May 14, 2003

A Humble Suggestion

I guess I could post a generic entry about how finals suck, but what fun would that be? Everyone already knows that. Instead, I'm going to post about how I think that the finals process could be improved here at Cal.

First, a little update: I've been pretty busy in the last week studying for finals, and as I type this, my eyes are hurting pretty bad; too much reading and that sort of stuff, I suppose. My English final is tomorrow, because I asked the professor if I could take it early with the graduating seniors, so I don't have to take it on the same day as EE. My pchem final is on Saturday. Once those two are over, I'm going to start worrying about EE and ochem, but not until then. I just keep telling myself that in one week, it's all over! I can't wait!

Anyway, so how do we make the finals process a bit more bearable? Well, here are my thoughts on the matter. First, have you have you ever noticed that when finals roll around, the weather suddenly dramatically improves? At least in spring for the last two years, this has been the case. So I suggest that we all do some kind of rain dance or something, because it's so much easier to study when the weather is depressing and miserable -- you don't feel half as bad about burying yourself underground for hours upon hours. This address the problem of motivation: bad weather makes it easy to study.

Next, another frequent issue I have is that whenever I head over to the Main Stacks, I always have to pass by Memorial Glade, and considering the weather is always nice, I always have to see all the rat bastards out there who are taking like one class with a real final, and none which they have to study for. They sit there on Memorial Glade, sunbathing, with their frisbees and their footballs, having a good time, not realizing how painful it is to watch that and then go into the library to study redox potentials or some shit. My suggestion is that all these people should be round up and shot. Now, granted, this may seem a bit severe, but I only condone this behavior during finals week. And it's not like it would be a big loss anyway -- if these people aren't studying for finals, how useful can they be to society anyway, right? So this resolves another problem -- now when students want to study, they don't have to be taunted by the Memorial Glade slackers.

Another major issue on campus is that there is just not enough seating in the libraries to support the student population that wants to study there. I once again propose an innovative solution. Since there is limited spacing and nothing can be done to resolve that, I suggest that we weed people out based on cell phone usage. Anyone who lets a cell phone ring in the library should be tossed out of the fifth floor of Moffitt. Anyone who dares to talk on a cell phone while in the library should be shocked with a cattle prod and then tossed out the fifth floor of Moffitt. Granted, defenestration seems like somewhat of an excessive solution, but seriously -- the people who talk on cell phones in the library deserve it. Again, no big loss.

The question comes up about how to pay for all this. Quite simple -- instead of wasting ASUC funds on futile elections and student groups that spend it on booze, whipped cream, and porn, or perhaps arguing pointlessly amongst themselves, we put it to good use -- we arm a contingent of library workers with high voltage cattle prods and fund research into controlling the weather. Not only would it make the finals process a bit more tolerable, it would also be a better use of our money than what the ASUC does with it now. At least this way, I will actually see my money being put to some practical use.

Some of you may consider my tactics a bit out there. What I say is that if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Come to think of it, I saw you with that cell phone in the library the other day, didn't I?