16B - The Michigan Daily Weekend Magazine - Thursday, October 22, 1998
Weekend etc. Column
A BRIEF ODYSSEY, OR HOW POP TARTS SAVED MY LIFE

College life is not easy. Let's not
deny it. We break our backs and our
spirits for intangible future rewards,
receiving little or
no recognition
from the school
at which we
labor. Sometimes
- after going
more than two
days without
sleep, and ingest-
ing nothing but
No-Doz and
Mountain Dew ANDREW
-- it's hard not to MORTENSEN
ask yourself just 3)G IDEt
what the hell (DON'T 's
you're doing ANY)
here.
"What am I doing to myself?" you
ask, heaving your textbooks against
the wall in despair. "Do I actually
enjoy this?"
The answer to this question is
"yes." You're all masochists at heart.
Truth is, vo" love getting a grand
total of seven hours of sleep a week,
with six of those hours coming on
the weekend. For you, there's noth-
ing in the world so enjoyable as the
horrible nausea caused by the 12-

pack of heavily caffeinated pop you
had for breakfast. And it's simply
impossible for you describe the plea-
sure you feel when, tired and weak
from hunger, you find yourselves
halted part way up a flight of stairs,
unable to summon the strength to
take another step.
But all bf this is aside from the
matter at hand. And that matter,
which is crucial to all college stu-
dents, is how to get through the day
with all your faculties intact To
some of you, the very idea that mak-
ing it through the day can be a strug-
gle seems ridiculous. If you are one
of those people, I'd like to ask you to
stop reading at this time, because
this column is addressed to people
who attend class with some regulari-
ty. Thank you.
To continue: How does one make
it through the day without suffering a
nervous breakdown? Because I
believe it's best to lead by example,
I've decided to describe to you one
of my typical days. If you study care-
fully my daily itinerary, I'm sure
you'll uncover the secret to my suc-
cess. Here we go:
8 a.m. - My alarm clock'sounds,
announcing to me that, yes, it's time

to go endure another day of humilia-
tion and failure. I respond by ripping
the plug out of the wall and hurling
the clock against the door. Still, it
wasn't a bad night, all things consid-
ered. I did get four hours of sleep.
I'm feeling on top of the world.
8:01 a.m. - The feeling of invin-
cibility dissolves. All of my limbs
ache: I suspect someone put a fren-
zied gorilla in my room while I was
sleeping; this gorilla purged his rage
by beating my sleeping form with
various pieces of furniture, includ-
ing I think, a couch. My mouth
tastes horrid, and I am forced to con-
clude that entire families of rodents
offed themselves in my mouth dur-
ing the night. My eyes appear to
have been coated with superglue. I
try not to blink, fearful that my lids,
once closed, will not be opened
again.
8:02 a.m. - I begin weeping.
8:03 a.m. - A violent crashing in
the next room tells me my roommate
has awakened. By the sound of
things, he's punched out the window
again. I struggle out of bed and
hurry to the bathroom, because if I
don't get to the shower first, he'll
use all the hot water, and I would be
forced to go without bathing. Cold
showers are grounds for justifiable
suicide.
8:10 a.m. - I emerge from the
shower, fresh as a new spring day. I
groom myself, brush my teeth,
shave. I look at the mirror to consid-
er the finished product of all this
grooming, and am repulsed. Today
I'll be frightening children. I sigh
and stumble back to my room, where
I collapse on my bed, despairing of
survival.

8:17 a.m. - I fall asleep.
8:30 a.m. - I wake up in a panic,
sure that I've slept through my
Russian test. I want to know the
time, but my clock is lying behind
the door, heavily damaged from my
throw. I rush downstairs to find that
it is only 8:30 a.m. My roommate,
having endured a cold shower, sits
on the couch watching the morning
news. My clumsy footsteps alert him
to my presence, and he turns to look
at me. He hates me this morning.
But that's ok, because I hate him this
morning, too. A good morning hate
strengthens us. We are deluded into
believing that we can handle a 9 a.m.
Russian test.
8:40 a.m. - My roommate and I
prepare to go to class. Just as we
open the door of our apartment to
leave, I remember I haven't eaten
anything. I grab a package of cold
pop tarts.
8:45 a.m. - I unwrap the pop
tarts. Fate, who is a vicious slut,
causes me immediately to drop one
of them in the grimy gutter. I look at
the remaining pop tart and discover
that I bought the sort without frost-
ing. I begin weeping again. My
roommate looks at me. He hates me.
I hate him.
8:50 a.m. - We approach an
intersection, at which stands a uni-
formed crossing guard. We can see
that she is waving to all passing
vehicles, indiscriminately welcom-
ing everyone to the new day. As we
get nearer to her, she notices us, and
greets us in a ridiculously happy
voice. Her voice suggests that sight
of two disheveled, slightly repulsive
college students is the highlight of
her week. She must take lots of

drugs.
Perhaps

I should take lots of

p

A Keffy

Price

drugs.
9 a.m. - We arrive at our Russian
class.
10 a.m. - We leave our Russian
class, fully aware that we failed the
test.
10:10-12:00 p.m. - I struggle to
remain awake in one of my English
classes. The discussion, which was
supposed to be about poetic form,
has deteriorated into nonsensical
orations of personal philosophy. I
surface from my sub-conscious state
just in time to hear someone remark
that she thinks of herself as an
observer of life: "I like to watch how
things transgress through time," she
says. I laugh out loud, bui nanit
else seems to have caught it. Instead,
the professor, who has been watch-
ing my nodding head for some time
now, asks me a question. which I
botch in comical fashion. The rest of
the class laughs at my expense.
12 p.m. - I head for my apart-
ment, believing that I've lasted
through another day of class. I am
violently disabused of this notion in
the middle of a crosswalk when I am
set upon by a brutal epiphany: I have
another class at 2:30 p.m. I collapse
on the road, halting traffic until
some kind soul kicks my body into
the gutter, out of harm's way.
12:05 p.m. - I discover my pop
tart in the same gutter. It doesn't
appear to be all that dirty.
12:06 p.m. - I eat the pop tart,
and am renewed.
And that, gentle readers, is how I
make it through a day. I credit the
crossing guard wiih much of my suc-
cess. Or maybe it's the drugs.
DYLAN
Continued from Page 6B
John Paul II.
Earlier this year Dylan was honored
with the Kennedy Center Honors, the
highest award for artistic excellence in
country music. After "Time Out Of
Mind" went gold, his first album ever to
do so, Dylan was nominated for
Grammys in three categories.
Bob Dylan won a Grammy for Album
of the Year, Best Male Rock 'vocal
Performance and Best Contemporary
Folk Album, not to mention the Lifetime
Achievement Award. In his acceptance
speech Dylan said, "We got a particular
sound on this record which you don't get
every day ... we didn't know what we
had when we did it but we did it anyway"
Dylan has done many things without
realizing the impact they had on society.
Dylan's lyrics have been acclaimed
nearly as much as his music. In 1997 he
was nominated for a Nobel Prize for
Literature. "I consider myself a poet first
and a musician second. I live like a poet
and I'll die like a poet," Dylan said.
"I wanted just a song to sing, and there
came a point where I couldn't sing any-
thing," Bob Dylan once told Rolling
Stone Magazine. "I had to write what I
wanted to sing 'cus what I wanted to
sing, nobody else was writing."

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