HEY-HEY!! I'M BACK!

I know it's been a while, but after discovering a beautiful article on the time-honored art of collegiate bullshitting, I just had to return. And then Firefox quit unexpectedly after I'd written this for the first time, leaving me to write my thousand words all over again. Thanks Mozilla. You're still roughy a tousand times better than Internet Explorer.

(Firefox : Internet Explorer :: Flying in the Concord : Hitting yourself in the head with a rock until you can convince yourself that you've traveled somewhere pretty. The same analogy works even better with Macs : PC's. Especially Dells or Compaqs.)

Anyway, while I appreciate the article and all the good it can do for the future generations of dissaffected Communications majors, it didn't feel comprehensive. THere was something missing. Something only a graduate of NYU's School of You're Double-Majoring In Two #1 Ranked Programs But The Only Tricky Part Was Getting Accepted could provide.

Yessiree. This is the advanced tactics class. The article above only applies to those wishing to bullshit their way to a passing grade. This is for those who wish to bullshit their way to exceptionality, and amuse themselves while doing it. But first, a little history.

My bullshitting career really began in sixth grade. Now, some people who follow my life a little too closely for my comfort might pinpoint the date later, when I would skip out on Sophomore English assignments by hanging out with the teacher and having hour-long discussions about Ulysses or Crime and Punishment, neither of which I have ever read. Others might look earlier, to my popular fourth grade science project about which ninja turtle the kids in the playground liked most. Or anywhere in between, such as my eighth grade habit of falling asleep in class and then playing for a note to the nurses office when the teacher awoke me, where I would then sleep for another two hours.

All of these are fine examples, to be sure, but none compare to being in the presence of one Kyle Whatley, who taught me everything I know about continually interrupting the teacher or professor with sarcastic comments, but in such a way that makes it seem like I'm just clever above average and thus should be giving a little leniency with the plebian material that they have to teach the rest of these poor Gifted and Talented kids.

Because, you see, the key to exemplary bullshitting is that other swear-word your mother let slide on account of there being no other suitable synonym...

Smart-assing

Again, I warn you, this is the advanced class. The techniques I explain here will backfire badly if you don't know what you're doing.

In the world of ordinary bullshitting, you're hoping essentially to pass unnoticed along with all the fools who actually did their work. I'm familiar with this, to be sure. In my 11th grade English class, our grade was based upon a final fifteen-page report on an American author we had each chosen at the beginning of the year. I chose Joseph Heller. My friend Alicia chose Toni Morrison. Alicia read everything that Toni Morrison had ever written, and everything that she could find that had ever been written about Toni Morrison. I read a third of the way through Catch-22 before deciding that my efforts were better spent on breasts, checked out the library's book about Joseph Heller, paraphrased the criticism, and then copied the Bibliography, and notated the book itself for good measure. All told, my work took me about a day and a half, and most of that was pool-side, while Alicia spent months on hers.

When we got our grades back, we both got 970 out of a possible 1000, the two highest grades in the year. It's a measure of her good humor that she didn't kill me then and there.

Nonehteless, while that kind of "work" has it's place, at it's best it still only equals you to the Alicia's of this world. You want to go beyond the fold, and in order to do that, your brazen lack of effort must be matched by your brazen lack of respect for the subject at hand. And you've got to be funny. At least to teachers and professors, so the bar isn't set that high, but still...

In that same year, I had to take a Geography class, which was strange to me. Geography hadn't been a requirement in Texas, but it was in Oklahoma, so my class was filled with a bunch of people who had failed it the first one or two times around, and a handful of smart kids who had transferred in. One of my assignments was a report on Singapore. I spent about fifteen minutes online picking up the necessary facts, and then wrote a paper describing my "visit" to Singapore in a style that would make a Gonzo Journalist blush, including passages wherein I screamed questions at a Buddha statue or cut a native into pieces on order to determine his ethnic percentages. And then I wRotE tHE wHolE ThINg iN rAnDOm CApiTaLIZatiON liKE tHIs juSt FoR fUn.

The teacher adored it. She had me read it out loud to the class. I got an A. And then, when I visited her several years later, she still had it in her desk, her example of the best report she had ever received.

Lesson: Bullshitting may let you pass, but smart-assing can make you immortal.

So how do you do it? Here are the best tips I can give you.

#1. Be Funny.

I can't stress this enough. If you can't write funny, then any of this will simply come off as sloppy and disrespectful. Your goal is to show that you get the material so much that it's below you to even be working on it. The funny just brings the professor in on the joke, and if they laugh, they give up all notion of being pissed. They simply agree, "hehe. Yeah, I know this is simple, but I've got to teach it or else all these kids who are working would be lost." That's the promised land right there, and if you get there just once, you're golden. In my senior year English class, the teacher called me over to her desk to tell me that she'd been working the numbers for the last hour, but couldn't find any way to give me an A. I told her that was fine by me, as I'd already gotten in to NYU and I'd made kind of a public point of not giving a shit about her assignments for the last quarter. When I got my report card, I'd gotten an A somehow. I guess she figured out the numbers. And all I'd ever done was make her laugh.

#2. Don't Be Mean-Spirited.

This is really a corallary to rule #1, but it deserves mention that there's a VERY fine line between being a likable smart-ass and a loathsome asshole. I've crossed this line twice (both with male science teachers on their first day in a new school, incidentally) and never truly recovered.

The first time happened in seventh grade, with Mr. Brillon, a thin, slight man in his early thirties. On the first day, after he went through his syllabus and what he expected of us, he asked if there were any questions. My hand shot up first, and I asked his opinion on gays in the military, which obviously had nothing to do with anything. His response: "I was in the military." I hadn't figured him for gay. It wouldn't have been my instinct to even look for things like that. But even though he hated me from that point forward (and charged me with cheating on the final exam, which I honestly didn't do) I've got to admire him in retrospect. He answered my question with the exact mixture of clarity and ambiguity to make himself clear in his sexuality, and yet to not make it an issue, let alone an issue that anyone would ever bring up again in class. So right on, Mr. Brillon. I still didn't cheat, but I was an asshole in that one moment, and I give you mad props now.

The second time was in - again - 11th grade, with Dr. Purser. He was undeniably smart, though he opening speech about having taught Garth Brooks didn't really mean anything. Still, I was looking for my chance to test my boundaries, and he went into a thing about his "bell policy." See, Bartlesville High School would have signal the start of class by a series of four bells. Dr. Purser's policy centered around the idea that he wanted to keep kids from running into his class as the bells started ringing, and so anyone who got there after the first bell would be considered tardy. Once again, the teacher asked for any questions. Once again, my hand shot up. My question: "If we have less time to get to class, won't that make us just run faster?" He wasn't amused, and he never let up on me all year. This gets me to my third rule:

#3. Women Are Cooler About This Than Men.

At least if you're a guy. I don't know much about the subtle sexy hints that teenage girls can throw at male teachers and proffessors, but I'm sure they're powerful, in a dirty, dirty kind of way. I do know that throughout high school I was able to regularly skip class just by tossing my bag in my seat and saying, "I've actually gotta run," and it was always cool with my female teachers, but if I'd ever tried that with any men, they'd have held me down in my chair by force if necessary. Chalk it up to a competition thing. Finally...

#4. Take The Opposite Stance Of The Text.

This is the biggie, and combined with rule #1, can make you the star of every class you take with the minimal amount of effort.

In college, any real course will end with an essay exam. Here you have two options: either agree with the person or viewpoint mentioned in the question, or disagree. At first glance, it might seem easier to agree, as that's what you were taught, but this is what separates the common bullshitter from the smart-asser that will set the curve. If at all possible, it's better to be a setting-the-curve smart-ass than a middle of the road bullshitter, especially since being the smart-ass takes less work once you know how to do it. (Those assholes who turn in their papers first and then announce for the rest of the class to meet them at the bar when they're done are invariably smartasses. Join their numbers. It's more fun.)

The thing about taking the opposition on papers is that, first off, the professors and TA's that are grading them don't care what position you take, and have to grade at least a few dozen of these things. If you make yours interesting, it goes a long way towards good will. Secondly, if you disagree, there's the unconscious admission on the part of the reader (i.e. grader) that you know enough to disagree. Thirdly, disagreement shows a certain degree of passion about the subject (even though it's bullshit.) Take this over-the-top. Assert your opinion to the degree that your evidence and argument seem almsot secondary to the famous idiot that you're refuting. And lastly, when you disagree in an essay exam, no one expects you to quote or cite sources, as they weren't part of the curriculum. Annotations are for the baby birds that can't think for themselves. You're an independent mind whose thoughts are worthy of study And on the off chance that it's a take-home test, just skim through an on-line copy of Coriolanus and search by key-word. Nobody ever reads Coriolanus, but no T.A. or professor will refute Shakespeare, particularly if it's Shakespeare that they're not familliar with,, but one of their students (seemingly) is. The just end with a pithy summation (See #1) and wait to get the top grade in your class, while giving that same class the finger, while at the same time doing the least effort of anyone in the class.

With any effort, even some of the other students will see you as the genius among them.