The Adam Mathes Guide to Complete College Misery
Part Two -- The College Years
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Last week I revealed the underlying framework for a miserable college life: an unfulfilling and unhappy childhood filled with emotional trauama, entirely unrealistic college expectations, excessive computer usage, and bikinis in high school gym classes. But now, things will be different! Because now, oh yes, now you are in College.
Try Being Nice
Now that you're in college, everything is going to be totally different and great and wonderful, so leave the "asshole sarcasm" behind! In college, nobody knows that you're a complete and total asshole. At least not yet. So drop the caustic exterior, and try to be nice to all the wonderful new people you're meeting. If you followed the steps from last week carefully, then you're not just at college, you're at an elite academic institution! Filled with the "best and brightest" from around the country. (You will quickly learn that "best and brightest" is all relative. The best and brightest from Tulsa can barely tie their shoelaces.) Smile and nod as your peers talk about their glory days in high school. All of a sudden, everyone was the popular one! Even you! Try to laugh as they all get sloppy drunk every weekend and puke everywhere because they can't drink to save their lives. Ignore the fact that they have no taste in music, movies, or cartoons. Ignore the growing feeling that they are just as stupid, pathetic, superficial, and idiotic as the people you hated in high school, even if they sign up alongside you for "intellectually stimulating" classes with titles like "Freedom and Eros In Philosophy and Art." You know it's a load of donkey doodie, they don't.
Meet your new best buddy
Almost all colleges have a little survey to fill out that will help determine who your roommate is. Be sure to fill it out honestly, as this will determine who you will be living with in a very, very small confined space for an entire year of your young life.
Whoever is in charge of making roommate pairs sure has a sense of humor though, or at least believes in the old "opposites attract" stuff. Because when you say things like, "I like to sleep between the hours of 1am and 11am" - yet they think you'd be a good match with someone who's preferred bed time is 5am! And who gets angry when people knock on the door at 3pm because they "woke him up." Stick a little anti-social computer geek in which a big, angry, frat-boy football player, it's sure going to be a great year!
When your roommate insists on using a new bar of soap every time he takes a shower, but spends his nights sleeping on the floor amongst a pile of dirty clothes, and has a smelly, four foot tall, trash-filled section of the room he calls his "shit-pit" that is rapidly taking over your side of the room, be sure to point out the "hypocrisy" and "weirdness" and "border-line obsessive compulsive behavior" to your RA. You will, of course, walk away bewildered as he suggests that the source of your problems is actually that you never had Mr. Crazy Stink Pile sign a "roommate contract" the first week of school, and that he can't help you until you two have a "friendly dialogue" to construct and sign said roommate contract.
Attempting this, you will get into a verbal fight with said roommate, and when he says "never call me an asshole again" - be sure to respond with "ok, asshole asshole asshole asshole." When he then threatens to act out his ape like violence fantasies on your head and physically beat you senseless, causing you fear for your life, try to take solace in the fact that if you survive the encounter, there's a chance you might get your own room in the hospital. Be amazed when a "Peer Health Educator" who gets free room and board for her "staff position" says things like "Golly, those two in the room next to me, sometimes I hear screams and I'm not really sure if everything is ok or not," but never actually does anything! Then remember that part of the $32,000 you are paying each year is for her to live next door to you (for free!) and hand out condoms. That'll make you feel better! Then, upon remembering that school is costing you over $32,000 a year, feel guilty about being miserable.
Nothing says "miserable" like spending nights reading Nietzche
Take philosophy classes. Pore over Nietzche, and then write spineless papers on Nietzche so you can go to class to "discuss" Nietzche with pretetentious bastards who think that school exists solely for them to "impress" people with the fact they spent hundreds of dollars on SAT prep courses and can use long fancy wo rds in sentences, incorrectly.
Stop Trying to Be Nice - Resume Asshole Tendencies
Get over the guilt. About a month into your freshman year, accept the fact that college kids, just like everyone else in the world, suck. Revert back to your asshole tendencies. Make sarcastic remarks at dinner. Don't take shit from anybody. Do your best to alienate yourself from everyone in your freshman dorm. Some handy tips:
Listen to the Spice Girls
At loud volumes, and sing along. Nothing says "stay away" like an 18-year-old guy singing "Stop right now, thank you very much, I need somebody with a human touch. Hey you, always on the run, gotta slow it down baby gotta have some fun oh..."Don't listen to people's stupid stories
If somebody walks into your room, and starts talking, stop what you're doing, look them straight in the eyes with a blank stare, then begin to pick your noise. At first, they will laugh, and continue. But after a few times, they'll say "Adam, seriously, that's disgusting, it's not funny, stop." And eventually they won't come back. All it takes is a little perseverance.Small discussion group fun
You know that guy in your discussion sections who just rolls his eyes at whatever people are saying? And whatever he says always starts out with, "You are wrong on so many levels..." Be that guy.Have a witty, sarcastic, asshole response for everything.
 | ||
| COMMENT | NICE RESPONSE | ASSHOLE RESPONSE |
| Hey, can I borrow your notes from class? | Yeah, sure. | Nah, they wouldn't help you anyway. |
| Wanna go get dinner? | Yeah, sure. | I hope you choke on the swill they call food at this piece of shit institution |
| We're gonna drink some beer! Wanna come? | Yeah, sure. | Only if I can watch you puke your guts out afterwards! |
| ||
Take the Summer Off
After all those asshole antics, you deserve a break. Since your first year was so traumatic and horrible, spend the entire four-month long summer trying to recover. Become nocturnal, but be sure to wake up by 3pm to watch Sailor Moon. The watching Sailor Moon thing is essential. Read a lot of bad science fiction novels. When your parents say things like, "when you said you were going to come home for the summer, well, we didn't think you meant you were going to be at 24 hours a day 7 days a week. What the hell is wrong with you? Aren't you going to get a job," you'll want to tell them that you would like to discuss this, but they'll have to wait until Sailor Moon is over. Do not actually ever discuss it or get a job.
Sophomore year - Choose a major
Become a computer science major. It is critical to choose a major in the engineering department, as all of them will require you to take so many mind-numbingly boring classes filled with boring, pathetic, ugly, smelly, geeky guys that you will inevitably begin to hate college, all your classmates, and life itself. Either that, or you will become a boring, pathetic, ugly, smelly, geeky guy who plays Quake deathmatch all week, but spices up his weekend life by playing Dungeons and Dragons with like-minded losers. It all depends on whether you make the all-important choice to shower or not to shower. Please, God, choose showering! Unfortunately, it doesn't make much of a difference.
As pathetic as undergraduate computer science majors are, there is no sadder, more pathetic, lonelier, sadder group of people on the planet than computer science graduate students. They wouldn't know fun if it bit them in the ass. They wouldn't even notice if it took a large chunk out of their ridiculously large asses. They would just continue to sit in front of the workstations in the computer lab and code like mindless automatons, and since all they EVER do is sit in front of their workstations, their asses are so large that they will never even notice the missing chunk.
Never, ever get laid
After becoming a computer science major, you might as well become a eunich, as women, who already were disgusted by you and you wouldn't talk to you to save your sorry life, will now refuse to even acknowledge your existence, even though, unlike the rest of the Computer Science department, you shower every day. Your brain will hurt so much from contemplating the question "how is programming something called 'BunnyWorld' really helping me to learn anything?" that you will be incapable of even remembering that your primary goal in college is not to learn, but to have lots of sex. This intense sexual frustration will permeate all you do, and will shine through in stupid essays you write for web sites nobody reads.
Also, since you are computer science major, there will be no women in your classes. You will be unable to pass the time by staring at their legs, so you will be forced to pay attention to the class, which will quickly and efficiently suck all the fun and joy computers once held for you. You will begin to wonder if you go to an all-male school, and whether or not the women that live in your dorm are some sort of bizarre hallucination.
Occasionally you will see a beautiful woman in one of your classes. After talking with her, you find out she is not only beautiful, but intelligent and a Linux nut (Not Red Hat like those trendy bastards, but Slackware!) And even though you're a FreeBSD evangelist, she seems pretty cool. Two weeks later you will find out that her girlfriend is even sexier and smarter than she is and you will cry and become more depressed because no matter how hard you try, they refuse to let you videotape their dormroom antics.
Write Stupid Essays About Being Miserable
Don't try and actually change your life for the better. Do not make constructive changes. Instead, funnel your angry little energy into essays obscure webzines. Tell yourself, "no seriously, this will be cathartic. Free therapy. And it will help me get chicks!"
It won't, but it's important to delude yourself and stay positive about something now that you're completely sure college is just a big racket designed to crush your spirit, destroy any creative energy you have left, and put you in serious debt.
Adam Mathes should have studied for finals instead of writing this.