My Senior Springtime Partay was rudely interrupted by this email I received the other day:
Dear Riley,Our records indicate that you borrowed a federal student loan while you were enrolled at Wheaton College. Federal regulations and college policy require that ALL borrowers attend exit counseling prior to graduation. During exit counseling you will receive important information about your federal student loans and will have the opportunity to ask any questions you may have.
Listen: Being in soul-crushing debt doesn't necessarily mean you have PTSD and require counseling. Anyway, what sort of questions am I supposed to have for this fancy exit counselor? "Excuse me sir, do you know if you can use the Common App to apply for food stamps?" or maybe, "Pardon me miss, but it is possible to work toward a degree--perhaps a MBA or something--while in debtor's prison?"
No, this exit counseling business just doesn't sound right. It needs re-branding. Better marketability.
After all, we live in a Feel-Good Spin Age, an Age in which a plastic tub of spooky chemicals is called "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!" and nothing at all is commonly referred to as "Weapons Of Mass Destruction!"
So really it would be great if exit counseling could be called something different, something like "Free Massages!" Yes, "free massages" sounds far more appetizing than "federally-required exit counseling."
But no matter. Point is, I don't need exit counseling or free massages because why bother? 2012 is literally just two years away.
There's a lot of speculation about what's in store for us in 2012, but most academics agree that basically the Aztecs are going to emerge from an active volcano and then boil us alive in a giant cauldron of Ramen Noodles. This is perfectly reasonable, because after hiding in a volcano for 500 years you would be hungry too, and what better way to satisfy your hunger than with a giant cauldron of human-flavored Ramen? Human flavor has far less sodium than the chicken flavor.
The Aztecs will boil the college students first of course because college students are so soft and their meat is so tender--especially their finger meat, because college students don't use their fingers, except when they are typing total-baloney nonsense on their trillion gigabyte iPowerBooks.
But eventually the Aztecs will run out of college students to boil and then they will opt for the second-best tender meat: college graduates.
God willing I will be a college graduate in 2012, and that means I will definitely be boiled alive by the Aztecs. But you know what? I'm not going to be boiled without a fight. When the Aztecs read my name from their college-grad list before dumping me into the Ramen Cauldron I'm going to shout defiantly, "That's Riley Waggaman, Bachelor of Arts to you, mister!" and that will give them a good laugh and then instead of boiling me in noodles they'll just chop my head off and play Ultimate Frisbee with it.
But I suspect the Aztecs have a good sense of humor, and that they will spare me for saying something so outrageous.
That's what I'm hoping for, at least. And then I can talk the Aztecs out of boiling me. I will ask them many rhetorical questions like, "Why waste countless minutes boiling college graduates in a cauldron of Ramen when you can go to the Dunkin' Donuts Drive-Thru and get an egg sandwich croissant and a medium sugar-coffee in literally fifteen seconds?"
This reasoning will impress them. And why shouldn't it? Time is money, even for volcano zombies like the Aztecs.
Either way, in 2012 my college degree will be geocached under the Dunkin' Donuts and/or Jamba Juice across the street from you. So feel free to dig it up and hang it on your wall or maybe decorate it with glitter, laminate it and then use it as a place mat.
Just remember:
You Find It, You Keep It.