Undergrad Advice

I gather you're an English major? Context clues suggest you are.

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 14:04:32 -0500

No, I am not, if you can believe it. Guess if I’m a man or a woman!

vicemag: Girls and College - Girl News I don’t even have a...

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 20:05:26 -0400

Girls and College - Girl News

I don’t even have a sense of how to position college in the Girl Experience because a) I literally don’t remember it—not a single class, what I did, what I looked like, or what I learned—even though I have an honors degree in politics. (Quite aside from the really intense full-time graduate work I did in getting way fucking high, that is weird, right?) And b) college is very much like ‘family’ in that the meaningful corollaries of experience between girls that we can talk about here, while we chew gum and daisy-chain the wrappers, is just too bound up in so many other traditions, experiences, and standards that there’s less of a wayin to the whole, common thing of ‘THIS IS COLLEGE.’ We don’t even call it ‘college’ in Canada, even though it’s just as letterman jackets and sweatpantsy here, we call it ‘university,’ just like Daddy does. This necessitates a different Girl News approach than, say, blowjobs, because no matter your personal context, where you come from, whatever, a blowjob will always be a blowjob (unless, like, Norwegians do them really weird? WHOAH, DO YOU?), like, we all use our thumb-pads to deal with jizz spill-off. And c) because college no longer seems like a singular, mandated, teensploitation-ready experience of familiar tropes for whoever is in, like, the top three-quarters of the socioeconomic spectrum or got good grades in high school or gives even a tiny baby shit about doing what you’re supposed to do or has parents that make you go. Now college, like fucking everything, is less of an assumed rite of passage and more of an economic transaction colored by Sex Terror and debt and date rape (OK that’s pretty 90s, when we thought ‘college’ meant ‘date rape’ and ‘date rape’ didn’t mean ‘everywhere all the time’). Do you know what I mean? Not to dive into the nostalgics this early, but when I was little college meant something mythic and Skull and Bonesy and forever, where I’d wear certain things (brown Prada boots; navy blue tights; tweed skirts, button-downs; reasonable ponytails) and come out so much smarter, and now that I’m a degenerate grownie college seems, like, just an enormous Visa bill you accrued when you were drunk. Is it still even fun? Email me.

DRUGS

Let’s start here since I do have some kind of memory of tripping balls in downtown Toronto in the winter without a coat on, which would be consistent with the facts of my college experience, and hallucinating that the thin red strings in weed were floating out of the baggie and onto my eyeballs, criss-crossing their broad white plains in the mirror like lonely backroads. And what I do remember, synesthetically, about college, is being very wet and cold and dirty most of the time, which is why I will go for a brisk walk when someone so much as rolls a joint, because my sense memory starts to transmute into just being fucking freezing and uncomfortable and getting terrible grades and knowing so many things that I couldn’t bring myself to say because what if I didn’t know them in the right waaaaay? This is very frownyface.

ROOMMATES

I am just totally opposed to the idea of college roommates because surely having a stranger sleeping across a room from you when you are at what has to be the most vulnerable time in your whole life will undermine your personality forever because you can’t fucking even masturbate??? Y’alls should totally contact Human Rights Watch about this.

POWER

Power structures are wildly different in a college setting than in high school in that the most important girl is a little hedgehog from some shit town where she was Max Fisher But Worse. Ugh, and she’s always real smug and doesn’t know that she’s not cool, or that her coolness taps out at the top of the nerd pyramid? BUT DOESN’T CARE? Anyway the point is that professors are still not allowed to fuck you, but are a little bit more allowed than in high school, but you will be commensurately that much less interested. Wait, is sex in college boring?

CONTINUE

When I'm still in the library after a 12 hour adderall bender

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:48:26 -0400

whatshouldwecallme:

Ongoing Series: Majors that Suck

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:12:00 -0400

Law/Pre-Law/Legal Studies

If you ask someone what their major is, and they respond with one of the above, immediately drop your beer on the floor and grind your foot into the broken glass because THAT is way more fucking fun than listening to these insufferable cumshits blahblahblah about whatever “ambitions” they fucking have.

Most of these undergrads are just doing this because their Stepford mom wants something to brag about in the annual Christmas letter, but some of them actually think that an undergrad in Law will somehow prepare them for the LSAT, when really, just casually fucking a philosophy major a couple times a week is WAY better prep.

And even if you do end up with a 1937483758 score on the LSAT and get into Harvard Law or whatever, you really want to BE A FUCKING ATTORNEY? You know these people work 4000 hours a week (plus pro bono!) while their significant others get assfucked by Filipino pool boys and their kids grow up to be the worst fucking dogshit excuse for humans? GAH! What is wrong with you? Oh, you think bringing justice to the world is your fucking calling? Excuse me while I go find some more glass, this time to scrape out my eyes because they are getting sore from ROLLING SO HARD.

Don't get the cheesecake

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 13:28:54 -0400

I know it’s really fucking hard not to, little undergrad, when your pupils are bigger than your stomach at that glorious little 24 hour diner that seems to glow like the Annunciation of the Virgin, but don’t do it. After you’ve devoured five orders of poutine and pancakes and zucchini sticks and you’re clawing the greasy papers for remnants of cheese and gravy, you will think you want to eat more, but getting the cheesecake will only make it fucking impossible to throw up later (cheesecake coats your disgusting, disease-laden throat) or you will be even more constipated tomorrow (too much diary/heroin).

Vodka Tap Water

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:45:49 -0400

This will become your new favourite drink, especially after you blew that tuition check Mommy sent you at the casino during frosh week and all of your savings from that shitty job pulling weeds and killing baby racoons at the City of Buttfuck dry up into $30 to last you the next 5 semesters.

In first semester of first year, you will be classy and use an empty beer bottle that you found under your dorm room bed (remember to wash out those cigarette butts) to mix, but REAL undergrads just fucking skip the glass part. Just pour some of that rubbing alcohol/nail polish remover liquid straight from the plastic bottle into your mouth, then turn on the tap, slurp and swallow (no dishes!). And don’t worry if you’ve done 5 of these and the ‘shrooms you took 20 minutes ago are making your tummy hurt, because the sink is right there!

ADDITIONAL GUIDANCE: When you have exactly $24.25 in your pocket and you’re at the liquor store, fucking skip on the beer/wine/whatever, and ALWAYS go for the two-six of vodka, because basic fucking arithmetic is higher % = + fun for - $. Now count out those pennies with pride and stop being a fucking pussy already!

Visit your friends

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 19:26:40 -0400

The reoccurring role of “visiting friend” is one of the best fucking decisions a wee undergrad such as yourself can assume. There are NO RULES for the “visiting friend”. None. You’ll get introduced to your friend’s friends, then drink 30 of their beers and swallow whatever pills you find on the floor (or at least the ones that don’t stick to the carpet), fall off their balcony (bushes will break your fall, the undergrad gods are looking out for you), smash a couple windows, wake up next to their girlfriend and peace the fuck out, with no consequences whatsoever (except for bruises and that vaginal discharge taste in your mouth that you can’t brush out for the bus ride home).

When I give advice to undergrads

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 10:41:47 -0400

whatshouldwecallme:

Ongoing Series: Majors that Suck

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 09:32:00 -0400

Engineering

I have dyscalculia, which is a made up learning disability for kids who go into Arts, but these fucks are the worst. Mostly arrogant pricks who have loud conversations about (imaginary) vaginas they (didn’t) stick their (limp) dicks into and have the most abhorrent frosh week orientation, thank god half of these losers drop out by second year. By fourth year, there are so few left they just blend into the regular imbeciles in undergrad, so don’t fret, little first year, it gets better.

Don’t Be Obnoxious on the Bus (or Why Bus Drivers should make a $1000/hour for driving the route that goes to a university)

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 16:05:00 -0400

Undergrad bros/ditzos exhibit the most infuriatingly appalling behavior on public transit, probably due to being worthless fartsacks with their parents’ credit cards. It’s really fucking fabulous that you were homeschooled/raised in a moldy, dank cave covered in your own urine and missed that whole acclimatizing to being around other human beings thing (I can find no other explanation?), but can you just ride a fucking bike*/walk/give roadhead if you insist on proclaiming how many cuntbitches you banged/fought with at some god-awful fratbash while you talk over two seats of people who are just trying to get the fuck home before they rip their veins out with their teeth? And who the FUCK is having sex with these misogynistic, insipid, infected pustules of dicks? Is it you, girls-with-daddy-issues? STOP DOING THAT!

You could herd a motherfucking cow with Asperger’s onto the bus and it would be like “maybe I should stop eating my own afterbirth, shut the fuck up and listen to my Ipod until my stop”. How are you not picking up on the overwhelmingly simple social codes here?

*Please fucking forget the helmet, nobody wants any chance you’ll survive if some suburban mom in her spawntank runs a red while looking for that Mariah Carey cd to sing along to on the commute

Ongoing Series: Majors that Suck

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 09:50:19 -0400

Journalism

UGH. Everyone who falls into this cesspool of a major turns into a giant colonoscopy bag of bullshit after the first fucking day of orientation. Marked by their incessant need to talk about “J-school” (Who started this? No other wretched morons refer to “first letter of discipline” + “school”), hanging out with these fuckwads always (1000% of the time) results in a “Did you read [insert NYT/Washington Post/Slate article title here]?” contest and everyone gathering around the Associated Press website, refreshing it, desperately eye-clawing it for something no one else has read yet.

If you have to constantly (PAINFULLY) be intravenously connected to an electronic device with a newsfeed for something to talk about or to define your worthless and boring abscess of a life, journalism will probably be your thing.

ADDITIONAL GUIDANCE: One of the most fun/debasing things to do in undergrad/to another human being is get paid to write something when you are not in journalism, and then tell a journalism student about it. They will probably try and tell you about something THEY got paid to write that was like a WAY BIGGER DEAL, but if you look close enough, a little piece of their souls/hopes/dreams dies in their eyes and know that later they will masturbate while crying to PLEASE GOD JUST MAKE IT GO AWAY.

*Extra points if you notice little patches of hair missing from their scalp next time you see them, that means they are on the brink of an existential breakdown because they can’t handle anyone else writing anything ever!

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Okay, I guess I was a little harsh on this one, particularly because most of these starry-eyed morons end up writing press releases for evangelical Christian novelists at 0-10 (usually 0) cents an hour while the rest of their life liquefies around them into a sad dumpster porridge. Same goes for you, Communications! And don’t think I’m not looking at you, Media Studies- in fact, your life already IS dumpster porridge, you don’t even have to wait!

Don't talk/snap your gum/listen to music without headphones in the library

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 14:40:00 -0400

There is a special position in hell of getting ass-raped with pinecones while having Hitler suck you off and Joseph Stalin and Osama Bin Laden ram both their thick, hairy cocks down your throat for eternity if you do this, PARTICULARLY DURING FINALS.

Get a (really) shitty job

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 11:00:30 -0400

Again, undergrad is really the last chance you get to have a shitty job with no one thinking you’re a poor, so make sure that you maximize this while you can. Remember, “this shitty job” will be the rest of your life, but the key is holding onto just enough entitlement to think “it’s just while I’m a student”. The perks are that you make $100/week for those drugs/horrible decisions you need to be doing/making.

How do you know if your job is shitty enough for a well-rounded undergrad experience?

Make sure it includes one of the following:

Folding clothing for obnoxious and irritating douchebaguettes to throw on the ground while they are “just looking”
Pouring rich misogynistic fucks champagne while they talk about “social media strategies” or “box tickets to the big game” or whatever else these MBA fucktards think about in between slopping up the dribble from each other’s chins and wearing button up shirts with $600 shoes (while they tip 10%)
Pouring rude hipster dads organic frothy juniper sap with kombucha while their stupid Montessori kids with non-gender-normative names and even dumber spellings (Maysen-Dixxonn! For a girl! Ongellika! For a boy!) scrawl on the tables with soy crayons
Being yelled at, ideally enough to make you cry once or twice in the bathroom
A cash register with buttons that stick/a debit/card machine that uses dial-up from 1995/manual UPC code entry (EXTRA POINTS: This one will make you be nicer to everyone at every store you buy shit at ever!)

Ongoing Series: Majors that Suck

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 14:04:41 -0400

Art History

Seriously? You want to spend 4 years having to give a shit about color and form and the artists’ use of his own dick cheese to express some “relevant” emotion he had after he fucked Dora Maar? Most of art history is just fucking figuring out that 3 year olds who shit their pants in Sunday School are better at understanding “art” than everyone else, but they don’t have millions of dollars to launder, so they market it to morons who will nod and cum at the mention of made-up Italian words like chiaroscuro, disegno and sfumato (MORE LIKE STFU-MATO, amiright?).

ADDITIONAL GUIDANCE: If for some god-forsaken reason you decide to major in this pathetic excuse for a discipline, just make sure you talk about vaginas in every paper and you will get an A.

Energy drinks are key

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 13:40:00 -0400

Synthetic taurine and caffeine pumped to saturation into a slurry liquid that tastes like a gummy bear abortion is disgusting, but if you don’t throw down $4 for these every once and awhile (read: 5-10 times a semester), you will fall asleep half-way through venus butterflying Feminist Theory and you will never get to lick the sweet juice of satisfaction off your revolting, shameless chin or reach intellectual climax. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a patronizing, delusional vegan* or a B- idiot who q-tips their colon after every shit they take.

I can’t advocate for the fucking atrocious marketing surrounding these shitstains for brands. Monster? Rockstar? Who the fuck comes up with these? I can only assume their “marketing strategies” come after the server at the bar showing UFC slips douchecunt poison into their beers or the syphilis from strippers goes untreated. Ignore this, or go with classic, streamlined Red Bull for the time being, because despite the horrid fonts used otherwise only for frat boy tattoos, this liquid has been bestowed to undergrads from the gods of modern science. Suckle from that sacred teet!

Like most drugs and having a lot of sex, energy drinks are okay in undergrad, but you really have to chill the fuck out after you graduate, because relying on “natural energy juice products” (read: chemicals that pregnant women can’t drink because their fetuses will explode) is fucking juvenile. Embrace it while you can, but sail that shit down the river as soon as you pick up that envelope with a $40,000 degree inside.

*more about these insufferable sacks of tempeh dysentery later!

Go to a fucking conference

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 23:10:59 -0400

Conferences are to academics what dirty bathhouses with off-white tiles run by Portugese men are to your least favourite uncle (and with the same amount of fisting!)

When you’re an undergrad, volunteer at these, which means you get to pick the pubic hairs out of the cheese platters and throw an extra bottle of wine into your backpack when no one is looking. Sometimes you have to handout name tags, but most of the time it’s just being in the same room with a whole bunch of people who can’t wait to jack each other off with “innovate new research” and “collaborative theory” or whatever else those articles talked about in the methodology class you showed up drunk to all the time because it was on Thursday mornings*.

Also, you might even end up going for drinks with grad students/profs afterwards to “thank you for all your help”. If you are really lucky, you get to wake up in a weird hotel room the next morning with only a vague memory of Foucault’s asshole and a strange smell on your fingers before grabbing your pants and asking the concierge where the nearest bus stop is.

*ADDITIONAL GUIDANCE: Wednesdays are fun to go out because drinks are cheaper and there are fewer (or even no) girls with daddy issues wearing scraps of silk/mesh/plastic over their nubile tits to puke on you! They usually save breaking up with their boyfriends and having fights with Ashley (for. like. the. billionth. time.) for Saturdays!

These are perfect, please make more.

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 22:14:00 -0400

Jeez, bro, give me a minute to crush up some more ritalin and disdain for humanity, already!

Don't get a fucking pet

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 01:42:00 -0400

Getting a pet is the cruelest fucking thing an undergrad can do. If you’re doing it right, you will barely be able to clean your own shit off your shoes, much less an adorable little fluff monster’s.

We get it, they’re cute and you miss the unconditional love (since your roommate is a total cunt and locks you out of the bathroom sometimes and doesn’t even share when she orders pizza, SOB!) but undergrad is not the time to be responsible for anything other than showering once a week, showing up to class no more than 25 minutes late and knowing when to fucking call it a night.

Don’t get a fish or a rabbit or a cat or a dog or whatever animal Petsmart throws in the discount bin before grinding them up into petfood (#circleoflife). If you get any of these in undergrad, you are selfish shitbag, because you will inevitably neglect it (don’t give me that “mature for your age” bullshit) because you are an UNDERGRAD and your priorities should be in finding the cheapest place to get pitchers of beer or how to block out the sounds of your cunty roommate getting fingerbanged while you pretend to sleep.

Who is going to feed your hamster when you get alcohol poisoning from drinking in your rich friend’s stepmom’s hot tub on spring break? Where are you going to get money for a fucking poodle groomer when you spent it all on that dumb cab ride where you passed out and the cab driver got lost? WHO IS GOING TO GIVE MR. SKITTLES HIS DIABETES SHOTS WHEN YOU DECIDE TO TRY KETAMINE FOR THE FIRST TIME AND WAKE UP THREE DAYS LATER?

Leave pets for lesbians and infertile couples to treat as children!

Start Smoking

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 00:06:13 -0400

There is a really fucking small window of opportunity to start smoking, and you’ve basically wasted half of it if you have graduated from high school without “sucking down darts” as hicks and gross bros say.

Smoking is awesome because it gives you something to do in those tiny 10 minute breaks in between lectures, and if you are really lucky and forget your lighter, you even get to interrupt the group of Arabic guys with olive oil in their hair to ask for one (remember what I said about having lots of sex?).

Smoking is also a really good way to get rid of those pesky $10 bills floating at the bottom of your pocket after you do too much E and see a gas station (don’t forget the gum!).

With all of the other shit you should be putting into the holes in your body as a red-blooded undergrad, the itty bitty filtered tobacco is really the least of your fucking problems. Chronic bronchitis gives you a mysterious cough that EVERYONE will be wondering about (more sex!).

Also, it helps combat all the weight gain that all your loser friends from high school will get because of “the emotional transition” to university (re:because their moms don’t change their tampons for them anymore). Going home for Thanksgiving is WAY easier when you don’t have to worry about counting calories (you’ll smoke them off later!)

Always carry cash

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 22:53:13 -0400

If you are going to do this undergrad thing, make sure you always carry cash, like $20 at least, at all fucking times. “Why would I need to carry such an archaic form of currency when my mom pays my credit card every month?” you ask.

Well, drug dealers don’t take plastic, and neither do bake sales, fuckface. DUH!