Wednesday, May 13, 1998
The hidden lessons of lecture
EDUCATION: Underclassmen need to learn procrastination skills,
help slacking seniors pass GE classes
Some of you out there may be wondering how I ever decided to
become a Viewpoint columnist. (OK, technically you’re wondering how
anybody could ever allow me to become a columnist, but why split
hairs?)
It may surprise many of you to know that it has nothing to do
with leaving my permanent mark on the literary scene, reclaiming
affirmative action or advancing my own religious beliefs. No, my
goals are much more lofty – I want to give UCLA students something
to do during lecture. I write my column so that, at the end of a
long day when you’ve let your guard down, you won’t accidentally
start to learn something from a fascinating lecture detailing Edgar
Allen Poe’s subtle-if-overstated use-of-the-hyphen.
However, some of you are probably still afraid that you might
miss something important if you read during lecture. In order to
rid you of this fear, this column will give away some of the most
important lessons I’ve learned in my four years here. You see,
although I’ve tried to avoid lectures, a lot of lessons can be
learned by attending them. After four years here, a few of them
must have popped into my brain, presumably by osmosis (a scientific
term meaning the gradual decay of the skeletal system in
women).
One of the most important things I learned was the roles of the
different classes within the university.
The main job of the freshman class at UCLA is to enroll in
general education (GE) classes and never study for them, thus
allowing seniors like myself to pass the class with minimum effort.
Please don’t think that we seniors are slacking off or not pulling
our own weight, because nothing could be further from the truth.
Seniors simply have a different role. As seniors, it is our duty
(and we take this very seriously) to frequent different
alcohol-serving locales in Westwood, thus ensuring that when the
current class of freshmen becomes seniors, these establishments
will still be available.
It is the duty of the sophomore class to hit the books and make
up for the bad grades they obtained while fulfilling their freshman
goals. The junior class has a duty similar to that of the sophomore
class – namely, studying hard. The difference is, juniors are
studying hard so they can afford to become binge drinkers when
their senior year rolls around.
I know that some of you freshman have a hard time pulling
yourselves away from your books. So, free of charge, I’m offering a
small list of distractions which should help you fulfill your duty
to fail GE classes.
1. The opposite sex (or the same sex, if you’re so inclined).
Few things are as distracting as a long-term relationship,
especially if you have an obsessive need to study.
2. Video games. This includes the arcades, personal computers,
your Nintendo – you name it. This is a very popular distraction
among socially challenged freshmen.
3. A job. If you feel the need to throw all your free time into
a useless activity but can’t get a steady date, you can become the
best cashier the Cooperage has ever seen.
4. Fraternities/sororities/alcohol. This is probably the best
option, because it takes up so much of your time. My freshman year
roommate pledged a fraternity during spring quarter. Not only did
he have weekly meetings and pledge activities, one night he came
home so drunk that he used one of my neighbor’s doors as a urinal.
While this is rarely considered an intelligent move, he made it
worse by leaning on the door (which wasn’t closed all the way) and
falling into the room with his pants around his ankles, thus waking
up its inhabitants. This garnered him generous hours of community
service, which is another great way to avoid studying for those
pesky GEs.
This list is by no means comprehensive; feel free to invent your
own ways of flunking GEs (but do it quickly; I have two this
quarter).
Of course, I’ve learned about a lot more than class duties in
lecture. I’ve also learned that if you want to meet women, you
shouldn’t be a physics student.
They don’t tell you these things at first; they only told me
about the amazing opportunities which were now available to me as a
physics student. I didn’t listen too carefully, however, because I
didn’t (and still don’t) care if I can use the physics library,
work on physics computers in the physics computer lab, or even take
a physics dump in the physics bathroom. The only physics "perk" I
enjoy is the physics elevator in Knudsen (which is technically open
to all students). That twisted device accelerates so fast, you
would think it was attempting to get into orbit. When it finally
reaches its destination (usually the third floor), its inhabitants
get the same disoriented sensation they would get if they had just
ridden a roller coaster 12 times in a row. It’s always fun to watch
uninitiated people stumble out of the elevator in a nauseating
stupor, attempting to steer their unresponsive bodies away from
doors, walls and laughing physicists. However, elevator coolness is
probably not the best criteria to judge a major.
But back to my point. The physics advisor, out of fairness,
should have at least mentioned what I would be missing. Because, as
all you physical scientists know, it is nearly impossible to meet
women in your classes.
I know this isn’t a surprise to most of you out there, but I
also know there are at least a handful of physical science students
who, when they enroll in their classes, actually try to figure out
whether there will be more women in the 9 a.m. electrical
engineering or in that mechanics class at 10. These students are
convinced that they’ve made the wrong choice each previous quarter,
but are hopeful that come first week, they will find the hidden
lecture hall that is filled with beautiful, half-naked supermodels
anxious to learn more about Newton’s three laws. (To review,
Newton’s laws are: 1. Never fall asleep under an apple tree. 2.
Time is always relative; an hour in a physics lecture is roughly
equivalent to 115 hours of a more enjoyable activity, such as
torture. 3. It is acceptable to take a test where the highest grade
is under 40 percent, but still much better than any other
score.)
Whenever you finally begin taking upper division classes, you
learn that it is fundamentally impossible – given the laws of
nature – for beautiful people to be in a physical science course
(this is actually Newton’s fourth law – I learned about it in
Physics 142: The Physics of Things That Suck). Some of your
classmates may be considered attractive under different
circumstances, but no science student will ever be attractive while
at UCLA.
There are fundamental reasons behind this fact. First, students
in general tend to emulate the most brilliant and influential
scholars in their fields. And every genius from Einstein to Lord
Kelvin had one thing in common: bad hair. If Vidal Sasoon were to
walk into an upper division physics class and look at the students,
he would bust a gut laughing. If he caught sight of a teaching
assistant he would become physically ill. If the professor were to
enter the room, Vidal would probably go insane, shave his head,
then retire to a secluded Tibetan monastery where he would spend
the rest of his life mastering an obscure martial art, until one
day he was forced to come down and defeat the evil … Oops, I got
a bit carried away. But you get the picture: physicists = bad hair.
(After four years on South Campus, you think of everything as an
equation.)
Of course, bad hair is not the only factor. If it were, you
could hire an army of beautician commandos to infiltrate South
Campus and shave the heads of every student, leaving a sea of
Michael Jordans, Patrick Stewarts, Sinead O’Connors and Sigourney
Weavers. In reality, if all of South Campus were to go bald
simultaneously, it could easily be mistaken for an Uncle Fester
convention.
The main reason that people on South Campus can never truly be
attractive is that they don’t have enough time for preparation. In
order for a human being to be attractive, it requires at least an
hour of preparation. This includes, in order of importance,
showering, teeth brushing, hair combing, changing clothes and
applying deodorant. (Note: this only includes the essentials; I’ve
heard that some students iron, coordinate outfits, apply makeup,
draw on facial features, etc. – but I’ve never seen it first
hand.)
Different students on North Campus have different ways to fit in
their hour of hygiene – some sleep for only 11 hours, others watch
less MTV. There are even a few philosophy students who cut an
entire hour of recreational drug use from their schedule. On South
Campus, it is harder for us to make time in our schedule. Most of
this stems from the fact that we are extremely lazy and always
procrastinate. I’m not exaggerating either – on my first day in
Chemistry 11A, my professor gave us a syllabus which informed the
class we should have read roughly 75 pages in preparation for the
first lecture.
Due to blatant slacking off (such as not spending our spring
break studying), we wanna-be scientists often find ourselves forced
to cut one or more of our more essential hygienic activities in
order to make time for frivolous pursuits, such as sleeping or
eating. And it only gets worse as the quarter progresses. During
weeks one and two, you can get by using Degree, the deodorant that
allows you to skip a day. As week four approaches, you pick out
your clothes for the rest of the quarter and give up on deodorant.
By 7th week, you usually begin to cultivate different life forms in
your teeth and hair. During finals week, you don’t even have time
to shower, so you better pray for rain …
Actually, I guess you can learn more in lecture, so maybe you’d
better put this paper down. Unless you happen to be in one of my
GEs. In which case, there’s a great crossword puzzle in the
classifieds.