make him understand English.

-Why do college kids like to brag about how little class they go to?  A typical exchange between a group of students:  “When was the last time you went to class?”  “Oh, I haven’t gone to that shit since the midterm.”  “Oh yeah, well I skipped the midterm, I haven’t been there since the first day.”  “Dude, I’ve never been there.  If all you had to do for the final exam was pick out a picture of the professor, I’d fail!”

-How come the only alarm clock that you can work is your own?  Have you ever been woken up by a roommate’s alarm clock at six in the morning?  You stumble over to his nightstand and try to shut it off, but you try every single button and it won’t stop, so you end up having to yank it out of the wall like a George Foreman grill.

-One of the mysteries that my college is trying to solve to how to get kids to stop drinking themselves into the hospital.  A few weeks ago, I watched some medics put this wasted freshman chick into an ambulance.  As she was being taken away, I heard her cry, “I’ve never even drank before!”  There you have it.  The way to stop this problem is to teach drinking in high school, pure and simple.

-Why do answering machine messages and movie theaters give you so many damn instructions?  “I’m not here right now, please leave your name, number, time that you called, along with a brief message after the tone.”  Oh, is that what this thing is for?  I was wondering what the fuck that beep meant!  Or: “Please do not speak during the movie and deposit your trash in the garbage cans located throughout the theater.”  Thanks for the handy tips, now just start the fucking movie!

-Why do weathermen give so much extra information?  They’re always like, “There is a low pressure system moving in over the Rockies which might result in a drop in the barometer on the East Coast.”  What the fuck?  Is it gonna rain or not?

-And, finally, hey fellow seniors, do you remember when you bought your computer freshman year?  It was so powerful and fast and you could download shit off the Internet in like two seconds.  What the hell happened?  Almost three and a half years later, my fucking computer sucks.  Connecting to the Internet is like slow death and it takes forever to change the fonts in Microsoft Word when I’m trying not to write a paper.  Fuck me!

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