College

Its early morning and just like any other school day you take a shower, brush your teeth, eat breakfast and watch your morning daily dose of sportscenter while you get dressed.  Another fun filled day of GenEd classes awaits you as you leave your house in complete misery. By this time the thought of not going and just staying home has crossed your mind at least three times, but you push on and proceed to drag yourself to a class that you have absolutely no desire in learning anything about.  Driving there you think to yourself of how much it’s going to suck to try and find a parking space.  All you can do is now hope and pray you’ll get lucky, and that your not late to this class for the 10^th time this semester. 

So after your normal daily commute you find yourself circling the parking lot yet again in order to find a good spot.  Then, in the distance, as a beam of light shines down from the heavens, you see someone getting into their car in the very front of the parking lot.  You race your car over there as to make sure you can pull in and sure enough SUCCESS! The space is yours.  “Maybe today isn’t going to be so bad after all.”

Walking to class you run into the girl you like and she waves and says hello.  You return the gesture, but continue on to class telling her you’d text her later cause your running a little late.  You arrive in class with a big smile, just as the bell rings and take your seat.  As you look around the room, all your friends appear to be rushing to get something finished.  You ask the kid next to you why, and it’s because that huge paper the teacher assigned a month ago is due today!

OH SHIT!!

That huge paper that was to be done on some famous painter is due today and you haven’t even started!  You start to get that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach.  Luckily you don’t have that class till later, but still don’t have any time to do it because you have three other classes until then.  So now in complete panic mode, you scrounge together your notes from that class and get as much information out of your friend as possible on what they wrote about in their paper.  Your “rough draft” is complete.

Your first class is now over and to be honest you don’t have a damn clue what the hell just happened in that class because all you were thinking about was the paper. You exit the room and are still as scared as you were when your friend reminded you of it.  You make the decision to skip your next class and head to the computer lab to do some serious research. As time flies by, it is now time for your third class of the day, but still not the one in which the paper is due.  Once again you choose to skip that class and keep at your work.  After about three hours in the computer lab you have a crude representation of a paper on C. M. Coolidge that you secure together with a fancy binder as to make it look as presentable as possible. 

The time finally comes for your last class and the paper is now due. As you enter the room the professor immediately asks for the homework to be placed on his desk. Walking towards the front of the room you get a glimpse of the other student’s work and to be honest, your just happy you got it done.  All you can do now is wait till the papers are graded and hope the teacher goes easy on you. 

A couple weeks later the professor informs the class that he has graded the papers and that he is overall impressed with everyone’s work.  Instantly you think to yourself that, hey, maybe I actually pulled this one off!  But just then, he continues to say that a few papers were an absolute catastrophe and he had a hard time believing a college student wrote it. “FUCK! There goes that.” So he hands out the papers and you’re to afraid to look so you immediately place you paper face down. That sick feeling in your stomach comes back and it’s now or never.  You flip over your paper and HOLY SHIT! B+ You did it!  You did what you had to do, made the right choices, got down to brass tax when shit needed to get done and you did it!

Moral of the story - All college kids know, or will come to find out, life is all about getting things done under pressure.  You may not always have the perfect tools or supplies on hand for the job. But you need to be able to make smart educated decisions on what is important, and be able to use the tools you have been presented with to accomplish your goals.

Oh yeah…and party your fucking ass off when shit like this happens causes it doesn't happen all the time but when it does, it feels great!

- Rooster