Author: Abbie Beane
"College is a non-stop whirlwind of excitement and IM, punctuated by hook-ups, drunken hook-ups and failed attempts at hooking-up. There are plenty of aspects of college other than sex and alcohol, but those are the two that result in the most noise."
"You will study. You will forget everything you've learned. You will study again. You will keep forgetting. You will manage to squeak by anyway."
These are the insightful and inspiring words of wisdom offered by Steve Hofstetter, a 2002 graduate of Columbia University, sports humor writer and recent author of "Student Body Shots," described as "a sarcastic look at the best 4 to 6 years of your life." A book that strips away weak and clichéd college humor, "Student" exposes the bare bones of a distorted world with its own language, twisted sleeping patterns and bizarre social rituals.
As Hofstetter simply and modestly puts it, the reason this book is so hilarious is because "it's true" and people tend to laugh hardest at situations they can relate to. Isn't it comforting to know that there is someone else out there who can never seem to put their life in order, remember the weekend or stay awake in class?
Hofstetter touches on most of these areas and much more, ranging from raunchy to innocent daily foibles and covering every politically correct topic in between. On top of that, his sense of irony is incorrigible.
The other particularly excellent aspect of this book is that it sympathizes with the college student's short attention span, breaking the book up into 10 categories, from social life to facilities, and then further breaking these up into sub-heads at each turn of the page. For these minor topics, Hofstetter comments on everything from laundry to gambling to bars to pathetic studying habits. That way, if you're one of those college students who likes short chapters, reading one page per sitting or just hates reading in general, this is the book for you. In fact, it need not even be thought of as a book but a collection of funny quips that jab at college life and all of the beasts it entails.
Hofstetter even throws a little poetry into the mix, which is not exclusive to English majors and artistic types—crude humor such as "I Killed My RA Today" and "Your Fat Friend," which he reminds us is only meant as an affront to fat people with bad personalities.
Hofstetter commiserates with students on so many levels. And he does a decent job avoiding the trite jokes and broad generalizations about college that have already been chewed up and spit out too. Instead he just tells it like it is, or was, in his case, writing a book on specifics with a new, unsweetened flavor that evokes age-old college past-times and is easy to digest.
Remember moving in? Hofstetter asks us how we could forget. "Orientation is a bad name for a week when everyone parties and has no classes. If I've learned anything it's that you're bound to wake up very disoriented."
And as for your first conversation with the opposite sex, "it is usually the best you will have with them. 'We stayed up until sunrise just talking.' True. But that's because you had 20 years to talk about. The problem now is that you covered your whole life in one night, and now you're left with nothing for the rest of your friendship. 'He just doesn't open up anymore.' No, he's open—he's just got nothing left inside."
And then, of course, Hofstetter shares with us some of his thoughts on annoying, conventional people. The "uber-freshman": He has an ID that looks nothing like him, drinks three beers past his tolerance, has the poster of John Belushi with the T-shirt that says "college" up on his wall and Dave Matthews MP3s on loop. "Or are you in a class with that one really unique guy who tries to find all of the vintage clothes he can because it makes him stand out from the rest of the crowd? I'm in a class with thirty-eight of them," says Hofstetter.
On the daily grind, Hofstetter sympathizes, "Seeing some people in a towel is a good thing. But for the rest of you, have some respect for your hall-mates and change in the bathroom. Nothing says good morning like a fat wet guy in a mini-towel."
Hofstetter also reminds us not to use words like "sketchy" and "tool" when at home. "That's why I don't go home anymore. Because when I do, no one understands me." Other bits of advice? "If you finish finals early, keep your mouth shut. You may think it's cool, but there is nothing other people hate more than the guy who finishes all of his work first. Walk up to anyone and say, 'I don't have finals and I kicked your baby brother in his stupid fat head.' 'What?' they'll say. 'You don't have finals?'" And lastly, "No offense to anyone, but if you don't date much in college, then you won't date much after college. Think of the situation you've been given. You live in a one-mile area that consists of thousands of members of the opposite sex, 99% of whom aren't married, and all within four years of your age. If that's not enough, you're put in small rooms with these people for four months and then given a new set of people for the next four months and this happens eight times. No one has an unlisted phone number and everyone eats in the same place. Members of the opposite sex are given a lot of alcohol, and are all hanging out in the same five places every night. Face it, if you can't score now, give up."
But at the end of the day, Hofstetter says that even careers in finance won't kill us, as we've spent the last four years drinking ourselves to sleep on weekends, subsisting on pizza and Chinese food, taking to studying on weekdays and braving communal bathrooms even if we forgot our shower shoes.
In the end, "College is really just like a quilt where everything is interwoven and it's more aesthetic than it is useful."
So invest some more of your time in procrastination and read Hofstetter's book, or short compilation of sarcastic remarks, if you prefer to avoid the "B word."
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