Top 5 Ways to Avoid Across the Curriculum Requirements

JUSTIN TONEY

In talking with my advisor recently I learned that bribery is not an effective means of getting one’s RPN. I also learned that somewhere Satan himself has devised certain regulations prohibiting me from graduating in four years with my major in… something. These “across-the-curriculum requirements” are a pain in mine and everyone else’s behind. But, with the deviousness only a slacker can muster, I have devised the following excuses for why I should have already have fulfilled the five requirements.

1. “Writing Intensive”
Writing intensive courses are a joke. My text messaging is more intense than any writing class. I have taken three-credit courses in which I have text-messaged every class, one-hundred percent of the time. My thumbs are permanently damaged in the way that most cows become shortly after they get a spike to the skull. Writing 101 can suck my bloody thumb.

2. “Environmental Awareness”
Have you seen all those papers littering campus walk? I have. That makes me aware of them.  Trees? Yes, they are there. You want to know how I know that?  I am aware of them. I am aware of how many paper advertisements Seaco throws away daily. I am aware of the hawk that lives somewhere on campus and eats the squirrels. I am aware of raccoons that choke and die on our garbage. I’m even aware that certain University employees drive from their on-campus houses to their on-campus jobs.  I am environmentally aware.

3. “Speaking Intensive”
Everywhere I go, people are telling me to shut up, because when I speak it’s too intense for normal ears. I have mastered the art of talking. I talk to my friends on campus walk very loudly about very personal problems. I interrupt my professors during class to talk about crack-pot theories I read on the internet. When I’m resting my digits from all that intense text-messaging, I’m even talking on the phone. I can say how “Peter Piper picked a patch of purple pickled peppers pictured perfectly poising by Pretty Polly’s predatorily platypuses” faster than Fifty-cent can say “word”.  Speech 101 can suck my silver tongue.

4. “Race/Gender Awareness”
I am aware that I am male.  And I am aware that if you’re reading this from your dorm room, there is a three out of four chance that you are not male and a one out of ten chance that you are not white. I am reminded of my racial and gender awareness every time I talk to my one black female friend…

5. “Global Awareness”
. . . who just so happens to have spent a semester in England, and tells me all about it all the time. And when I’m not hearing her go on about Cheerios and crumpets, I’m watching the Daily Show and reading through the funny pages of the New York Times. Global politics aren’t really important to me anyway. I live on campus, and since there’s never anything to do in Fredericksburg I can stay right here in my little hole, or I can drive two hours every weekend to visit home. Why do I need to know that thousands are dying in wars and genocides around the world? I voted for Students Helping Honduras. It’s not like I’m not doing my part.