College
Monday, August 26, 2002
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Let me tell you the best-kept secret about college. It's easy. The two hardest things I did in college were, in order of difficulty, 1. Beat Tony Hawk Pro Skater on the PlayStation and 2. Explain to a very nice guy named Mike DiTullio how and why
I came to urinate on his mattress. Reading Ulysses barely even cracks my Top 10.
I don't mean to imply that life in college is easy--it's not. But the classes themselves are pretty easy, whether you're at U of C or Depaul or the Devry Institute. My girlfriend, for instance, graduated summa cum laude from the renowned Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, and the other day she called me to ask whether Yemen was in Asia or Africa. I didn't know either. If you can graduate, as we both did, from prestigious institutions of higher learning without knowing your continents, you can rest assured that college is not particularly arduous.
Because college is so easy, a lot of students go four years without learning or doing anything worthwhile. This is a mistake, because six months after you graduate, when you're living in an overpriced studio contemplating the idea of nighttime telemarketing to supplement your temping income so you can afford your college loan payments, you'll need an excellent answer to the question, "Why the hell did I go to college anyway?" I've collected a brief lists of do's and don't's for college life in Chicago to ensure that our current and future students won't be left with regrets the size of their student loans.
DO: Take classes in liberal arts departments, like anthropology and history. Not only will these classes give you invaluable knowledge about such confounding questions as the geographic location of Yemen, they will also make you seem smart at parties and job interviews. Seeming smart is much, much more important than being smart.
DON'T: Take science classes, unless for some strange reason you aspire to become a scientist. For one thing, science classes are hard. For another, science is always being reinvented, which means that everything you learn could become suddenly obsolete. Just think of those poor saps who got their degrees in biology just before Watson and Crick figured out the structure of DNA.
DO: Study some. College is the last chance you'll have to spend entire days reading good books, and anyway, it's a lot easier if you do your homework. I'm not saying stay up all night popping no-doz and drinking seventeen pots of coffee. I'm just saying that if nothing's going on some afternoon, you might as well read Kant.
DON'T: Turn down the opportunity to do something absolutely amazing because you need to study. My sophomore year, I passed on a chance to go to a casino in Indiana because I had a big test, and you know what happened? One of my friends won ten thousand dollars at the slots, got drunk, and gave each of his cohorts a thousand dollars. I did fine on that religion test, but I would have gladly failed it for a thousand bucks.
DO: Things you can't do anywhere else. If you want to really live in this city and not just study here, you'll need to find something that makes you uniquely enamored with Chicago. For my friend Dean, it's eating hot dogs with only mustard while loudly complaining that people who eat their hot dogs with ketchup are communists. For me, it's sitting on the corner of Huron and Wabash on windy winter afternoons and watching gusts of winds knock over pedestrians. Even if you grew up in Chicago, you'll need to make college a second home. Finding a distinctively Chicago interest will ease that transition.
DON'T: Start acting like you're suddenly sophisticated now that you're in the big city with its jazz festivals and ballet troupes. Chicago's greatest asset as a city is its midwestern humility, its willingness to acknowledge its place as America's second city. Take a lesson from the town and accept that you're exactly as cool and smart as you were back home in Iowa or where ever.
DO: Go on zany adventures you'll never be able to do as an actual grown-up, like for example driving 6000 miles to work in an ice cream shop in Moose Pass, Alaska for a summer even though you could have stayed here and interned at the Trib. But . . .
Don't: For instance, drive to Moose Pass, Alaska with a girl you've been dating for two weeks and who will soon dump you for a balding 33-year-old divorcee named Clarence. Just an example.
And finally, DO: Take a moment as you're driving down Halsted at four in the morning on a Tuesday with five of your best friends piled into the back seat to realize your tremendous good fortune to be young, bright, and free to skip your morning classes.
But for the love of everything holy DON'T: Buy into all that talk about how college is supposed to be the best years of your life. College is like any other phase of your life - except much, much easier.
Let me tell you the best-kept secret about college. It's easy. The two hardest things I did in college were, in order of difficulty, 1. Beat Tony Hawk Pro Skater on the PlayStation and 2. Explain to a very nice guy named Mike DiTullio how and why
I came to urinate on his mattress. Reading Ulysses barely even cracks my Top 10.
I don't mean to imply that life in college is easy--it's not. But the classes themselves are pretty easy, whether you're at U of C or Depaul or the Devry Institute. My girlfriend, for instance, graduated summa cum laude from the renowned Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, and the other day she called me to ask whether Yemen was in Asia or Africa. I didn't know either. If you can graduate, as we both did, from prestigious institutions of higher learning without knowing your continents, you can rest assured that college is not particularly arduous.
Because college is so easy, a lot of students go four years without learning or doing anything worthwhile. This is a mistake, because six months after you graduate, when you're living in an overpriced studio contemplating the idea of nighttime telemarketing to supplement your temping income so you can afford your college loan payments, you'll need an excellent answer to the question, "Why the hell did I go to college anyway?" I've collected a brief lists of do's and don't's for college life in Chicago to ensure that our current and future students won't be left with regrets the size of their student loans.
DO: Take classes in liberal arts departments, like anthropology and history. Not only will these classes give you invaluable knowledge about such confounding questions as the geographic location of Yemen, they will also make you seem smart at parties and job interviews. Seeming smart is much, much more important than being smart.
DON'T: Take science classes, unless for some strange reason you aspire to become a scientist. For one thing, science classes are hard. For another, science is always being reinvented, which means that everything you learn could become suddenly obsolete. Just think of those poor saps who got their degrees in biology just before Watson and Crick figured out the structure of DNA.
DO: Study some. College is the last chance you'll have to spend entire days reading good books, and anyway, it's a lot easier if you do your homework. I'm not saying stay up all night popping no-doz and drinking seventeen pots of coffee. I'm just saying that if nothing's going on some afternoon, you might as well read Kant.
DON'T: Turn down the opportunity to do something absolutely amazing because you need to study. My sophomore year, I passed on a chance to go to a casino in Indiana because I had a big test, and you know what happened? One of my friends won ten thousand dollars at the slots, got drunk, and gave each of his cohorts a thousand dollars. I did fine on that religion test, but I would have gladly failed it for a thousand bucks.
DO: Things you can't do anywhere else. If you want to really live in this city and not just study here, you'll need to find something that makes you uniquely enamored with Chicago. For my friend Dean, it's eating hot dogs with only mustard while loudly complaining that people who eat their hot dogs with ketchup are communists. For me, it's sitting on the corner of Huron and Wabash on windy winter afternoons and watching gusts of winds knock over pedestrians. Even if you grew up in Chicago, you'll need to make college a second home. Finding a distinctively Chicago interest will ease that transition.
DON'T: Start acting like you're suddenly sophisticated now that you're in the big city with its jazz festivals and ballet troupes. Chicago's greatest asset as a city is its midwestern humility, its willingness to acknowledge its place as America's second city. Take a lesson from the town and accept that you're exactly as cool and smart as you were back home in Iowa or where ever.
DO: Go on zany adventures you'll never be able to do as an actual grown-up, like for example driving 6000 miles to work in an ice cream shop in Moose Pass, Alaska for a summer even though you could have stayed here and interned at the Trib. But . . .
Don't: For instance, drive to Moose Pass, Alaska with a girl you've been dating for two weeks and who will soon dump you for a balding 33-year-old divorcee named Clarence. Just an example.
And finally, DO: Take a moment as you're driving down Halsted at four in the morning on a Tuesday with five of your best friends piled into the back seat to realize your tremendous good fortune to be young, bright, and free to skip your morning classes.
But for the love of everything holy DON'T: Buy into all that talk about how college is supposed to be the best years of your life. College is like any other phase of your life - except much, much easier.
