By Claire Parsons
Fall break should mean no work
I’m lazy. I don’t like to do ANYTHING. Sitting around is almost too much for me. I routinely sit through horrible television programming because the remote is out of reach and I can’t find it in me to get up and change the station. One might think that my laziness would impede my academic ambitions, but that is not the case. For the most part, my excellent ability to produce bullshit at the last minute has counterbalanced my laziness. I have often thought of this ability as a gift from God, although many of you readers probably don’t feel the same.
I am sitting here on a Sunday morning writing this very article at the last minute. Last night, I drank a little more than necessary, so I feel kind of shaky, but I am willing to persevere for you, my fabulous reading audience. I have a rant to get out, and I will not let a headache and a little nausea deter me.
Here’s the thing. Fall break is next week, and it’s about time. I’m going nowhere spectacular, but the lack of class for five days is spectacular enough. I get goose bumps just thinking about it. Sleeping in all day. Not reading anything except in website form, or possibly the credits of an Adam Sandler movie. Most importantly, I won’t be writing any essays or papers of any kind. If I want to utilize my flair for BS, I’ll only have to do so in the oh-so-accommodating verbal form, and it won’t matter if anyone buys it or not.
Much to my chagrin, however, my professors don’t seem to fully understand the premise of the fall break. Alarmingly, they seem to think of fall break as a time to catch up on one’s work instead of avoiding work in all forms. In fact, this week is absolute hell for me. As if it weren’t bad enough to live through the anticipation of fall break in this final week, this week has been packed with due dates for papers and exams. What in the blue blazes? Why do professors hate us? Don’t they know that the ideal way to prepare for a fall break completely devoid of work is to do no work in the week prior?
There is no excuse for the professors’ lack of understanding on this point. I know that many of them are out of touch with reality. I know many professors cannot seem to resist the siren call of the combover, but does even that incriminating evidence mean that professors are fundamentally bad? Of course not. Unwilling to face reality, yes, but not necessarily evil. No matter how much we’d like to think so, professors are not stupid. Most of them hold PhDs and have worked their asses off in school for them. Why, then, have they been unable to figure out that cramming work into the week preceding fall break means that they, themselves, will have to work over fall break? It seems insane to me, but I guess that could be the hangover and four cups of coffee talking.
Come on, profs, I know you were once measly college students seeking nothing other than the bliss of not studying. Can’t you find it in your hearts to give us a break? No? Fine, then. Here’s what we’re going to do. You have underestimated us students. We have power, and we will use it. If you give us more work than we find absolutely necessary, we will make fun of you and call you a sadist. We will mercilessly mock your clothes and hair and whatever else we can think of behind your back. We will make up funny, and if possible, vulgar plays on your name. If you are boring (and really, even if you’re not) we will sleep in your class. Finally, we will give you bad evaluations and we may even resort to using the F-word if we are so provoked. We are poor and disenfranchised, but we aren’t docile. We are young, disrespectful, and immature, but most of all, we’re desperate. We will fight back. Consider this in your course plans for the coming semesters.
