Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got an epidemic on our hands.
Nobody likes to talk about it. Nobody wants any part of it. But, one day when you think you’ve got it made, it will happen to you.
It’s possibly the meanest, nastiest and cruelest collection of syllables in the English language ““ graduation.
There are some of us who will be getting hit by that train come June.
The rest of you? Think Billy Madison coming back to third grade with the chubby kid’s face in his hands ““ stay here.
Stay here as long as you can.
But no matter how many times you change your major hoping it’ll keep you around longer, they’re going to kick you through that door with a diploma in your hand whether you like it or not.
That’s the problem.
This fine establishment just does not have enough requirements. Sure, there’s 180 units of academic mumbo jumbo, but I’m talking about real requirements ““ things that everyone should and must do before they graduate.
For that reason, consider this a formal petition to add the next four courses onto everyone’s DPR.
1. Introduction to Sports History (Two Units): This should be mandatory for every freshman who steps onto campus. UCLA is arguably the most storied athletic university in this fine country, and this course would lay down the basics.
Didn’t know Jackie Robinson was this school’s only four-sport star?
Flunk.
Had no idea John Wooden was named “Coach of Century” 29 years before the century was over?
Fail.
Can’t draw an accurate depiction of Bill Walton’s choppers or Wooden’s ear lobes?
Just leave.
2. Contemporary Topics in Small Sports (Three Units): This course emphasizes the sports that don’t bring in the big cash. Pretty much everything but basketball and football is acceptable. Each student would learn the rules of a smaller sport like water polo or gymnastics and attend a match/game/whatever you call a gymnastics thing.
Each student would learn all of the ins, outs and what-have-you’s of their sport and its corresponding Bruin team. The term would culminate in a final project that would be graded on each student’s skills at small-sport smack talk.
Screaming nothing but “You suck!” for nine innings will get you a bright, shiny F.
Here at UCLA, we know talking smack to opposing athletes is hard. We’re here to help.
Take this course and your smack-talkability will never be the same.
3. Linguistic Analysis of “Sports Talk” (Four Units): We’re just going to take it one day at a time in this course. It’s a long quarter and any lecture could be the best lecture any day of the week.
Because of that, this course is going to need 110 percent of your effort each and every time you sit down at your desk.
At the end of the day when it’s all said and done and the fat lady sings, you’ve got to look yourself in the mirror and know that there’s no “I” in academcs.
4. Fan Appreciation (Five Units): This course would be an open-ended exploration into the depths of what it means to be a fan.
Possible projects include: camping out for a basketball game, sans sleeping bag; cheering in another school’s student section wearing your Den shirt; and body painting with a concoction of food dye and super glue.
Following a Bruin team on a road trip to the wonderful metropolises of Pullman, Washington or Corvallis, Oregon are automatic “˜A’s.
E-mail Feder at jfeder@media.ucla.edu if you need a PTE number.