So Where's Your College?

Let's face it, there's alot more than academics and cost to consider when choosing a college- proximity to an ice cream parlor, whether or not they serve pizza everyday, the general attractiveness of the female and male students (it would really be a shame if I had to attend a school where I was once again the best-looking guy; such a heavy burden to bear...). But there's something more important than that- as these formative years shape you, so will the geography of those years. Imagine if you were attending college...

In the Heart of the City
Some people live for the city, and don't sleep because of the city. Those are those insane individuals who believe that "being social defines you" or some other inane and blathering nonsense; something about "needing people to survive" and "no man is an island." Well, let me tell ya, perhaps no man is an island, but no man can possibly see the need to surround yourself with 14 million other small islands and/or miniature geographic features at all times, stranded within a bigger geographic feature.

In simpler words: no sane man willingly consigns himself to be in the company of millions of other men without some kinda catch, especially in college. Maybe you're in it for the ladies. Maybe you're in it for the 13$ a gallon gas or the 4$ a pizza slice pizza, but you'll regret it. Oh, yes you will. After finding out that my number 1 college was at the heart of a college town, surrounded by 7 or so other colleges, I retreated under my desk and curled up into a ball, sobbing and rocking back and forth. Save yourself.

Prime real estate: you can barely touch both walls at the same time!

In the Heart of the Cornfields
At the other extreme end of the spectrum is the "hole in the ground" college. Once upon a time, back when Manifest Destiny gripped the hearts of pioneers and shook them until they staggered out Westward, a lone caravan decided to settle in the single most desolate and abandonded spot possible. This is the town founded by complete loons for no good reason, and their descendants, continuing in the tradition of their mindless forefathers, have destined to lure other people into a town where the cows outnumber the people 3:1. Their bait: a modest college that looks nice and is inhabited by generally genial and amiable people.

Don't fall for this one, either. The only supermarket in town is Wally's Mart, and the nearest actual town is somehow 200 miles away, something you once thought geographically impossible in the United States. It's a shame that living in the cornfields is what finally forced you to learn how to use a map and figure out just how stranded you are. One day, the corn will rise up and destroy the town and the college.

"I forgot what hills look life..."

Abroad in the Jungles of the Amazon
"Gee, this is a neat brochure. Everyone in other countries is so blindingly good looking and happy all the time." The first step towards your timely decision to escape America, this brochure proves to have lied right into your face about everything. At the same time, it has collectively saved you more money than a fleet of dump trucks can transport in a week. No, really. It's cheap. The downsides, depending on your specific locale, range from living in a thatched hut with twelve villagers to living in a slum tenement with twelve other international students, and from eating purple earthworm larvae to drinking camel poop juice. Little did you ever suspect that camel poop juice denotes a delicious concoction of coconut juice and the blood of unicorns along with lime shavings, and it's surprisingly fecal-less. Enjoy!

Exactly like I... imagined it?... um...

Next Door, You Wuss
There's several reasons you didn't leave your house. For some reason or other, be it parents or tuition or something similarly absurd and lame, you figured that going too far from home might kill you- whether it's over-nutrition or homesickness, there are a thousand different maladies that can strike you dead pending your setting foot outside of state lines, according to their odd taste of logic.
There are some decent explanations for several of these phenomenons, such as helicopter parents or an irrational fear of being further than five minutes away from home, but I would personally like to reach out and say that perhaps you should accept the alternative that leaving home would help your health and be mentally healthy for your parents. Probably. This doesn't even deserve a picture. You're pathetic. Just kidding, please love me and my blog. You're beautiful. And scared of open spaces, that's kinda ok too (not really).

On the Beach in Suburbia
Either in a stilted hut or in a hammock between two palm trees, gorging yourself on the sunshine, this is the place to be. Even vampires can't resist- being in the beautiful sun is worth every cell in their body being scorched by the sun. When the sand is too hot and you burn your feet, that actually means you have vampire feet. Weirdo. Anyways. The Beach is the best place to live- better than cornfields, the Amazon, or two doors over from your house in a dorm.

"Class will be held at low tide." 

Right Now, I'd Rather Be...

It's been a traumatic night. I spent 7 nonconsecutive hours reading a 210 page book that I received three weeks ago. This kind of reckless literary abandon is nothing new; and besides, I relish the opportunity to ketchup on my reading sometimes. (Condiment joke!)
But as of now, the my stultified mind has succumbed to the wiles of the a-ccursed Internet, the bane of all humans and even slightly sentient beings. If frogs were useful for something other than shoe sole lubricant, they would also enjoy using computers. But right now, my mind rebels with every keystroke as it imagines several wonderful scenarios in which I am not being vaporized by the light emitted from a computer screen, such as...

Going for a Bike Ride : The Story
Biking is supremely supreme- supremerific, if you will. As a sport and as a method of transportation, it holds so much more promise than such foolhardy pursuits such as this "walking" people keep telling me about. In my heyday, I would glide through the streets and backroads of Bayonne, hair fluttering from under an only slightly ill fitting helmet and my eyes watering from the intense 12 mph's of velocitative movement the bicycle was sustaining... so like, fastish.

Height*Speed=Total Velocity, I think?

A Dam Bike Ride - The Hill
When I was a kid (summer 2011) and in Poland, I found myself in a similar situation. Luckily, the family hosting me lived in the mountains. No, really, you had to switch gears on the bike and all to get up to their house, perched precariously there like a tree jutting out of the side of a mountain. Why do trees do that? Anyway, I might've sustained several heart-attacks biking up to their house, and several more on the way back down. But this one morning, I was feelin' lucky. My friend, Piotr, told me about gorgeous hills and an active sawmill directly above a dam-caused lake not far from his house... who was I to resist this invitation? Wheeling a bike out and riding the few kilometers (that's right, Europe, baby) there, my front wheel finally began enjoying its true offroad environment by sinking several feet down into a swamp that was four inches wide and thirty feet deep (official estimates vary). As I looked up, my spine was thrashed by more than a chill- an icy freight train ran through it, rattling each vertebrae while stopping for fuel around my T4, then continuing on its hellish way. Before me stood not a hill- nay!; that description doesn't do it justice. Imagine a rocky, jagged precipice that giants jokingly chopped off the top of a mountain and plopped unceremoniously on a random hillside. Welcome to Poland.

The name of the town I was in. Why is it in English? Shutup.

The Ascent
In a fit of daring, imagine attempting to climb a skyscraper using thumb tacks as picks and toilet plungers as foot suction cups. Transpose this ridiculous scenario to Poland 2011, Wisla, and you would alight on a scene of me billowing full speed, wheel bouncing in and out of cavernous puddles, heading straight for a rock-studded wall. Okay, rock-studded hill. At a 89 degree angle. After the bike decided it wasn't feeling going vertical and started sliding down the rocky, muddy hill (I didn't mention it rained, did I? Because it rained the night before. Alot.), disembarking seemed the wisest course of action. At the top of the hill, the hill had another hill on top of it. This hill was barely on a 45-degree angle; might as well have been downhill for all I cared, and this hill was covered with tall grass and fallen tree branches, which was confusing because there was tall grass and no trees; yet there were tree branches. Poland. After 30 minutes of switching between riding my bike three feet and then getting it either stalled in water or stuck in mud, I just biked across the hill, because screw it, there was a third hill on top of the hill on top of the hill, and screw everyone, the bike was now sporting a brown coat of mud. Later, I would find out that the "trails" I thought I was using were actually just where the rain had worn ruts into the hill... but how did they wear ruts running horizontally across the hill?... Eh. Poland.

When I looked behind me on the road to the hill, casually passing by...

The Suici, er, Descent
There I was. Actually, that statement is definitively false, because I had no idea where I was in a geographic sense, but more of a local intuition. I was at the top of Suicide Hill. At a sporting 40 degree descent, this hill features a 8-inch gash running through the middle of the road until the bottom, where it crosses the left side of the division, forming a moat filled halfway up with rocks. The top half was empty space. After staring at this road for the span of 12 prayers to God to give me a sign whether I would survive the descent, I decided that signs are for wussies. But I waited an extra minute just in case, cause, y'know. DOWN I SPED, gripping the handlebars tighter than a fat kid defending a pastry. The wheels shook and grumbled, moaning for a sudden and violent release from their bicycle-frame prison, but the unruly rocks shattered them back into place with each new bump. Traveling at an estimated ten bagillion MPH (once again, official estimates vary, though consensus pegs it between 8 and 12 bagillion), I realized that the gash in the road had turned into a smirking mouth which was anticipating a delicious meal in the form of my entire front tire. In the most single daring moment of my life, I loosened my grip on the handlebars and hopped the voracious rock filled moat of doom only to land in a rocky road (not the ice cream, although that would've been nice) with the front tire swerving more erratically than a Batmobile with an entire birthday party inside. Forty feet later, the bike ground to a halt.

At this point, I decided to do something safer for the rest of the hour, like navigating through an active sawmill with logs rolling to and fro. And hour later, I went down suicide hill again, offering another baker's dozen of perfunctory prayers. After coming back to my host family's house and talking to Piotr Blazowski, who introduced me to that area, he told me he only goes down it with a helmet... when it doesn't rain.

.....................

According to the logbook (I never called it a diary) which I kept in Poland, this is how I introduced this entry: "I found out I can be declared clinically retarded today, and let me tell you why."

A Case Study in Absorbed Humor

I write this in the moments before the entire house collapses onto my head, I actually hear the groaning and creaking now. You see, everyone else in the three story building has fallen victim to my shovel-gunpowder-trampoline trap on the front stairs and is rather permanently incapacitated, I am afraid. On the plus side, the money and credit cards looted off of the slightly perforated bodies were put to good use growing an entire jungle and a half on the second and third floors of my house. Among palm trees, beach vistas, and masses of tropical birds and feral monkeys is a perpetual creek of water created with a superglue and styrofoam riverbank. I am afraid that the water has leaked out and leeched into the support structure of the entire house, rendering it similar to a large rectangular jello blob. Whenever I sneeze, I drop to the floor for fear of another wall socking me right in the jaw. Unfortunately, the feral monkeys have found the jello house rather appetizing and have been tucking in rather voraciously. The house will fall in moments.

Why was I able to google "jello house" and find something?

This is a passage loosely based on 27\6, an uproarious humour website featuring an Australian writer and designer who just loves being a butthead to everyone. I was demonstrating (mainly to myself) how easy it is to absorb humor from authors and works that you read. Some of my strongest influences? Bill Bryson, Cracked, Artemis Fowl, and now 27\6.

Era of Procrastination

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.--Charles Darwin

Anyone can tell you about procrastination. It is a universal conundrum, affecting drooling toddlers and drooling seniors alike, and striking down young high schoolers. It is the bane of all workers even slightly at risk to distractions... And like anything else universally affecting the entire human population, like a ludicrous love for peanut butter and ham waffles, procrastination can be broken down into a few different time frames...

A national dish of all 900 countries.

General Overview

Next time your parents try to convince you that sorting dominoes according to the number of dots on each side is less important than homework, try this: Ask them about their childhood and their own school procrastination. Chances are they'll tell you an interesting story and help you procrastinate at the same time; you just bought yourself some time to figure out how to arrange those two blocks with a 5-2 pattern on each side. Just don't glance at the domino box too often or they'll catch on. My mum recalled living across the street from the school, and as she went every morning her own mother would watch her... so my mum went in the front of the school and waltzed right out the back whenever she felt like it. But the point is, procrastination convinces you that an infinite number of things are more desirable than homework: smelling that stain on your ceiling, staring at dust floating in your room, even gazing slack-jawed at a pencil for three hours will suffice. But let me indulge you with a few slightly more specific and thoroughly incapacitating examples of procrastination that you're all too familiar with...

"Good habits start now!"

Sunday Night Blues

"Man, this was one great weekend. From Friday night hanging out behind 7-11 and getting yelled at by the Indian owner to Sunday afternoon having one-handed shoelace tying competitions with your friends, the excitement just kept on comin'!" Well, guess what, it's now Sunday night, 9:00, and it turns out your backpack hasn't even been opened. Hell, you can't bring yourself to recall where you put it. After an hour of digging  through layers of dirty clothes, food wrappers, and fruit husks, you successfully excavate your academic portmanteau and begin to peruse your papers. Time to get to work.

Three hours later, you wake up. Seriously, time to get to work... right after I check my email.

It's now 2:45am, and you're knee deep in three sentences of literary wisdom. The essay due needs to fill five pages. Single-spaced. Dude, just go to sleep at this point. Tell the teacher your backpack got buried in a landslide, it's basically the truth.

Except that's not homework. He's researching sandpit backpack removal techniques.

Day-Before Deadline

As you receive the assignment, you vow, "This time, it'll be done a WEEK before deadline. I swear, my work will overflow with grace, beauty, and education, and my teacher will deferentially bow before me for the rest of the year in awe of such a masterpiece."

This is what you said a month ago. You told yourself it would get done next week every weekend, and guess what, the deadline is tomorrow and the empty word doc is mocking you with a grin while it shakes its private parts at your auntie (Holy Grail ref). In other words, yep, you're screwed. Once again, the only option is to sit down and power through it... or you could go and raid the fridge for the ninth time today. Is there even a question which one you pick?

Too hungry to sleep. Too tired to eat. Still better than doing homework.

Period Before Class

Well, this time, the teacher assigned some asinine form of homework yesterday. But, once again, you had much better things to do after school like skipping rocks on the street and planking on top of moving cars dressed as a gorilla. When you got back home, between eating and eating, there was no time to pause your frenzied chewing and do 800 math problems. The next day, in school, you're too lazy to even copy the work. C'mon, even Ben copies his work in a timely manner, you lazy, poo-sniffing, no good yellabelly bum. But you have class next period, and it's now or never, buster... but your friends are playing cards, and they only do this the entire day, so it would be like a sin to miss out! At this point, just... just drop out of high school and become a Walmart greeter or something. But you'd probably suck at that, too.

A synopsis of the next five years of your life.

High School: The Way too Longest Yard

Back in 8th grade, our teachers would threaten us with tales of high school, telling us we were "unprepared" and "stop chewing your desk, they don't do that in high school," among other gems of advice. And in 8th grade, as the end of the year came faster than a rocket-powered cheetah, we hunkered down and prayed that somehow, our graduation would be delayed by that Jell-O factory across the street flooding our school, trapping us in blissful middle school-dom forever.

But not anymore. We're big boys and girls in high school. Much to the chagrin of any living thing that crosses the street once in awhile, many high school students can drive. We've taken our tests, finished our classes, did what we had to do... and the end of the year is still just a speck on the horizon. Why?

An adequate summation of how every high school senior feels

Midterms Loom Like Bucktoothed Giants

For some reason, college students have their finals in our third month of school, something which makes a startlingly small amount of sense to me. We, on the other hand, have midterms (spoiler alert) at the end of January. Besides a late-night cram session or two, midterms signify the academic middle of the year for us. These midterms will be the last where most teachers have taught at least 45%+ of the material actually on the midterm and some teachers literally just hand out old tests hastily stapled together... In other words, midterms remind us that we're nearly done with our school year. But even those are so far away...

Pictured: A recurring theme of all education

Senioritis Strikes Fast and Furiously. Jk, *struck

As seniors vie and plot towards the end of senior year, teachers haven't come to grips with the fact that senioritis is no longer an innocent flu strain or benign academic tumor; au contraire, it's a contagion and pandemic long come and gone that has shattered what little work ethic and discipline anyone might've had in high school. Some survivors have made it this far; some succumbed during a period of relative calm known as "Stage Freshmania," but noone will manage to retain their virility after midterms, when senioritis spreads faster than a fire in a gasoline and heating oil shop... that is to say, very quickly.

Welcome to senioritis.

Teachers Demand And Assign As if We Cared

It's not that we're not motivated... it's just that we don't really care anymore. With palm trees and college dorms glistening in the distance like beautiful, rapturing dewdrops, who can blame us? Teachers can. Many of us, persisting with what little of our work ethic has been spared from senioritis, have delved into a world of AP classes and all of the courses we previously weren't able to take because of our "inability to do algebra" or "lack of basic reading and writing skills," whatever those are supposed to mean. And so, our fine educators see fit to give us work, and boy, do they give us work. See my previous post on unruly teachers for more details on this one.

After Christmas break, every teacher starts acting like this.

The Destination Outshines the Road

Though that line reads much like the slovenly poetry of a disgruntled english major in college, it rings true nonetheless. We want high school to end, well, because every end is the beginning of another... beginning? What? Huh? That's definitely not how that quote goes... anyway, 99% of seniors plan on going to college. Applications, interviews, FAFSA, and 200,000$ of student debt... nevermind all of that. It's college, an impending era of independence and stupidity which holds a universal appeal to high schoolers. College: High school 3.0. If you want to party for a week straight with only a loincloth on, you can. If staying in your dorm room for an entire semester and avoiding sunlight altogether is your thing, go for it. Eating only microwaved ramen and peeing only in empty ramen containers floats your boat? Float on, 'cap. Only when we get there will we all realize that college will be nothing like the advertisements of smiling chicks and professors that have a sense of humanity about them. In fact, safe to say that college will be more hellish than high school: more work, less free time, more jerks, less home food, ad infinitum. 

entering college after high school:
also like this

But that's when we get there. Imagine seeing a beautiful island glistening in the sun far, far away and instinctively moving towards it as fast as humanly possible, only to realize you've hit the Pacific Garbage Rift once there. Welcome to College Introduction 101!

THOSE Teachers

Foiled : The Tragic Stories of 4 Teachers You Know

Y'know, I'm a nonconfrontational kind of guy. Authority figures and domineering teachers are totally cool with me, so long as they don't interfere with my lunchtime. Ms. Hoppersnap still hasn't recovered from giving me lunchtime detention. But you see, sometimes- sometimes, teachers aren't so simple and manageable as to be dealt with according to modern conventions of "sanity" and "social tact." Some teachers, simply put, exhibit similar traits to those of an infuriated honey badger with pens duct taped to it, yet strikingly less awesome. And you've had to fight him and put him down with nothing but a broken stapler and three Post-its.

RRghhhgrrgh. KILL. RGghgirrriri!

The Eternally Disorganized Teacher: Amateur Spelunker

    We've all been here. You proudly hand in your essay, head high and chest puffed out, after thrashing it out of your brain after an early-morning panic attack finishing it. The teacher, eyes glazed over and hair disheveled, tie leaning tiredly to one side, smiles weakly. "Oh.. an, ahem... essay..." Aforementioned educator then slumps over into a deep "meditation" session among caves of paper, mountains of reports, stapler fortresses, folder valleys, and somewhere deep in there- a dusty computer screen. Hopefully, the teacher wakes up and finds your essay. More often than not, 80%+ of the papers and assignments he/she receives will never see the light of day again, much like the teacher's computer and deodorant.

Damn. Where did I leave that keybo*mumblemumble..*

The Deadline Stickler  (all teachers now to be deferred to as males for expedited pronounage)

    High school students are busy, let's face it. Between procrastinating, parties, and pretending to play sports when the coach isn't watching, you're really all booked. But that doesn't matter to the deadline stickler. Oh, no. Lateness will NOT be tolerated, he says. I assigned this assignment in a timely manner (during the weekend) and I expect you guys to hold up your end of the sacrosanct high school homework social agreement and hand this assignment in a timely manner (two days after it was due; assignment is three essays). Once again, more often than not, the deadline stickler will finally give you back your tests and essays during graduation with all 90's- because there wasn't enough time to grade it. Well pooh-paah, looks as if I might not ever have enough time to do your homework again! (Just kidding, again implies I did some at one point.)

Just kidding, I'll move it up a week if you want!

The Homework-Bulldozer Hybrid

   Mr. Bull[dozer] has clearly never been a student. A permutation of the deadline stickler, Mr. Bull is worse for the fact that he does not even know which class he's teaching at any point in time. Usually, he will assign projects and presentations to students whilst in the process of trying to figure out whether he's a literature or physics teacher- all based on the assignments he gets back. Students do him no such courtesy, mixing all subjects in to throw him off the scent. As backlash, he sits at his desk brooding, and will call up a student.  "Bradley.."    "My name is Raj."   "Ah, yes, Richard."     "Raj."    "Okay there, student, I have some papers for this class in this stack of papers. Hand out 12 copies, three form types each, to your classmates.

They're near the top somewhere, Richard. See you next week.

The Lieutenant Captain of the SS Obvious

      In order to properly emphasize what a complete nincompoopy, tubby-gutted moron this kind of teacher is, an imaginary rank must be assigned to elevate him far above the average Captain Obvious. With a sporting IQ of 19 (takes an IQ of 8 to grunt), this teacher has no will to teach. He probably went to a community college, and hell, the only reason he's a teacher is because he's now eligible for discounted lunch at the cafeteria. Lt. Admiral Captain Obvious does not know a thing about his subject, though he might happen to remember which one he teaches. Instead of offering pithy insight and relevant information, Lt. Captain Lameface will regurgitate facts found in your textbook, occasionally muddling them yet still boring the pants off of everyone in class.

And then the Japanese submarines torpedoed, uh, Carl Columbus' caravel in... 18, hm, 33. Sounds good, students?

Luckily for myself, I've managed to avoid most of these toxic teachers of the years. Many of my past teachers have given me an academic edge through the things and methods they have taught me, though many a pair of pants have indeed been bored right off of me. Thanks to Amr Tawfik for helping me brainstorm a few of these.