Are you afraid of the real world? I mean the world outside of the sheltered college environment? Are you even sure it exists in the first place? If you arent, then youre probably a very heavy drinker. This is a good thing, mostly because while sober and about to graduate, you tend to stay up nights wondering, thinking, fearing in the abysmal depths of insecurity who, once you are no longer in college, is going to feed you, fill up the toilet paper spindle, call facilities, cancel Modfest, or unlock your dorm room when you leave the keys inside and your roommate is in a different country because hes an international student who had to rush home because of a coup in Zimbabwe? The answers to all these questions can be found at the bottom of a Bacardi 151 bottle. However, you might not be cognizant enough at that point to understand them, and youll probably be pretty flammable by then as well.
To those who would mistakenly accuse me of encouraging excessive drinking as a way to solve all of your problems, youre wrong. It only solves most of them. In the end, everyone has to come to the realization that the human body can only sustain a certain percentage of flammability before it simply becomes too dangerous to walk into an exploding building while intoxicated.
To deal with this in a sober setting, the area will have to be more systematically explored. This is a complete waste of time, but its critically important to all our futures as non-college students. The most obvious problem is the question of food. Who, indeed, will feed us once we are no longer on a grossly overcharged meal plan? Lets face it people. Soon, we will no longer have the privilege of simply swiping our cards, walking into Sherman, plopping a bunch of greasy stuff on our trays, piling up our oil-drenched napkins and getting deathly ill. We will have to do this ourselves, probably with prepackaged greasy stuff, oil-drenched napkins and a free side of e-coli for that authentic Sherman feel.
We have to face the inevitable fact that once we are done and gone from this place, we will no longer be able to call facilities to fix our heaters when they suddenly start belching noxious fumes, and then wait three weeks for some guy to show up knocking on our door at 3:00a.m. asking what the problem is. Well have to do all that ourselves.
When the toilet paper runs out, were the ones who will have to scavenge around for bath tissue, showing up mysteriously at various high schools throughout the country during senior prank season collecting toilet paper from vandalized school administration offices. When the toilet gets clogged, were the ones that will have to dig a hole in the backyard, and when the garbage fills up to capacity, well have to dig another hole in the backyard.
The reality is that weve been pampered for years, and now we have to go out into the world, all scared and helpless, unable to even fathom the responsibility of covering up the sticky spots on the rug with construction paper ourselves when it simply becomes too difficult to keep wrenching our feet off of them and having the bottoms of our shoes rip off all the time. College has made us soft, needy, and unable to tackle the responsibilities of running our own future households.
This isnt a joke. This is serious. (See my column This is NOT a Humor Column from three weeks ago for further information.) The average college student is simply not prepared to go out into the world and deal with basic life necessities, myself included. Still, it is not my intention to sound alarmist, and therefore I have cooked up what once-ambitious and world-dominating, now non-existent Soviet communist empires call a Five Year Plan. Granted, my Five Year Plan is somewhat different than the USSRs Five Year Plans were. (WARNING: YOU WILL NEED TO KNOW SOME RUSSIAN/UNITED NATIONS HISTORY TO GET THIS NEXT JOKE.) For instance, their Five Year Plans involved things like Krushchevs potato plan with a nuclear arms race on the side. That was the thing about Russia. You never knew if they were serious about these things, and if so, whether or not one of their winters would just be so cold that their brains would harden and theyd confuse the two and develop a nuclear potato somewhere in Siberia.
Aside from the fact that The Nuclear Potato would be a great name for a tuber-themed Mexican restuarant, my Five Year Plan is somewhat different. Basically, it involves four and a half years of thinking really really hard about how to make your own food and fix your own heater, followed by six months of traveling to the former Soviet Union, stealing all of their potatoes and sneaking out with a few nuclear weapons to warm up your apartment in the winter.
With that in mind, its easy to see that when push comes to shove comes to nuclear heaters, taking care of yourself is a very intimidating task. But luckily, Brandeis takes care of its student body rather well. I mean, if youve ever – even for a moment – stopped to think about the immense load of time, dedication, toil, blood, sweat, tears, Winston Churchill, and mild stimulants that goes into this operation we call running Brandeis University, you probably belong to a whole bunch of social action groups with long acronyms such as BRANSWER (Brandeis Republicans Against No Specific War Endoplasmic Reticulum) BOOOOOO (Brandeis OrthOdOx OrgOnizatiOn) and others, have a very long resume, and most likely have not been drinking enough Bacardi 151.
