Tag: BLM

My vocabulary didn’t expand just because I graduated college.

It was because of the WAY I graduated college…

“Well…congratulations, me?”

I hung up the phone with the Kansas State University Registrar’s Office, and was trying to process the emotional turmoil that had just blindsided me. Maybe it was because those feelings were completely unexpected–after all, my academic advisor did give in and grant my special request.

Yet, for being an education-oriented young lad my entire life, I was feeling pretty empty inside for having just graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Physics.

Correction–I meant to say “for having just found out that I had graduated”…

“Anti-Climactic Denouement”–that’s the Word of the Day.

And no, I know what you’re (probably) thinking, but that phrase does not refer to the act of some jackass getting up on their soapbox and declaring global warming to be nothing but a hoax.

Nor does it refer to the Puritan movement back in the 1800’s that declared the female orgasm to be “the work of the Devil himself, that horny bastard.” Hell, I don’t even know if that was a real thing, but knowing those Puritans, I wouldn’t put it past those prudes to come up with some load of horse crap like that. But I digress…

Instead–as you may have gathered from context–“Anti-Climactic Denouement” is the perfect descriptor for my, shall we say, “nontraditional” graduation journey.

Officially earning my college degree–and doing so with dang-near perfect grades at that (#HumbleBrag)–should have been the pinnacle of my academic career. But nooooo, I just had to be “special” and couldn’t let things play out in a much more typical–i.e. linearly synchronous–fashion.

And I blame the Love of (Free) Money for all the resulting emotional trauma I endured. Well, that, along with a healthy dose of Not Knowing What (the ----- ) I Wanted to Do With My Life.

You see, most youngsters my age were set to graduate in May 2003. However, I needed a bit more time to wrap things up, and so had concordantly applied to graduate the following December. This wasn’t too uncommon, though: December graduations happen all the time.

But as that time neared, it occurred to me that I had no idea what I was to do after that. True story–I never had any intentions of using my degree in Physics, believe it or not.¹If you’re not aware, I have my PhD in Physics, a fact that would have shocked my Past Self to hear. My future career was a blank canvas. Trust me, though, that’s not nearly as fun as it sounds.

Anyways, I had a few ideas I was kicking around, one of which was becoming a photographer. One of my friends suggested that I could explore that more by taking K-State’s Digital Photography class. You know…the one that was being offered in Spring 2004.

You know…after I was no longer a quote-unquote “student.”

And if you’re not actually a student, guess what? You ain’t getting none of that sweet, sweet free FAFSA monies from Uncle Sam–and you know how much I love me some of them FAFSA monies, right?

I didn’t have a job lined out post-graduation, so the last thing I wanted was to have to pay $453.80²Based on this and this, accounting for the Campus Privilege Fee for Residents, the cost of a credit hour in the Spring 2004 would have been $118.60. Three credit hours would be $355.80, and when you add back in the Campus Privilege Fee of $64 for the first credit hour and $17 for each hour thereafter, you get $355.80 + $64 + $17 + $17 = $453.80. Ta-da! in tuition and so-called “Campus Privilege Fees,” especially since my Spidey-sense was telling me that ultimately photography would not be how I earned a living.

So I got creative. Shortly after that Thanksgiving, I called up ye ole’ Registrar’s Office, and was like, “Hey, what-say we put my December graduation on hold and how about I graduate in May like a normal person a year younger than me? Oh, and how about some of that free money?”

And they were like, “Looky here, young whipper-snapper…well, uh…yeah, I guess we can do that. Sure. A May graduation it is for you. Enjoy your free money…”

“You want a decent-paying job? Then I suggest you get your danged college degree, son!”

Those words–or something very close to those words–were uttered by my slightly-older-but-much-wiser roommate, the Beautiful Love Muscle. BLM was commiserating with me, as I wasn’t having any luck landing a job after spending most of that January job hunting.

“Just think of how many more job opportunities would be open to you with your degree in hand!”

“But…but…but I would have to pay back all my free monies!” I blubbered in response.

“Nah, man, just think–you’ll probably have a much better paying job than without your degree, so you’ll make up that $500 within your first couple of paycheck!”

“Dude…your logic is…airtight. Alright! I’ll do it!”

…

“So…I just call them and ask them to go back in time and give me my diploma in December?” It was dawning on me that I was blazing a path that probably had never been blazed before.

“Huhn,” BLM stroked the stubble on his chin, “I hadn’t really thought that far out.”

Welp, I had nothing to lose by simply asking, so that next day I gave ol’ K-State yet another friendly phone call:

“Uh, yeah, hello there Registrar’s Office. You see, I was wondering…um, how do I say this? Could you have me in your system as having officially graduated in December? I already had an application approved and everything…”

“Sir, we haven’t even started processing graduation applications for December 2004 yet…”

“No, not this coming December. I mean this past December–December 2003. I’m needing you to back-date my graduation. Please. Pretty please?”

I conspicuously omitted any questions about whether I would have to pay back the free money they had given me, hoping that they would overlook it amidst the confusion.

“Oh. Okay…I guess I’ll have to talk to my boss about that…”

It wasn’t but a few days later that I received the so-called good news that it was official: I was a Bachelor of Arts,³You would think that I would have been a Bachelor of Science, but due to my scheme that enabled me to avoid taking Quantum Physics and Electronics Lab, I was able to skate by with “Arts” instead. Physically speaking!

The realization that immediately followed hearing that news, though, turned my mood sour pretty quick: “Dammit, I missed the pomp & circumstance of my own graduation! How did I manage to miss such a major life milestone?!?”

And before you go judging me for throwing myself a little pity party over the matter, consider this: the feeling with which I was beset? That was indubitably the same feeling that a bride would have if she, say, missed her own wedding. Or a father, unintentionally missing the birth of his first child.

Like I said–using the big college graduate words that I’m now entitled to use willy-nilly–it was a true “Anti-Climactic Denouement”. What should have been a high point in my life ended up being nothing more than a pathetic let-down…

“Welp, this must be what it feels like to be a criminal running from the law,” I thought to myself–over and over, for the next 4 months. You know, always looking over their shoulder, wondering not if but when The Man was going to come knocking on their door, demanding the justice that was due.

But, in the end, no one ever said anything about me paying back that $453.80 I was so worried about. So…hooray me?

Oh, and I also ended up getting a job a couple months later…that didn’t require a college degree.

So after all that, I could have just graduated in May like every one else, minus all the drama. Go figure.

But on the bright side, when anybody asks me “So, when did you graduate?” I get to flex my hard-earned scholarly vocabulary, humbly replying:

“Well, you see, a kind of a funny thing happened…I’ll spare you the details, though, and just get straight to the point of the story…

“The point of the story is that in January 2004, I retroactively graduated summa cumm laude⁴For the record, I know that it is “c-u-m” with one “m” and not “cumm.” But my Censorship software will blank it our (“—-“) if I spell it like the synonym for jism (male ejaculate). in December 2003, ergo necessitating the caveat explicationibus that it had been conferred expo facto–but, fortunately, not posthumously.”

You know…just your average graduation story.

Every time I tell it though, I can’t help think of this classic scene from The Matrix 2 (also pay attention to around the 8:06 mark of the clip) :

Content created on: 21 January 2022 (Friday)

Don’t be satisfied with those bougie pranks.

If you want to funk with someone’s mind, you gotta play the long game…

I like to think of myself as a prankster at heart–even from a young age and few solid hits, such as wrapping a rubber band around the sink faucet sprayer and ass-blasting my maternal grandma with an ass-ton of water when she turned it on. She was not bemused.

Or the time, when 7-year-old me was forced to hang out in my dad’s semi truck for a boringly long time while he was plowing or harvesting or doing some other farmy-type activity. That was when I took a tarp strap and hooked up the driver’s door to the truck’s horn, so my dad got ass-blasted with an ass-ton of decibels upside his head when he tried to get in the truck a few hours later. Unlike my grandma, he was bemused. Apparently, I get my jokester genes from his side of the family.

I’ve had some other good ones here and there, but if I’m being honest with you–and you know I am–I have actually lead a seriously deprived prank life. Growing up, it seemed that my best ideas would require at least one accomplice, but unfortunately, my ideas were too outside-the-box, genius, and/or dangerous for the comfort of my much more closed-minded acquaintances.

Alternatively, my college friends only seemed to be in a pranking mood when I wasn’t around, so I ended feeling left out and sorry for myself when, time after time, I found myself excluded from all the fun and cheeky shenanigans.

However, as an adult, there was one incident that I was particularly proud of…

During the summer after I graduated from college, one of my roommates at the time, the Beautiful Love Muscle–yes, that BLM–was preparing to get married and move to Colorado Springs at the end of July. Consequently, he would one or two weeks at a time scouting out this new and strange land, occasionally returning to grace us with his presence.

It was while he was gone one of these times that my concurrent co-conspirators, Andrew and Crash–a nickname earned by going over to friends houses only to involuntarily nap on their couches–had the bright idea to toy with BLM’s sanity a bit. And all we needed was a screwdriver…

In our kitchen, the fridge was in the middle of one of the walls, and its door–unlike in most kitchen layouts–did not necessarily need to open to the left or right. It literally swung both ways. In theory at least.

So just for ----- and giggles we decided to swap which side the hinges were on (an obvious consequence of which would be the handle would be on the opposite side). BLM came back and we could barely contain ourselves as we waited to see what type of confusion and delay our handiwork might cause him.

…but it never came. He seemed to be oblivious to our minor rearrangement, like the big doof he could sometimes be. I was rather disappointed that our collective stroke of genius had seemingly gone to waste.

Come end of the summer, when it was time for him to move out and move on with his life, I just had to know if he ever even noticed the difference, so I subtly asked him just that.

“Oh my god! THAT’s what’s been eating at me! Halfway through the summer, I could sense something wasn’t quite right, but I could never quite put my finger on it. I was going ----- insane!”

Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised and infinitely pleased to see that it had worked out even better than I could have imagined…I just had to play the long game.

Anyways, there’s not real point to this story, other than to give you the idea to go switch the fridge door on your mates and then…wait. It will be well worth it. If you’re getting antsy, then maybe you could up your game and switch the door back and forth every week or so. Either way, slowly driving insane the lovable assholes you find yourself cohabiting with will be well worth it.

Happy April Fool’s Day!

Content created on: 1 April 2021 (Thursday)