It’s that special time of year again. The sun is out, my forearms and legs below the knee are uncovered, and lust is in the air.
But I won’t be entertaining any hunnies right now. No, I’ve got my mind on some higher pleasures: academia. That’s right, the only sheets I’ll be trifling in are Excel sheets full of data for MATH 241: Probability Theory. The only bodies I’ll be exploring will be in E&EB 251L: Labora- tory for Biology of Terrestrial Arthropods. And the only party you’ll find me at is the Party of the Right, because the environment has had it too good for too long!
In his master-slave dialectic, Georg Wilhem Friedrich Hegel wrote that our existence is solely defined by our rela- tionships to other humans. What a moron! He followed that doozy up by claiming “If you want to love you must serve, if you want freedom you must die.” Well, big guy, I don’t need love and I don’t need freedom. I just want a 3.7 GPA or higher to prove to my parents that I’m just as smart as my older brother, Brandon!
Descartes believed that to love was to give up one’s freedom to someone else. Well, French guy, I don’t need love and I don’t need freedom. I just want a 3.7 GPA or higher to prove to my parents that I’m just as smart as my older brother, Brandon!
Speaking of family, my mind races back to my first day of kindergarten. My mother dropped me off at my classroom, 2L with Mrs. DeWinter. I was crying. I was anxious then and still am today. “I don’t want to go,” I wailed as I dug my feet into the epoxied hallway floor. My mom wasn’t having it. Why couldn’t I be like my older brother? Brandon never made a ruckus like this. “Son,” my mama said sternly, “you will go in there and you will enjoy it.” “I will?” I asked. I was such a pushover back then. “You will make new friends and you will learn a lot.” For the first time that day, I smiled, but she wasn’t done. “And remember, fulfill your mind in the Fall, sleep around in the Spring.” Since that fateful Sep- tember morning, I have carried those words in my heart.
Would Marie Curie have invented every element in the table elements if she’d gotten frisky with Albert Einstein instead of traversing the globe in search of Tungsten? Would Barack Obama have become president if he’d met Michelle before commencing his term in the White House? Would Joseph Campbell have blurred the lines between important scholarship and anti-Semitism if he’d found a lover with a thousand faces (if you know what I mean!)? No, no, and perhaps. So why should I, an academic powerhouse, anchor myself down with such base pleasures? If I am able to re- main chaste, I too could invent the table of elements, become president, and imply dubious things about certain groups of people!
So, one last time, I’m asking all the ladies, fellas, and that one cute TF from my Computer Science to just wait one semester. My spring will be full of Sex, Markets, and Power, and I’m not talking about Global 353.
—W. Cramer
