Twist and Shout

Yesterday, I finished up my last problem set of junior year. After a quick nap and two or three short hours on Facebook, I realized just how much free time I have over course of the next week. I know, I know, finals are coming up, and I have four too many of those. And true, I have an essay to write in the meantime, comparing and contrasting Stalinism, surrealism, and Shintoism for my History of Philosophical Governance class. But I mean who really cares? The real issue is that I’m not yet 21 and all my friends seem to be hitting their midlife crises already. Talk about struggling through finals period.

Now don’t think for a moment that I am apathetic toward surrealism, sexism, or any other -ism. I believe that they are bad. Various -isms distort our ability to express our inner natures and think for ourselves as individuals. To quote Kanye West, “I embody every characteristic of the egotistic. He knows, he’s so fuckin’ gifted.” Excellent point there. That man is the self-proclaimed greatest of all time. I could be the self-proclaimed greatest of all time, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m still only 20 and some bars actually check.

Despite my age, I am left with a wonderful week, before a desperate panic sets in about finals, in which I have all the time in the world to find something to do.

I thought about making a trip over to the Institute of Politics for one of their forums. I might go, except I already went to the speech last time by the politician who lost an election in that foreign country a few years ago, and don’t really feel like doing the same thing all over again. I mean hell, I can’t even find Canada on a map, and that’s America’s hat. I’m certainly not going to know anything about a country that doesn’t even resemble an article of clothing.

I’m just kidding, guys. I love the Institute of Politics. They usually have free food.

Speaking of free food, Annenberg opens itself up to all classes during exam period and the week beforehand. This would be a fantastic thing to remember, if I were ever looking to walk for 20 minutes to eat a slightly worse version of my own house’s dining hall food.

Of course, there’s more to life than food. There’s Netflix, too. One of my friends suggested I start watching a show called “Drop Dead Diva.” “You have to get past the first episode!” she told me. “I promise it’s a really good show.” So, like any good friend would, I went on YouTube and watched a two minute clip before coming to the conclusion that maybe I need to find new friends. I wound up spending most of the evening watching the latest reruns of “Archer” before being reminded by my editor that I had a column to write for this newspaper.

I know what you’re thinking. I should stop fooling around, tell my editor to be fruitful and multiply with himself, and write my essay for class already! The one about spiritualism and stoicism, or something like that. Let me assure you that the assignment is not due until Tuesday, so I’ll be spending the better part of Monday night trying to extend sentences and reach the minimum word count.

But you’re absolutely right that writing an entire essay all about -isms is not the simplest task. Classes seem to get harder and harder with every passing year. Freshman year was about being able to find the intersection of two lines on a graph. Sophomore year had more complicated equations that involved both numbers and letters, and now I’m working on long-winded essays about topics I’ve never heard of, possibly because they were only discussed in lecture, or section, or the readings, or some combination of the three. By next year I’ll probably need to cure some obscure disease to meet my science requirement.

And things are just looking harder from here on out. Just wait until we have to earn our own livings, out in the wider world where we aren’t always provided with free Toastie-O cereal at the convenient hours of 9:15 to 10:45 p.m. So before we have to worry about real problems, like what the little blinking light on the dashboard means or how to figure out the neighbor’s Wi-Fi password, we should all take a moment, an afternoon, or maybe all of reading period to slow down and watch reruns of “Archer.” Or smell the roses, but let’s try not to be too ridiculously trite. As the great Ferris Bueller once mused, “Pardon my French, but Cameron is so tight that if you stuck a lump of coal up his ass, in two weeks you’d have a diamond.” Don’t be Cameron, unless you want a diamond.

Take it with a grain of salt, though, because this was a guy who once licked his palms to play hooky in high school. I don’t know about you, but my parents would have told me to wash my hands instead.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be busy trying to turn 21, one pint at a time.

Jacob R. Drucker ‘15, a Crimson editorial writer, is an economics concentrator in Mather House.