As this is the beginning of a brand new scholastic year, I’ve decided to turn over a new leaf as a student journalist and completely immerse myself into every piece that I write. Weeks ago when I took on this guide to slacking I decided to dabble in the world of slacking myself. After taking a minute to write the sub-headings in bold, I quickly determined that late-night infomercials and sleeping were more important than actually writing this article. Some would call this an experiment in the new journalism of Tom Wolfe or Hunter Thompson; still others would call it procrastination. But that’s neither here nor there, it’s time to buckle down and get to work or I’ll be leaving a big blank page in this week’s issue of The Concordian.
Disclaimer: if you choose to follow this guide and fail out of university as a result, I hereby declare myself not responsible whatsoever.
I begin.
Slacking as an Art Form
The ultimate goal of slacking is to get through university (or the first year) by doing the least amount of work possible.
It’s easy to assume that it won’t take any effort at all, but underestimating the skill involved can quickly lead to disaster. A fair share of work goes into doing nothing successfully. Well, not nothing, just the bare minimum required to pass. Because every slacker knows that failure is a breach of the code of conduct that immediately classifies you as a bum.
It’s a utilitarian point of view if you think about it (to learn more take Philosophy 101).
The Beginning: Preparation & Choosing Your Classes
Make university as easy as possible during your first semester. As the years progress classes get more intricate and your professors become more demanding. Your slacker lifestyle may then have to take a time-out if you wish to remain in school until you graduate. Long-term thinking is the very antithesis of the slacking ideology.
In order to help make your first semester as easy as possible select classes that will compliment your chosen lifestyle. Introduction classes are usually the best way to go because information is general and easily available.
Avoid taking classes that require presentations or a lot of hands-on class work. Most language and visual or performing arts classes fall under that category. They would most likely be smaller classes as well, which is completely undesirable. For a slacker the more people taking the class the better.
The Process:
Conduct & Class Etiquette
One of the most important things that must be remembered about going to class (when you do actually go to class) is that although you’re there, you’re not there. Confused? You want to make sure that you fit right in to the middle of the pack. Don’t try too hard to stay out of the spotlight. You want to be the weirdo sitting in the corner of the class who doesn’t want to be noticed, that everyone notices. Remember to sport ordinary clothes. This will allow you to remain unnoticed in class. Jeans are usually a safe bet no matter what the season, and neutral coloured sweatshirts complete the outfit perfectly.
In a large auditorium class, sitting behind a vertically superior student allows you to run your laptop undetected to Facebook or any desired internet flash game. You’d also be able to sleep behind your screen without attracting much attention. It’s okay if people notice you sleeping, but heavy breathing, slobbering and snoring will attract too much attention. So avoid doing anything of the sort.
Baseball caps in the forward position can easily mask closed eyes as long as you’ve mastered the art of dozing off on your fist with your elbow strategically placed on the desk. If you choose the thinker position as you desired sleeping arrangement make sure that you’re not one of those people who slip off your fist and smack the table with your head and hand. That would attract a lot of attention. Very undesirable.
If you plan on going to class, don’t bother if you’re going to be late. You might as well walk into class wearing a clown suit and holding a sign that says ‘I AM A SLACKER.’ You want to remain unnoticed, remember? Arrive on time and leave in a herd of people. Don’t show up too early or too late and don’t leave too early or too late. You’re a slacker, not a moron.
The Conclusion:
Ending Strong
& The Ability to Close
It’s easy to fly through the entire semester by doing your own thing and having school-savvy friends help write papers for your overabundance of intro courses; but what happens when you find out that you have a final exam coming up in a week. An exam worth 50 per cent of your grade. An exam that your friends can’t take for you. It’s time to panic a little bit and prepare yourself to stay up for as long as you can and remember as much information as you can fit in your half-functioning slacker brain.
The fact is that you’ve made it through the year. Your slacking techniques have worked until now and you’ve been rewarded with a semester of jerking around. Now you have to finish strong and actually prove that you can earn credits after an entire semester of week-old pizza and drooling on yourself.
At this point the bare minimum that you’ve done throughout the semester won’t really help you. Now it’s up to you to gather as much information as you can in short order. Most if not all of this information can be found in books, which I gather can be found in campus libraries.
For your intro courses, get as much broad information as possible and make sure that you cover every topic. Make sure that you can describe and give examples on a wide range of topics so that you can at least scam some points from different parts of the exam.
Don’t get too comfortable if your final exam is multiple choice. Process of elimination might seems like a solid strategy, but multiple choice is actually more like four chances to be wrong. Vague explanations may at least earn part-marks on a written.
Otherwise you have to struggle through it and ensure that your semester of slack doesn’t completely go down the drain. You have to at least pass and get the credits. It is possible. It’s been done countless times before.
I believe in you all. Now go. Slack my children, slack!
