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SchoolCollege Joke: 6
| College
by Dave Barry
Many of you young persons out there are seriously thinking about
going to college. (That is, of course, a lie. The only things you
young persons think seriously about are loud music and sex. Trust
me: these are closely related to college.)
College is basically a bunch of rooms where you sit for roughly
two thousand hours and try to memorize things. The two thousand
hours are spread out over four years; you spend the rest of the time
sleeping and trying to get dates.
Basically, you learn two kinds of things in college:
* Things you will need to know in later life (two hours). These
include how to make collect telephone calls and get beer and
crepe-paper stains out of your pajamas.
* Things you will not need to know in later life (1,998 hours).
These are the things you learn in classes whose names end in -ology,
- - -osophy, -istry, -ics, and so on. The idea is, you memorize these
things, then write them down in little exam books, then forget them.
If you fail to forget them, you become a professor and have to stay
in college for the rest of your life.
It's very difficult to forget everything. For example, when I was
in college, I had to memorize -- don't ask me why -- the names of
three metaphysical poets other than John Donne. I have managed to
forget one of them, but I still remember that the other two were
named Vaughan and Crashaw. Sometimes, when I'm trying to remember
something important like whether my wife told me to get tuna packed
in oil or tuna packed in water, Vaughan and Crashaw just pop up in
my mind, right there in the supermarket. It's a terrible waste of
brain cells.
After you've been in college for a year or so, you're supposed to
choose a major, which is the subject you intend to memorize and
forget the most things about. Here is a very important piece of
advice: Be sure to choose a major that does not involve Known Facts
and Right Answers.
This means you must *not* major in mathematics, physics, biology,
or chemistry, because these subjects involve actual facts. If, for
example, you major in mathematics, you're going to wander into class
one day and the professor will say: "Define the cosine integer of
the quadrant of a rhomboid binary axis, and extrapolate your result
to five significant vertices." If you don't come up with *exactly*
the answer the professor has in mind, you fail. The same is true of
chemistry: if you write in your exam book that carbon and hydrogen
combine to form oak, your professor will flunk you. He wants you to
come up with the same answer he and all the other chemists have
agreed on. Scientists are extremely snotty about this.
So you should major in subjects like English, philosophy,
psychology, and sociology -- subjects in which nobody really
understands what anybody else is talking about, and which involve
virtually no actual facts. I attended classes in all these
subjects, so I'll give you a quick overview of each:
ENGLISH: This involves writing papers about long books you have
read little snippets of just before class. Here is a tip on how to
get good grades on your English papers: Never say anything about a
book that anybody with any common sense would say. For example,
suppose you are studying Moby-Dick. Anybody with any common sense
would say that Moby-Dick is a big white whale, since the characters
in the book refer to it as a big white whale roughly eleven thousand
times. So in *your* paper, *you* say Moby-Dick is actually the
Republic of Ireland. Your professor, who is sick to death of
reading papers and never liked Moby-Dick anyway, will think you are
enormously creative. If you can regularly come up with lunatic
interpretations of simple stories, you should major in English.
PHILOSOPHY: Basically, this involves sitting in a room and
deciding there is no such thing as reality and then going to lunch.
You should major in philosophy if you plan to take a lot of drugs.
PSYCHOLOGY: This involves talking about rats and dreams.
Psychologists are *obsessed* with rats and dreams. I once spent an
entire semester training a rat to punch little buttons in a certain
sequence, then training my roommate to do the same thing. The rat
learned much faster. My roommate is now a doctor.
If you like rats or dreams, and above all if you dream about rats,
you should major in psychology.
SOCIOLOGY: For sheer lack of intelligibility, sociology is far and
away the number one subject. I sat through hundreds of hours of
sociology courses, and read gobs of sociology writing, and I never
once heard or read a coherent statement. This is because
sociologists want to be considered scientists, so they spend most of
their time translating simple, obvious observations into
scientific-sounding code. If you plan to major in sociology, you'll
have to learn to do the same thing. For example, suppose you have
observed that children cry when they fall down. You should write:
"Methodological observation of the sociometrical behavior tendencies
of prematurated isolates indicates that a casual relationship exists
between groundward tropism and lachrimatory, or 'crying,' behavior
forms." If you can keep this up for fifty or sixty pages, you will
get a large government grant.
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SchoolCollege Joke: 7
The following is a "history" collected by teachers throughout the
United States, from eighth grade through college level. Read carefully,
and you will learn a lot.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The inhabitants of ancient Egypt were called mummies. They
lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of
the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so
certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. The
Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube.
The Pyramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.
The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first
book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an
apple tree. On of their children, Cain, once asked, "Am I my brother's
son?" God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob,
son of Isaac, stole his brother's birth mark. Jacob was a patriarch
who brought up his twelve sons to be patriarchs, but they did not
take it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.
Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw.
Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which
is bread made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on
Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king
skilled at playing the liar. He fought with the Philatelists, a race
of people who lived in the Biblical times. Soloman, one of David's
sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.
Without the Greeks we wouldn't have history. The Greeks
invented three kinds of columns - Corinthian, Doric, and Ironic. They
also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the
mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became
intollerable. Achilles appears in The Iliad, by Homer. Homer also
wrote The Oddity, in which Penelope was the last hardship that
Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by
Homer but by another man of that name.
Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving
people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of
wedlock.
In the Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the
biscuits, the threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral
wreath. The government of Athens was democratic because people took
the law into their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the
mountains were so high that they couldn't climb over to see what
their neighbors were doing. When they fought with the Persians, the
Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men.
Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Greeks. History calls
people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long.
At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlic in their hair. Julius
Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of
March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king.
Nero was a cruel tyranny who would turture his poor subjects by
playing the fiddle to them.
Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames.
King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harold mustarded his
troops before the Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was canonized by
Bernard Shaw, and victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their
necks. Finally, Magna Carta provided that no free man should be
hanged twice for the same offense.
In medevil time most of the people were alliterate. The
greatest writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and
versus and also wrote literature. Another tale tells of William
Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his
son's head.
The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt
the value of their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the
church door at Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died
a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull. It was the
painter Donatello's interes in the female nude that made him the
father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great inventions and
discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh is
a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another
important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Francis
Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper.
The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry
VIII found walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee.
Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a
success. When Elizabeth exposed herself before her troops, they all
shouted, "hurrah." Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish
Armadillo.
The greatest write of the Renaissance was William Shakespear.
Shakespear never made much money and is only famous because of his
plays. He lived at Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies,
comedies and errors. In one of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet
rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy.
In another, Lady Macbeth tried to convince Macbeth to kill the Kind
by attack his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic
couplet. Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miguel Cervantes.
He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton
wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.
During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was
a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the
Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe.
Later, the Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and this was known as
Pilgrims Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were
greeted by the Indians, who came down the hill rolling their war hoops
before them. The Indian squabs carried porpoises on their back. Many
of the Indian heroes were killed, along with their cabooses, which
proved very fatal for them. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the
settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John
Smith was responsible for all this.
SchoolCollege Joke: 8
American University Grading Procedures
Here is a list of the ways professors here at the American
University grade their final exams:
DEPT OF STATISTICS:
- All grades are plotted along the normal bell curve.
DEPT OF PSYCHOLOGY:
- Students are asked to blot ink in their exam books, close
them and turn them in. The professor opens the books and
assigns the first grade that comes to mind.
DEPT OF HISTORY:
- All students get the same grade they got last year.
DEPT OF RELEGION:
- Grade is determined by God.
DEPT OF PHILOSOPHY:
- What is a grade?
LAW SCHOOL:
- Students are asked to defend their position of why they
should receive an A.
DEPT OF MATHEMATICS:
- Grades are variable.
DEPT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE:
- If and only if the student is present for the final and
the student has accumulated a passing grade then the student
will receive an A else the student will not receive an A.
MUSIC DEPARTMENT:
- Each student must figure out his grade by listening to the
instructor play the corresponding note (+ and - would be sharp
and flat respectively).
DEPT OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION:
- Everybody gets an A.
SchoolCollege Joke: 9
Academy of Mudgeology
Some selections from our catalog: Course number/Title/(Days/Time)
MUS147 HOW TO HUM: LECTURE AND LAB (MW 10:00-10:50)
HIS024 U.S. HISTORY SINCE ABOUT AN HOUR AGO (TH 12:00-1:15)
GEO222 COUNTRIES THAT ARE ORANGE ON MAPS (MWF 2:00-2:50)
ENG537 SURVEY IN ENG LIT: SIR FRANCIS BACON AND LORD HENRY SAUSAGE
(MWF 9:00-11:15)
POLS834 U.S. DOMESTIC POLICY: IF FROGS COULD VOTE (TH 1:30-2:45)
ANT248 AMISH PARTY GAMES (W 6:00-8:15)
FR106 ELEMENTARY FRENCH TOAST (MW 8:00-8:50)
COM193 TOPICS FROM "GREEN ACRES": LIFE AND TIMES OF MR. HANEY
(TU 7:00-9:15)
HIS456 THE HISTORY OF SOUP (TH 9:30-10:45)
CHE546 THE SCIENCE OF PLAY-DOH (MWF 10:00-10:50)
PHI101 THE RAMBLINGS OF DEAD, DRUNKEN PHILOSOPHERS
(MWF 9:00-9:50)
ARC555 ARCHITECTURE OF THE BRADY BUNCH HOME
(WTBS 4:35-5:05)
MOO108 THE BOVINE ERA, PART IV: COW HISTORY SINCE 1784
(TH 5:30-7:15)
ENG327 SHAKESPEAREAN MEMOS, MENUS, AND GROCERY LISTS
(TH 11:00-12:15)
ANT764 NOMADIC TRIBES OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA THAT ARE REALLY JUST LOST
(MW 3:00-3:50)
MATH001 COMPREHENSIVE STUDY OF THE NUMBER SEVEN
(TH 9:30-10:45)
POLS497 POLITICAL PARTY ETHICS (M 1:00-1:05)
ARC123 DESIGNING MODERN CITIES USING LEGOS (MWF 2:00-2:50)
MATH198 MATHEMATICS SO HARD THAT NO ONE CAN DO IT (W 6:00-8:30)
COM253 UNDERSTANDING THE PLOT TWISTS IN "MELROSE PLACE"
(MTWTFSS 9:00-4:15)
A-S546 TOPICS IN MODERN ART: USING A LIVER AS A PAINT BRUSH
(TH 3:00-4:15)
HPR314 BEGINNING YAHTZEE (MWF 1:00-1:50)
ENG893 THE ROMANTIC PROSE OF BARNEY FIFE (MWF 9:00-9:50)
PHY276 HYPNOTIZING YOUR PETS (TH 2:00-3:15)
TEL115 MUNSTERS/ADDAMS FAMILY: A COMPARISON STUDY
(M 7:00-9:15)
ENG690 STOOGE CRITICISM: THE SHEMP YEARS (MWF 10:00-10:50)
Thanks to stampo (genie.com)
SchoolCollege Joke: 10
No $
Dear Dad,
$chool i$ really great. I am making lot$ of friend$ and $tudying very hard.
With all my $tuff, I $imply can't think of anything I need, $o if you would
like, you can ju$t $end me a card, a$ I would love to hear from you.
Love,
Your $on.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Dear Son,
I kNOw that astroNOmy, ecoNOmics, and oceaNOgraphy are eNOugh to keep even an
hoNOr student busy. Do NOt forget that the pursuit of kNOwledge is a NOble
task, and you can never study eNOugh.
Love,
Dad
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