Howard Ho
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Yawn. Waking up is hard to do, but hey, I’ve got three
finals tomorrow, one right after another. It’s going to be
nine straight hours of bloody murder, but luckily I have an
indestructible game plan for how to ace them.
I am your average college student, who, like you, once worried
about the pressures of being at prestigious UCLA, what with
unweighted GPAs, impersonal lecture halls, cataclysmic finals and
all. It may sound rough, but really it’s a piece of pie in
the sky. But what often get lost in this college equation are the
merits of staring at paint on a canvas, tapping fingers on a piano,
and gluing eyes to a television screen (no, not literally). College
is the delicate balance of one on top of the other. The plan
therefore is to have no plan.
After waking up and skipping breakfast (things to do, people to
see), I join my study group, because my friend Yan Yan is there and
I think it would be nice if she posed nude for my art assignment.
Next I’m off to Ackerman Union’s dining areas for some
ice to console Yan Yan’s hearty slap to my face. Boy, if only
my parents knew how I suffered for art. The truth is that my
assignment was for my class, Heideggerian Hermeneutics 101, where
we are supposed to use words to incite passion. My professor sure
would be proud.
My next class, an Honors Collegium which studies the effect of
Brazilian rainforest ant migrations on the Enron scandal, requires
in-depth research on chaos mathematics, biology and economics.
Luckily, last night I rented “Jurassic Park” for the
chaos theory, “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” for biology
and “Wall Street” for economics. Powell Library even
has a room for watching movies, and there I sit through them one by
one.
Alrighty then, after learning that greed is good and dinosaurs
are undesirable, I go to choir practice and sing my heart out on a
Verdi aria. The lyrics are from Shakespeare’s play
“Othello,” which helps since we’re reading
“Othello” in my English class.
Walking back to the dorms, I see a crowd of people at the
Ackerman Grand Ballroom waiting to get inside. I elbow my way in
and find that Adam Sandler is singing his newest incarnation of the
Hanukkah song on stage. Did you know that Spock and Captain Kirk
are Jewish? Sandler also points out that Heidegger was a supporter
of Hitler, thus explaining his abandonment of phenomenology and
dasein analysis in the 1930s. I jot this down on my hand and
remember to use it for tomorrow’s essay question.
Now it’s time to go clubbing and I start dressing to
impress. My pseudo-punk rocker roommate bangs on his guitar and I
watch him gleefully rip through Metallica choruses. I high-five him
and drive off to meet my date. We go to Miyagi’s on Sunset
only to realize that its dance floor resembles a sardine can more
than a dance floor. Some underage drunk vomits on my arm and I wash
it off.
Panic-stricken, I realize the Heidegger notes on my hand are
washed away and I frantically call my roommate’s cell to see
where he is. Hopefully, our high five left a trace of my notes on
his hand.
I travel across town to the Paladium to meet him at a Green Day
concert and copy down my notes. Reluctant to miss the fun of the
gig, I join the mosh pit and get spit on by Billie Joe Armstrong.
The spit obeys the laws of chaos mathematics, flying randomly into
the fractal image that is a rock concert. That does it for me and I
go home.
I take the finals the next day, and I don’t need to tell
you that I haven’t flunked out of school (if I had, they
wouldn’t let me write for the Daily Bruin). I may have
exaggerated how easy classes are, but life is for living, for
relationships among friends and lovers, for whimsical decisions to
chart unknown places, for exploration into the heart of what it
means to have a heart. In other words, Heidegger, Sandler,
clubbing, Green Day and Yan Yan all mix into this goo which is my
life.
Since goo rhymes with shoe and shoes are required for heroic
journeys of the UCLA kind, I suggest you drop those books once in a
while, skip class and see some of the art and entertainment
that’s going on in the world around you. Hey, it may even
make you smarter.