Prof. Jim Wilcox, Guest Writer
Let’s say there are three or four weeks of school left, hypothetically speaking.
And let’s imagine that at least half your classes will have a final exam and the other half will have some kind of rinky-dink (as in written) project due that final week.
And we need to calculate your sleep time, hours that will surely diminish as exams and rinky-dink projects get closer to due dates.
Then, for sure, you will spend untold hours on your cell phones, texting, instant messaging, befriending, chatting, posting, and creating hilarious notes, messages, chats and posts.
Many need to feed the beasts of video game obsessions – smashing enemy armaments, undermining enemy plots, transforming humans into robot and Smurf-killing machines, and , of course, picking up pieces of what was once the remote control and trying to re-assemble it before your scholarly roommate returns from the library.
You’ll need to enroll for classes for next semester, an experience that could take hours, days, if not weeks, depending upon your advisor’s ability to navigate the tempermental enrolling programs, the new computer systems and the evolving course deliverables.
Most of you have jobs – part-time and full-time – or close to it, and you need those jobs to pay for school even though the jobs are the very cause of your miserable mid-term grades.
(Wow! If your boss or co-workers hate you for being smarter and better-looking or higher-skilled, you have to spend some of that job-money on counseling or buying flowers and gifts or putting horsemeat in the chili.)
Church! You gotta go to church, especially now that you’re no longer going to chapel because you’ve got your 27. Choir practice, retreat planning, Sunday school lessons to write, benevolent ministries to pursue. All of that. Plus the time and effort of washing and ironing your good clothes to impress the girls or get noticed by the pastor’s son, Billy.
Kissy-facing with your soon-to-be fiancé(e), pranking thine enemies, bike-riding, long-walking, returning unopened textbooks.
Well, I don’t know how you’ve found the time to read this stupid thing.
But thanks for doing it. Writing is my only escape from reading papers and rinky-dink projects, answering email, washing and ironing my out-of-fashion wardrobe, buying flowers and gifts for my weary colleagues, enrolling my advisees (seven hours each because, frankly, I haven’t a clue how to navigate the new computer system or plow through the stresses of Univisor’s cranky eccentricities), kissy-facing with my soon-to-be widow and getting my necessary 12 hours of sleep a day.
You’d better get busy. Time’s a-wasting.