The Real College Experience

Movies lie about school, I remember my first day at College I was bright eyed and thought that it would answer all of my problems. No. Not even close. It created more problems. College parties? Never been to one, no one even hosted parties anymore. Frats and Sororities? Those people actually do work. I worked at the school newspaper for awhile and I volunteered to cover the one Sorority and I thought “maybe I’ll catch some of that “college action” that Hollywood is talking about.” I went to the sorority meetings for three months and it was all volunteer work and investments and homework and becoming product testers. I actually fell asleep at one meeting and when I woke up I had my jacket over my body and someone had rolled up one of their sweaters that they sold and put it under my head. I went to the library once and no one was making out, they were studying. One guy was crying but he pulled himself together, it was midterms week and we all got a little cuckoo. I saw one kid take off his flip flops and run down a coffee cart that was closing up. I was in an astronomy class and one guy brought in a hot plate and made bacon. The professor was going through a presentation and all of a sudden you heard “ssssssssssssss” and it was stadium seating and we all looked to the nosebleed row and there was this little billow of smoke that went in front of the projector light. My professor was like “is there a fire?” And there was this little voice in the back that said “.....it’s controlled” and the professor just bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose and said “fuck it, class dismissed” and walked out.

Nothing prepared me for college, NOTHING. In high school all our teachers were like:

“No eating in class! You will get thrown out if you do that in college”

“No late work! You’ll get kicked out if you do that in college”

“No gum!”

I cannot tell you how many professors cancelled class at the last minute just because they were hungover. On the first day of one of my animation classes, the teacher walked in and said “I live in LA and there will be days where I will not wanna make that drive.”

During a final in my history class, one guy took out a jar of peanut butter and started eating it. The teacher tried to tell him that maybe it wasn’t the best time to do that and he held up the jar and said “I tore off the label, there’s nothing inside, I’m just hungry” and the professor was like “just keep slurping to a minimum”.

I had one professor for my economics class, oh I hated her. She would go on and on and on about her son for the whole class. He would email her every day at like 10 am which is when our class would start and she would read it out loud and then talk about him. We would ask questions about economics “what are trickle down economics? What’s the definition? How to you create an economy strategy?” But she would be like “we’ll get to that in a minute don’t be rude, so my son just met a very nice Jewish girl named Miranda.”

So, before one test she decided to have a light review. She started to go over things and we were like “THATS what macroeconomic means?” She was frustrated but handed out the test anyway. We all sat there for a minute just staring at the paper. I remember thinking “...fuck…why the fuck is “goose” one of the answer options?” I did not remember reading that in the book. She slammed her hands on her desk so hard her coffee cup fell off the desk. Then she yelled “GET OUT!” I was out the door before I even realized I had moved out of my seat and I didn’t stop till I was at my car. I started to think maybe she didn’t know anything about economics because she was always so desperate to go to any other topic.

I walked into class one day and I had a bandage wrapped around my forearm because I fell the day before and I had pretty nasty scratches. She zoomed in on me and said “what happened to you?” And I, the passive aggressive smart ass with resting bitch face, was totally prepared for the questioning I knew was coming. I kept saying I didn’t wanna talk about it but she kept pushing so finally I caved.

“You really wanna know what happened?” I leaned back in my chair and rolled my eyes.

“Ugh yes I need to know” She stood in front of my, with her little arms crossed and her foot tapping impatiently on the gray linolium.

“Okay," I began my completely made up story. "So I was at the zoo and this lion was looking at me. And he was looking at me like 'pfft little bitch' and I said 'what’s you say to me lion?' And he was like 'did I stutter? Bitch.' So I jumped into the enclosure and he got a good scratch on me but he definitely looks worse than I do.”

A couple people in class were giggling, so that felt good but she was glaring at me like I had just spit on her grandchild.

“That’s NOT what happened.” She shifted to her other leg and sighed. "Tell me the truth."

“Were you there?” I asked. She’s like stop lying so I said

“Okay okay, the truth is while I was swimming in the ocean this shark comes up and gives me this look like 'pfft little bitch' and before I could confirm with him what he said I punched him in the face and he swam away.”

“You tell me the truth young lady!” She’s getting mad at this point. She's turning red and staring at me like a pissed off chipmunk.

“That is the truth! I straight up punched a shark and LIVED!” The people around me are dying of laughter. She, the professor, is turning red and for once I was actually enjoying this class.

“For the last time, what happened to you?” She put her hands on my desk and tried to stare into my soul. Little did she know, my soul had been sold long ago for a full set of lingerie from Victoria's Secret.

And I leaned back and thought about it for a minute and said

“Okay, you got me.” And she relaxed for a minute. “I don’t know. I got drunk and when I woke up I had a bandage on my arm.”

She was so pissed off by that answer that she grabbed her stuff and walked out. The girl next to me leaned over and asked me what actually happened.

“I tried to ride a skateboard at Target and I fell into a wire rack.”

While, I can say with absolute confidence that College is totally different from movies, you can derive just as much pleasure from driving a professor insane.