Imagine you
did not party the weekend before finals week. Imagine you did not drink it up
to every time your professor made you fall asleep. Imagine for just a few
moments that you are a good student. You are fully prepared for the two hours
that are cumulative of a whole semester’s worth of reading, and memorizing
flashcards. Coffee is a vice of yours to have in the morning, and not something
you drink so the imaginary midget is keeping your eyes pried open with a
crowbar late into the hours of night all the way through the morning. In this
world, you are an academic God. Offerings of alcohol and illegal smokables do
not affect you. Your pocket protector is as fashionable as the tape keeping
your glass frames together. A rainbow of colored post-its has your book marked
from cover to cover. You”¦are”¦a NERD.
You do not
even bother to wonder what else can go wrong as you stroll into the basement of
Breslin Hall, a dungeon for learning that robs all the popular kids from time
they can spend ignoring the professor by texting friends about last night. When
you have no friends, the knowledge of knowing that others do not bother with
studying and “will die a fiery death”* is your best man at your future wedding
with a woman is a combo of Catwoman and Marie Curie. This is the moment. This
is the moment you have seen and will see several times again to ace another
final, and receive a commendation from the office of the President: Stuart
Rabbi-Jewstein.
You sit with your fellow classmates in the
class for a record fifteen minutes without the prestigious professor insight
when a public safety officer walks in to announce the death of your professor.
Unfortunately, the FBI, showed up to bust his home at 8 AM the morning of the
test (while you were innocently reorganizing your toenail clippings) for
cocaine trafficking. In turn there was a shootout between your professor and
the agents. After successfully killing two of them, his partially-deaf wife,
was shot and killed instantly when she was cooking breakfast by a bullet that
ricocheted off the toaster. When asked after the incident, it was reported the
toast was whole wheat. After a recorded three misfires, the professor killed
himself at the sight of his wife’s dead body. The public safety officer then
told the class his final words were: “Cancel the final.”
Everyone casually
got up to leave as if the P-safe officer just told the class to “go away”, you
sit there stupid-ified that all the people, burnt out and hung over, got away
with it. Everyone will get the credits added to the DAR and not a single thing
they did for the class will affect their GPA. All you did was for NOTHING,
because you are FUCKING NERD!!!
Your cell
phone alarms and you realize it was all a dream. The sweatshirt you’ve been wearing
smells like your high school football gear after two weeks without washing. Your
eyes are as red as a ginger at the beach that lost his sunscreen (yes, personal
experience.) Consider yourself fortunate that the midget woke up from his power
nap first to re-pry open those eyes of yours. The black coffee burns as it hits
the back of your throat. The blank Word document stares back in your face as
you rake through all the books from the library. Like finding some hay in a
needle stack, every stroke of the page causes more and more pain. You are lost
and confused on why the September version of yourself would screw over December
you by deciding it’d be a fun experiment to not do any work until the thoughts
of flunking and working on your Great Uncle Rudy’s farm fifty miles out of
Wichita begin to creep in.
You curse
your professor this week. Whatever he or shay may do, however much they smile,
or talk about the good tidings of Christmas, Hanukkah, or even that
African-American holiday first celebrated circa 1966 because it’s their way of
saying: “Down with the white man!” And as your professor goes off on a tangent
about how Bing Crosby was talking about snow, not race, when he dreamt of a white Christmas. Annoyed, aggravated,
and tired, your brain begins to plot how to plant cocaine on your professor and
have one last chance out of your misery dialing the FBI hotline.
Good luck with
finals!
*Robot Unicorn Attack, anyone?
