>>> Points in Case
By staff writer Court Sullivan
Issue #15 – May 2002

-Our school is designed to be a walking campus. Thus, there is only one road to drive and park on—the “campus circle.” I know this. I also know that no point on a circle is closer to the center. Geometry tells me this. However, nothing will stop me from getting in my car every morning and attempting to drive closer to class. Experience tells me this. Basically, I cruise the circle until at some point I either feel confident I have broken the laws of geometry or I end up where I started. Then I proceed to walk the same distance to class as any other point on the circle, only five minutes later and parked illegally. It sure is a great feeling though. In the incredibly dumb sense of greatness that is.

-Speaking of driving everywhere, have you ever noticed these kids who have no car, yet still refuse to move 100 yards from where they live without trying to get a ride in your car? I swear we have at least ten of these “ride scavengers” in my fraternity. There’s always a couple of them hanging around the front door soliciting rides to the library or trying to hop in someone’s car just to save thirty seconds to class. You’ve been waiting here for thirty minutes!! Break in your shoes, asshole!!

-The worst though is having to ask someone to borrow their car. You have to sell yourself as the complete opposite of what the other person knows you as. “Oh don’t worry! I’m an extremely careful, defensive driver and I’ll make sure to keep the inside clean. And of course, I’ll accept all responsibility for my actions.” Then the other person’s like, “Wait, wait…what ‘actions’ are you planning to take? And aren’t you the reckless drunk who spills beer and food in my room every weekend and breaks shit in the dorm and blames it on everyone else?! Hell no you can’t borrow my car!!”

-Some of my friends from home came to my fraternity on a weeknight and asked me if I could grab them some beers. I said I didn’t have any and they all looked shocked. Finally, one of them said, “But you’re in a fraternity! Isn’t there lots of beer everywhere?” Are you kidding me?! A fraternity is the LAST place you will find extra alcohol! We would have consumed it all by now! I think there is a common misperception that fraternities keep some kind of secret stockpile of beer and liquor…like just in case the university threatens us, we can all get drunk on call and rebel immediately.

-In college, we are way too dependent on computers. One time, I was still in bed and I asked my roommate what it was like outside. He said “let me check,” and then proceeded to log on to weather.com instead of opening the blinds.

-Have you ever come across a spot on a piece of paper where your pen just won't write for some reason? Then you try another spot and the pen works again. So you go back to the first spot, but it still doesn’t work! And the harder you try, the harder it resists until finally you can just read the grooves you made. In fact, I bet that Braille guy had great vision but just got really pissed off at a pen, wrote a whole letter like this, and then flipped it over one day.

-Guys often find it annoying to wash their hands after using the bathroom. But normally it’s like, “Well, this isn’t really about MY germs, I’m cleansing myself of ALL the dirty motherfuckers I’ve been in contact with all day! This could be good!” But have you ever gone to the bathroom JUST to wash your hands, and then afterwards realized that you have to use the bathroom too? Nothing makes you feel dirtier than having to rewash your hands one minute later merely on account of your own germs.

-I hate it when drunk kids attempt to regain their balance after standing up by putting their arms all the way out and wavering around for like thirty seconds. What are you, a fucking small airplane caught in a thunderstorm?!! Sit down and stop embarrassing yourself! Or at least shout “Mayday! Mayday!” and then crash or something so we can all have a good laugh.

-Have you ever seen a girl wearing a nice-looking shirt…if only it were one size larger? College girls in particular seem to think that shirts should not only hug their body tightly, but they should also try to squeeze ten pounds off around the waist. Listen ladies, we have no problem with tight shirts, but please don’t use them to try to make up for the freshman fifteen.

-Do you have that one stray magazine that’s been laying around your room forever? By the end of the year, the cover is torn off and it’s got floor filth all over it. We have this one Maxim in our bathroom that has been sitting there all semester opened to the same page because we’re all afraid to touch it. I have taken a shit and read the same article at least 27 times! Why won’t this magazine just go away, please!!

-Have you ever noticed those people who only raise their hands halfway up in the air to ask a question and then whine when the professor doesn’t see them? Do you want to ask half of a question or are you just fucking stupid?!

-Have you ever spent more time trying to calculate what grade you need to make on a final than actually studying for it? This was especially true for a pretty easy pass/fail class I had this past semester. I calculated that I would only need a 28 on the final exam to make a passing grade. That was confusing though, because I didn’t want to expend any extra energy earning useless points, but I wasn’t sure how to aim that low. As soon as I started looking through my notes, I was afraid I might get at least a 65. I failed at failing!! On a positive note, I was successfully able to argue against some of my own answers after the exam and bring my grade down to a 40.

-When it comes to leaving school for the year, there are several different types of people. First, there are the people who keep an exact running count of the number of hours remaining before they depart for home. These are the same people who want to leave so bad that they can’t decide whether to study or pack on the last few days of exams. They are also likely to schedule a plane flight for 30 minutes following their last exam.

-Then there are the “ride home scavengers.” The ones who know you live somewhere remotely close to them and approach you with ambiguously leading questions like, “SOOO, when are YOU leaving?” and “Hey, I hear there’s this great new interstate that connects [my city] with [your city]!”

-And finally, there are the people that you see a week after they told you they would be leaving, so you innocently ask, “Hey man, weren’t you going home last Thursday?” And then they just break down into some melodramatic catharsis. “I hate home! I have no friends there!! I can’t believe I have to go back to that boring, shitty-ass hellhole for the entire fucking summer!! When do we have to move out again?!!” Then they make sure you have their summer email, address, home phone, cell phone, and “emergency boredom breakdown phone” with extensive D-battery backup power supply just in case you really need to know that someone is more bored than you.

-Moving out is one big sequence of discoveries. First, I realized just how much stuff I brought to school but never used. Then I realized I probably would have used most of this stuff, but forgot I had brought it.

-I also discovered shit I never knew about colonizing underneath things in my room. When I moved my futon, I felt like I was disrupting a natural habitat of floor filth! The bottle caps were helping the dust-covered pieces of food build a damn barricade out of loose change! Next thing you know, those cardboard toilet paper cylinders are going to be reading old magazines in my bathroom! Ahhh!! My dorm room is alive!!

-Sometimes it’s funny how you forget to pack the most obvious things. You finish putting everything away and then realize you actually own the lamps too. And then your mom is like, “Honey, aren’t you going to take your pillow and bed sheets with you?”

-The weirdest thing about moving out this year was having to say goodbye to my senior friends who were graduating. In high school you just tell the seniors, “Have a good summer and party hard at college.” And then in college it’s like, “Whew, sucks for you. Looks like this is the end of the road buddy! Come visit me here next year if you ever wanna have any more fun!!”

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