I’m super pleased that the Dr. Wizard site has continued to attract steady traffic over the past two years. I hope that you continue to read and enjoy the posts, and I plan to leave the site in its current iteration permanently. In the mean time, I’ve moved to Los Angeles and am now working full-time as a writer. So here’s a link to my latest show, BOOKS. Lesson #23 remains below.

LESSON #23: COIN-OPERATED LAUNDRY

          Unless you are either one of the chosen few college students whose mothers do their laundry for them every weekend or one of the rich few college students who can afford a laundry service at two dollars a pound, you will quickly find yourself engaged in a never-ending war of epic proportions. Your nemesis: laundry.  Your only weapon: a roll full of quarters.  

          Now, let’s be clear here.  There is no denying the fact that as an enemy laundry sucks.  It’s clever, like an interior operative agent that uses your own desire to achieve personal hygiene against you.  And worse, it’s indefatigable.  The war against laundry is like a land war with China.  Once the battle has begun, it will never, ever end. 

          You see, behind closed doors, while you’re busy in the library or the gym, your clothes are piling up in the hamper, plotting their attack.  Stealthily, they wait for just the right moment (that Saturday night when all you need is a pair of clean underwear), then overflow the hamper lid and spill out into the rest of the closet, busting open the door and swelling from a small wave of socks into a crushing tidal force of hooded sweatshirts and gym shorts that threatens to overtake your entire dorm room floor. They will never quit; they will never tire.  Laundry, like John McClane, dies hard.

          So, what do you do?  Well, the secret, as in any war, is to know your enemy.  Laundry’s objective isn’t so much to outright destroy you as to slowly bleed you dry, sucking away either your economic or temporal resources.  If you choose to fight the battle via proxy, with a laundry service, your enemy strips away your ability to purchase new CDs, to go out on the weekends, and to take your special friend on dates.  If you choose to man up and fight the battle yourself, laundry seeks to suck away valuable time from studying and playing wiffleball.  You must counteract this evil by fighting smarter, and thus I now give you the rules of college laundry:

          Rule 1: Sort your clothes quickly into two piles – whites, and everything else.  While, in general, I am against any categorizing that involves dividing white populations from things of color, laundry is an important exception.  Miscegenation in the world is a good thing (there’s a reason that babies of mixed race are usually cuter than other children); but miscegenation in your laundry basket will just leave you with a bunch of pink undershirts. 

          Rule 2: Wash your white clothing with warm water, and your dark clothing in cold.  The great myth surrounding laundry is that your clothes do the majority of their shrinking in the dryer.  This, in fact, is not the case. Cold water is the best way to prevent shrinkage.  (Ironic, I know.)

          Rule 3: Make sure you are there to switch your clothes promptly from the washer to the dryer. You know the asshole that leaves his clothes sitting in the washing machine all day? Don’t be that guy – because two things are going to happen if you are.  #1) Your clothes will end up smelling like wet dog, and in a desperate attempt to counteract this fact, you will douse yourself with Axe body-spray.  Unfortunately, this will only lead to your clothes smelling like Sex Panther; and #2) Somebody is going to get pissed off that you’ve frozen the poetics of the laundry room, and they are going to throw your wet, dog-smelling clothes on the floor.  This is entirely your fault.  So either set your watch, or stick it out in the laundry room for thirty minutes and read one of those J-Stor articles you’ve been carrying around (see Lesson #20).  As an added bonus, if you believe Hollywood films, the Laundromat is perhaps the world’s third greatest location to find a date. 

          Rule 4: When drying your clothes, use a fabric softener sheet.  Otherwise, you will be plagued by static electricity and your underwear will feel like it is made out of wool.  So be thankful that you haven’t been born in the nineteenth-century, when everyone’s underwear really was made out of wool, and embrace the fabric softener sheet.

          Rule 5: Fold when you have time.  That’s right.  There’s no hurry here – especially if you purchase only wrinkle-free clothing.  Go out, enjoy the sunshine, and fold your laundry later as you watch reruns of Sex in the City.

          Rule 6: Well, actually…that’s basically it.  Repeat regularly, I suppose.  The bottom line is that laundry should take you no more than two hours a week if you do it right, and during that time you should be able to get a little homework done.  You’ve just got to treat it as if it’s a chronic nuisance, that will never go away, and must be treated with penicillin – (oops, I meant a roll full of quarters).  Following these 6 rules means that while laundry may not be able to be beaten, it can be controlled… 

          …which I guess means it’s not exactly as tough as John McClane.  Seriously, have you watched Die Hard IV?  Just when you think you’ve got him where you want him, he’ll jump a motorcycle into your helicopter.  Can laundry do that?  No, it can’t.  So maybe the better analogy is to compare the chore of doing laundry to John McCain.  Neither seems to be going anywhere, even though they both have a tendency to get old real fast.    

I’m super pleased that the Dr. Wizard site has continued to attract steady traffic over the past two years. I hope that you continue to read and enjoy the posts, and I plan to leave the site in its current iteration permanently. In the mean time, I’ve moved to Los Angeles and am now working full-time as a writer. So here’s a link to my latest show, BOOKS. Lesson #58 remains below.

LESSON #58: WEEKENDS ON THE CHEAP

          Do you remember that old saying about the only two certainties in life being death and taxes?  Well, as far as sayings go – this one’s okay – but I’m not absolutely convinced that it’s entirely true. Sure, yes, I hear your grumblings – these two constructs are, in fact, certainties.  You’ve got to pay your taxes, and if you don’t, the IRS will eventually catch up with you (just ask Al Capone and Barry Bonds).  And, it’s also true that unless you get carried like Elijah to Heaven by chariots of fire, you’re going to die – although, according to the fictional Ricky Bobby, “with a high enough level of income and the advances in modern medicine, it’s not unthinkable to think that some people might live to be 245 or 300″ (we’ll call this latter life extension the Magic Johnson rule – since he now has as many T-Cells as all of Mbabane, Swaziland combined).  But, my contention is that life, while indeed offering us a recurring sit-down with the tax-man and a one-time appointment with the undertaker, is at the same time full of all kinds of other inevitabilities – and the secret (also known as Michael Scott’s Second Rule Business) is to react, adapt, readapt, and act.  Or, in less cryptic, or less stupid terms – life is about preparing for the many inevitabilities that exist, and having a glass jar full of contingency plans to break open when the time is appropriate.

          For instance, despite China’s terrifying record of human rights violations, it is inevitable that at some point in the twenty-first century, they will pass up the United States and become the world’s leading economic superpower .  Why is this inevitable?  Well, the major reason is that they’ve got 5 times as many people as we do – which wouldn’t mean all that much except for the fact that their 1.5 billion citizens are also working considerably harder than we are right now.  As I write this sentence, most of my American readers are on spring break, and most Chinese kids are tucked away in a basement doing organic chemistry experiments.  This is why, after you get back from Cancun, you should get prepared, and START TAKING CHINESE NOW (see Lesson #2).  Likewise, it is equally inevitable that at some point in the next decade, the Chicago Cubs will reverse the Curse of the Billy Goat and, much to my chagrin, will actually win a World Series title.  Why is this the case?  Well, as long as the Cubs continue to dump twice as much money into their payroll as any other National League franchise, it only makes sense that they will eventually be able to buy themselves and the ghost of Harry Carey a championship.  After all, it worked for the Red Sox in 2004 – and there is absolutely no way that the curse of a fucking Billy Goat has anything on Babe Ruth (I’m pretty sure Babe Ruth used to eat Billy Goats for breakfast).  As such, if you, like myself, are a Cardinals fan, it’s important to steel yourselves for this certainty.  I’d recommend ear-plugs, Budweiser, and a Kosuke Fukudome dartboard to help you through what will inevitably be a lousy November.

          Those, however, are just two examples of major life inevitabilities that help round out the death and taxes equation.  And there are plenty more – including the one that we’ll be working with today – the inevitable boredom that will eventually haunt your weekend nights as you make your way through college.  Now, there’s no one path to boredom (just like there’s no one path to enlightenment – Dr. Wizard’s Advice notwithstanding), but, in order to catch as broad a swath of the college population as possible, let’s deal with the inevitable march towards boredom that is typified in the college-drinking scenario – which breaks down like this:

          Freshman Year:  Most students, upon arriving on campus during the fall semester of their freshman year, will be initially overwhelmed by the freedom of escaping from their parents and the fact that there’s no one waiting at home to smell their breath at the end of the night (except, possibly, a member of the opposite sex who has also spent the night gargling with Keystone Light and cigarettes).  As such, there exists an introductory period of drinking euphoria, typified by a progression of swilling cheap beer in dorm rooms, swilling cheap beer at a cousin’s off-campus apartment of some guy who lives on your dorm floor, and swilling cheap beer at fraternity parties during rush and the remainder of your freshman year.  But eventually, this gets old.

          Sophomore Year:  During the summer after your freshman year, you go back home, and some moderately shifty guy named Ricky who hangs out at the community pool tells you that for a hundred bucks, he can get you a fake I.D. – which, you assume, will make your sophomore year awesome.  Upon your return to campus, you are even more excited to find out that all of your friends have also met their own version of Ricky – and you spend your second year at college drinking at bars where the bartenders know you aren’t 21, but let you drink anyway with your crappy Hawaii I.D. because in the inevitable bar-raid that’s coming, your crappy Hawaii I.D. will deflect the necessary amount of blame from them for serving minors.  Win-win-win (except for the fact that your real driver’s license might get revoked for a few months if you get caught).  Even still, this gets boring – and you can’t wait until you turn 21 at some point during your junior year so that you can start going to bars that card more carefully – because campus bars are totally for sophomores.

          Junior Year:  And now the moment of awesomeness finally arrives.  You have your big birthday (hopefully you follow Dr. Wizard’s rules for YOUR TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY – see Lesson #21), and you graduate to the big leagues.  But, about a month after you turn 21, you realize that drinking Jaeger-bombs in a black button-up shirt is just about the same as drinking Keystone Light at an off-campus apartment – and so you decide instead to start wearing a thrift store T-shirt (so you’ll fit in) at the townie-bar (that isn’t really a townie-bar because every March and April it gets invaded by a new crop of barely-21-year-olds – and it actually counts on this for 74% of its annual business – where there might even be some random Hungarian owner who makes you feel like you are part of an insider circle because he gives you shots of homemade moonshine from his “secret distillery” in the back).   And then, this gets old, too – and now you’ve reached a precarious position.  So you stop, terrified, and you ask yourself, “what is it that we’re going to do next year?”

          And thus, now we come back to the inevitable merger of all of the many paths to weekend boredom that are reconvening from the woods.  Our quick journey through a prototypical college drinking lifestyle has been fun – but at the end of the day, you’re still fucking bored – because even Keystone Light, while being terrific fun for a season or two, can hardly fill the entirety of 208 college weekends.  So, it becomes time to look elsewhere.  The problem, however, is that unless your parents have given you an otherworldly allowance, you don’t have much money to do expensive cool things – like go skydiving or go to Paris.  And thus, it’s time to explore other promising alternatives for filling collegiate WEEKENDS ON THE CHEAP.

          So here’s what you should know: all of the things that you can’t wait to do, that sound so grown-up and adult-like, that you assume you’ll do once you have a job and money – well, you can actually do those things for next to nothing while you’re still in college – because most colleges provide them for free.  Concerts?  Movies?  The Symphony?  Plays?  Sporting Events?  Internationally Renowned Speakers?  Yeah – your college and your Student Entertainment Board are bringing these things regularly to your campus.  All you have to do is get off your ass, get out of the Keystone Light mindset, and go attend them.  Now, I’m not trying to tell you that you have to do these things – but the next time you complain about boredom, consider the fact that there’s probably a Nobel-Prize winner lecturing on your campus at some point in the next month, your student-drama department is begging people to come watch them put on a show that you would have to pay $75.00 to see on Broadway, and you can score tickets to see up-and-coming artists who are busy touring college campuses for almost nothing on their way to becoming the next big thing (during the same week of my senior year, I once saw Jack Johnson, John Mayer, and Dave Chappelle – for a total cost of ten dollars – and all of them blew up in popularity inside of the next 12 months).  You’ve just got to commit to taking advantage of the free entertainment.

          Now, while I’d strongly recommend that you do these things while you don’t have to pay for them, I understand that sometimes it can be difficult, for some unknown reason, to go watch a movie at the campus movie theater.  Still, if none of these options excite you, there are still other ways to have fun during college weekends on the cheap – including, if you’re stuck in the Keystone Light mindset, innovative ways to drink.  For instance, have you ever tried putting on your winter coat, setting up a card-table outside, and playing drinking War in the middle of February?  Or loaded a backpack with Keystone Light and gone for a ten-mile hike with your friends at the town-golf course?  Just a couple of ideas to mix things up during that long senior year – but you should also try the Symphony, because it’s cooler than you think.  Sort of like McLovin – who, incidentally, also had a crappy Hawaii I.D.

I’m super pleased that the Dr. Wizard site has continued to attract steady traffic over the past two years. I hope that you continue to read and enjoy the posts, and I plan to leave the site in its current iteration permanently. In the mean time, I’ve moved to Los Angeles and am now working full-time as a writer. So here’s a link to my latest show, BOOKS. Lesson #57 remains below.

LESSON #57: READ FOR FUN

          Well, I should probably start today’s lesson with a slight disclaimer – I’m having an undeniably strange day.  Last night, I woke up screaming from a nightmare where Michael Dukakis, no joke, was trying to kill me.  Now, I haven’t had a nightmare since 1999, and I haven’t given Michael Dukakis much serious thought since George Bush the Elder was sworn into office ten years earlier than that – but that’s not all.  This morning, I started crying in the gym while I was lifting weights because I got all choked up with happiness about a random episode of the incredibly geeky Battlestar Galactica that I happened to watch earlier in the day while I was eating breakfast – and I had to go hide for a few minutes in the locker room!  Literally, and it might have something to do with the incredibly intense Jeopardy study sessions that I’ve been undertaking for the last few weeks, my emotions are cycling faster than Charlie’s during the scene in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia where he’s eating the steak in preparation for his underground street-fight.  Now, I suppose this phenomenon could be a case of the normal spring fever I always feel as spring break approaches, or I suppose it’s also possible that some evil hobbit has switched out my multi-vitamins with Sweet Dee’s fictional steroid, “Mucho Macho.” Regardless, it feels like my cerebellum is on Batman, The Ride! at Six-Flags.

          So, maybe I’m hallucinating – and because I don’t want to embarrass anybody, I’ll leave this anonymous – but I just read two business school admissions essays from a couple of GMAT students (I have a couple dozen in my total stack – so again, this is anonymous) that I swear were written by fourth-graders.  I mean, they were terrible, and full of the misspelled words, incomplete sentences, and horribly illogical phrasings that most of my classmates left behind when they graduated from Mrs. Butler’s class at Bennett Elementary school – and these essays were supposed to represent the polished writing of college graduates.  Keeping that in mind, forget everything else I’ve ever claimed was the number one problem with the college students of today (granted, the fact that college students don’t date and get wildly inebriated are still troublesome) – and focus on this truth: as undergraduates, you have got to start reading more – because it’s clear that that’s where the problem lies with these future business leaders of America whose essays I just completed grading.

           Listen to me when I say that there is absolutely no substitute for what reading can do for you intellectually and emotionally.  And despite my occupation as a teacher of classic literary fiction, I’m not talking about just reading Faulkner or Melville for class – or, as my good friend Matt advocated in his post a few weeks ago, James Joyce.  I’m saying that you need to crack open books in your spare time – I hear good things about Harry Potter and Twilight – and you need to read them, maybe even in lieu of doing your homework – because you’ve got to get into something where you begin concentrating on the story, where you find yourself losing track of time because of the pleasure you’re experiencing, and where you can allow your subconscious mind to process the way that the words in the English language are supposed to be put together.  Unless you read seriously (and by this I mean read things that are fun), and enjoy the process, you will never be able to write well.  And why is this important?  Well, despite the advancement of technology and the growing need in our country for science and math related laborers, in every profession you can possibly undertake, you need to be able to write down your findings clearly and logically – and you will never succeed very well in any profession unless you can do so.  Hell, even Jose Canseco was able to write a pretty good book – and his primary job was to take “Mucho Macho” and bash a baseball.

           Now, anybody who has read Dr. Wizard’s Advice to this point knows that I love television – and I think that the small screen is a wonderful venue for storytelling – but as Aristotle argues in the Nichomachean Ethics, “all things in moderation.”  There’s something about being forced to construct your own mental images that raises your ability to creatively problem solve and imagine new ways of processing information, and reading definitely is the one and only way to heighten your powers of lengthy concentration in a world where you are constantly bombarded with images meant to splinter your attention span.  In order for your brain to undergo this transformation back to its more powerful state, however, you’ve got to crack open the books – John Grisham, Michael Crichton, Stephen King – whatever works for you.  If you do this, I promise that you will be rewarded – on both the personal and professional scales of gratification.  Also, it will probably make you a better viewer of television, in that you’ll make more powerful and lasting associations with the story arcs of each series you watch.

            Last year, the Scholastic Corporation released a study citing the fact that only 21 percent of students 17 and older thought that reading for fun was important.  This probably explains the fact that only 21 percent of Americans can write a simple business letter.  The problem is that people don’t think they like to read – which is mainly a by-product of teachers in my position quizzing them over Faulkner and James Joyce.  But there are a whole lot of reading options out there, and everybody can find something that will help them.  Still, as Hilary Clinton said, “it takes a village,” because as John Donne said, “no man is an island.”  You’ve got to help me in the revolution to reverse this non-reading trend.  So, your assignment for spring break is as follows: bring a few books with you to the beach.  Read one yourself, and pass the rest out to your friends.  There will still be plenty of time left over at the end of the day to drink margaritas and meet new co-eds at Club La Vila– in moderation.

I’m super pleased that the Dr. Wizard site has continued to attract steady traffic over the past two years. I hope that you continue to read and enjoy the posts, and I plan to leave the site in its current iteration permanently. In the mean time, I’ve moved to Los Angeles and am now working full-time as a writer. So here’s a link to my latest show, BOOKS. Lesson #56 remains below.

LESSON #56: A REAL DOPE WRAPPER

          So, to get us started today, here’s a funny little story…

          In my hometown of Mattoon, Illinois, there used to be this restaurant called D & W.  It was one of those home-style sit-down-to-eat places, kind of like a local version of a Perkins, where the kitchen served Biscuits and Gravy, and Chicken and Dumplings, and Beef Manhattans.  Unfortunately, D & W went out of business two years ago, but, up until that moment, D & W was a virtual hot-spot for the 65-and-over crowd.  Every day of the week, regardless of the season, hundreds of these blue-haired old widows and widowers would roll into the D & W parking lot at 5:30 in the morning in their Buick Park Avenues and Cadillac Sevilles, and they’d perform a ritualistic eight-hour mating and gossip ritual that involved copious amounts of coffee, dozens of hands of bridge, and chicken salad sandwiches.  Believe me when I say that what Prey is to the 20-something Los Angeles night-club scene, D & W replicated for the geriatric corn-belt crew.

          Anyway, back in early 2006, my sister was home from St. Louis for the weekend, and I drove over from Charleston to meet my folks and grandparents at D & W for lunch.  I probably had chicken-fried steak, or something equally awesome – but I can’t exactly remember.  What I can remember, however, is becoming fascinated, as I filled myself with gravy, by the conversation of the two old guys at the table behind us.  It turns out that one of them had gone the previous night on a date to go see Brokeback Mountain – but he had no idea what the movie was about before he got there.  Evidently, he just thought it was going to be a cowboy movie, and he picked the film (on his turn in the dating rotation), because he liked Westerns.  Oh God – I wish I could recreate the awkwardness of that conversation for you; it was one of the wildest things I’ve ever heard!  The man wanted to leave the movie, but somehow couldn’t, because his girlfriend really liked it, and he decided to be a gentleman – and just the confusion in his voice the next morning was incredible.  “It was a fag movie, Walter!  About these two fag cowboys!  But…it was kind of good…once you got past all the gross stuff.”  I’m sure I haven’t done the moment justice – but just try to picture it.  It was surreal.

          Now, what’s my point with this introductory story?  Well, certainly it’s not to deride old people for being homophobic.  They grew up in a different era, and this man’s confusion, and his decision to stay throughout the entire picture, was actually kind of open-minded when you stop to think about the context.  Rather, my point is that sometimes in life you just have to accept the fact that you can’t know everything in advance, and in those situations you have to roll with the punches.  Believe it or not, this post today represents that exact situation for many of the site’s readers.

          You see, ever since I released the full list of lessons back in October with the “Real Dope Rapper” / “Real Dope Wrapper” wordplay, my friends have been hassling me about the topic of this specific piece of advice.  And I guess this makes sense, because when you look at the full list, it’s a little difficult to tell exactly what this post is going to be about.  Mostly, I blame this confusion on the general ambiguity of the English language, where so many words double as multiple parts of speech.  Is “dope” a noun or an adjective?  Is “wrapper” a verb or a noun?  Well, now it’s time for the grand unveiling of what lies behind the pearl-studded shirt, spurs, and cowboy boots.  So…today’s post has absolutely nothing to do with a magical elf who explains the proper method of Christmas present wrapping.  Unlike Pam Beesly’s advice to Roy in Season 3 of The Office, I have no interest in telling you that if you’re using more than 3 pieces of tape when wrapping a present then you’re doing something wrong.  Nor is today’s post about zig-zags.  Obviously, Dr. Wizard can make no official endorsement regarding the choice between clear and white papers.  Instead, the “real dope wrapper” referred to in the title of this lesson is the Jimmy – and the lesson is about why you should use one if you’re going to have irresponsible sex with multiple partners – like Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.

          Now, my agenda here isn’t to insult your intelligence.  I know that most of you, in your moments of rational thought, are completely aware of the reasons that having unprotected sex is a bad idea.  For one thing, unless you have Magic Johnson money, or a magic Johnson, AIDS is still a terminal, not a chronic, disease.  For another, the average human being urinates eight times a day – which is eight more times a day than I would want to feel a burning sensation in my lower extremities.  And finally, babies are a terrifying responsibility.  I have plenty of friends who have waited until they were married for half-a-dozen years, with stable high-paying jobs and strong equity in their homes, to have their first child – and just watching them struggle with the burdens of parenthood (late night crying, constant feeding, the inability to stay out past 7:00) is enough to convince me that raising a human infant must be nearly impossible for a 20-year-old single parent who is simultaneously enrolled in college and working a $12 an hour part-time job.  You’re just short-changing both the future of your progeny and your own future if you think this is something you can handle.

          Nevertheless, millions of college students, who in their sober moments of reflection know better, will choose to have unprotected sex this year – because all responsible thoughts aside, the argument against wearing a condom is one of the most persuasive imaginable – that is, “it just feels better without one.”  But trust me when I say that this sneaky devil of an argument is one that you must fight against vigilantly.  Why trade nine minutes of drunken bliss for nine months of pregnancy if you’re not ready?  I promise you, if you do this, you’ll live to regret it as being one of the worst trades of all time.  AIDS for a midnight romp with a random girl from the bar?  That’s like the trade between Charlotte and Los Angeles in the 1996 NBA draft that sent Kobe Bryant to the Lakers for a washed-up Vlade Divac.

          So what’s my argument?  Well, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have sex – because I don’t really believe that, and I think the “wait until marriage” argument is naïve at best.  I do think, however, you’d be best served by at least waiting for awhile, by only having monogamous sex with one partner to whom you are committed at a time, by taking birth control seriously, and by being regularly tested for STDs before each new sexual encounter.  But if you’re not going to do this, at least wear a condom so you don’t jeopardize your future.  Sure, occasionally life will throw you an unexpected wild pitch, and you’ve got to roll with the punches – but it doesn’t mean you have to step into the batter’s box every night with Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn.  That’s just asking to be beaned in the head by a 100 mile an hour fastball.  So, use protection: a batting helmet if you’re crazy enough to be playing a baseball game against the fictional Major League Cleveland Indians, and a condom if you’re crazy enough to dip your wick into some unknown waxy candle.  Just like Pam Beesly, the condom is a “real dope wrapper,” and when it’s not busy messing with Dwight, at least it does some secretarial work.

I’m super pleased that the Dr. Wizard site has continued to attract steady traffic over the past two years. I hope that you continue to read and enjoy the posts, and I plan to leave the site in its current iteration permanently. In the mean time, I’ve moved to Los Angeles and am now working full-time as a writer. So here’s a link to my latest show, BOOKS. Lesson #55 remains below.

LESSON #55: A REAL DOPE RAPPER

          I think that one of my mother’s greatest fears with this whole Dr. Wizard Creative Group business – besides the fear that I will somehow legitimize the f-bomb as an everyday article of speech for you, America’s undergraduates – is that I will suddenly wake up one morning and decide that I’m going to drop out of the academic game for good to follow the wild-goose chase life of being a penniless writer.  Now, to be fair, it’s not exactly like this fear isn’t grounded in a solid basis of precedent that can be traced throughout my early 20s.  You see, up until the age of 24, I had a nice, consistent penchant for leaving respectable educational institutions and employers to chase down wild dreams with very little planning and almost no preparation.  But I consider these all learning experiences, and they’ve led me to where I am today.  Still, for a little humor at my own expense, let’s do a quick run-down:

          In the summer of 2000, I lived with three friends in an awesome condo at Fort Myers Beach, Florida, where we had secured good jobs waiting tables at a retirement home for former United States Congressmen and captains of American industry.  These guys took us out to play golf, and one of them, who used to be a member of the Red Sox, let us borrow his boat.  This place we worked at was incredibly posh – and we made great money.  But six weeks into the job, I decided that it was interfering (and this is going to sound crazy!) with my non-existent rap career, and so I quit the job, used all of my savings on a Yamaha Keyboard and beat-making equipment, and settled down to write rap lyrics full time.  The rest of the summer was full of freestyle battles at this somewhat shady club called The Purple Platinum, bar fights whenever my friend Striegel decided that he would dance provocatively with another dude’s girl to a Prince song, and beat-boxing sessions with our neighbor Jimmy, a crack-dealing, Gold Gloves boxing champion.  When I came back to school in the fall, my rap career had made no visible progress due to my decision to quit work – and I was broke.  But this didn’t teach me my lesson.

          In the fall of 2001, fresh off a study abroad semester in London and 12 credit hours short of graduating Summa Cum Laude from Truman State, I decided that I no longer wanted to be a lawyer, and dropped out of school to work as a bartender and write a novel.  Once I quit school, however, and sat around the fraternity house all day staring at my computer, I found that I no longer had any motivation to finish my book.  This also may have had something to do with the fact that the first novel I was writing was just horribly shitty.  In fact, I wouldn’t let somebody read it now if they offered to pay me a thousand dollars.  But again, this initial foray into novel-writing and subsequent failure didn’t exactly teach me my lesson.  So let’s take a look at what some might call my final great creativity-bred life failure:

          In the spring of 2003, now back in school at Eastern Illinois University, again 12 credit hours short of graduating with a new degree in English, I started a band – Hardly Portland.  Shortly thereafter, I dropped out of school to take a job selling cars so that I could focus my attention on promoting my band full time.  In retrospect, this seems like perhaps the dumbest decision in the world.  But I followed that one up with another that may have been even stupider.  You see, when the job of selling cars got in the way of my band work, I proceeded to quit it too, purchased a 15-passenger van, and dedicated myself fully to songwriting.  Again, I quickly ran out of money.  Luckily, this time, however, I went back to school for good.  And now I’ve got a job where I have both the financial flexibility to not have to worry about rent while I’m working on music or writing at night, and the temporal flexibility to spend every Tuesday playing guitar all day if I want to – as long as I also take care of my teaching responsibilities on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  It took me awhile to get there – and I had to stop and restart a couple of times along the way, but ultimately, for at least the last five years, I’ve become a finisher – and have been able to actually enjoy things like seeing my first rock musical produced.  Mostly, this was because as I was working on the project, I wasn’t constantly worrying about how I was going to pay the rent.

          Still, when I call to tell my parents about all of the exciting things that are currently happening with Dr. Wizard’s Advice, I understand their hesitation to embrace the moment, and completely understand the fact that my mom always follows up by asking me whether or not I’ve been working on my dissertation.  My parents are deathly afraid that I still have the latent crazy-gene buried deep inside of me – and I can’t really blame them.  But, hopefully, this will calm your fears, Mom: YES, I’ve been working on my dissertation, it should be finished pretty soon – and we’ll ultimately let the editors decide about the number of f-bombs in the book.

          You see, while it took me awhile, (and I think in a lot of respects that time I spent drifting has made me a more focused person – see Lesson #53), eventually I learned a very valuable lesson about the way to appropriately follow my crazy-ass dreams – and I’d like to share that lesson with you today.  If you want to do something creative or risky with your life, the best way to transition out of your current position and into a more non-traditional one is to continue working hard at both careers until your second one provides reliable income.  If you’ve got the talent and the desire, you can be anything you want to be in this world – a fashion designer, a concert pianist, or a ruthless venture capitalist.  But it takes years to learn the ins and outs of each of those ventures.  It’s going to take lots of practice, and it’s going to take money in the mean time.

          If you’re in college at Loyola in Chicago, and you believe your band, The Jesuits, has an incredibly bright future, don’t drop out of school and move to New York to pursue your dreams – pursue them in Chicago.  Why?  Well, for one thing, New York’s really freaking expensive, and for another, you’ve already got the beginnings of a built-in fan-base in your current population of friends who will let you know whether or not you’re any good.  As you work your way up from the Beat Kitchen to the Cubby Bear to playing shows at the Metro, you can build a local army of followers who will be a valuable asset in gauging your progress.  If your band is good enough to play the Metro, and if you’re sending out demos that include a press-piece about the shows you’re playing where you’re drawing 2000 fans, I think you’ll catch the attention of an A & R guy.  The secret is to not give up your day job – until the time is right – because most bands don’t make it, and it’s good to have a back-up plan.  Life, like New York, is also pretty freaking expensive.

          At this point, it should probably come as no surprise that I love the movie 8 Mile – that’s where the title of this lesson comes from.  But you know the best part of the movie (besides the battle-scenes)?  It’s at the very end, where after defeating Papa Doc at the Shelter, Eminem goes back to work at the stamping plant.  He’s following the two-worlds approach that I strongly advocate in this lesson – waiting to make his big move until the appropriate time arises, and all the while laying the groundwork for that move while keeping his day job.  The bottom line is that life is short, and it’s silly not to follow your dreams.  If you just let them die, you’ll eventually become that old, middle-management dude who’s just bitter and awful (like the Will Ferrell character who proudly screams “I drive a Dodge Stratus!!!”) – but you’ve got to cover your bases.  One of the unfortunate aspects of life is that as humans we must occasionally eat, and there’s nothing that’s really all that romantic about being broke, even if you are a real dope rapper.

I’m super pleased that the Dr. Wizard site has continued to attract steady traffic over the past two years. I hope that you continue to read and enjoy the posts, and I plan to leave the site in its current iteration permanently. In the mean time, I’ve moved to Los Angeles and am now working full-time as a writer. So here’s a link to my latest show, BOOKS. Lesson #54 remains below.

LESSON #54: THE HOURS BEFORE NOON

          So there’s this book that came out in 2001 called The Corrections, right?  It’s written by this snarky dip-shit genius named Jonathan Franzen, and it, like Ron Burgundy, is kind of a big deal around these parts for a couple of reasons.  First of all, when the book was released, it was hailed as the greatest novel of the twenty-first century – which, at the time, I thought may have been just a tad fucking presumptuous considering the fact that “the century” was only about eight months old.  (There was also, you see, a brief window in January 2001 when Save the Last Dance was the highest grossing movie of the twenty-first century – because it’s not that hard to be the prettiest girl at the ball when you’re the only one there – no offense, Julia Stiles.)  Yet, regarding their aggressive prediction, time has proven many of these over-eager critics correct – The Corrections won the National Book Award in 2002, and it’s still at the top of most people’s “best novels of the century list.”  So, that’s reason number one why the book is kind of a big deal – and it’s the more general one.

          The other reason the book is specifically important around these parts is because Franzen is from St. Louis – and has been unafraid in each of his first three novels to let the world know just how much he despises his unfortunate Midwestern upbringing.  Obviously, it must have been tough on poor Jonathan growing up in the horribly underprivileged upper-middle class suburb of Webster Groves – where outrageous property taxes fund one of the nicest school districts in the country.  Throw in the fact that poor Jonathan kind of looks like a movie star and you can just imagine the Hell that must have been his childhood.  D-Bag.  But I guess you can run around saying pretty much whatever you want when you write a book that’s so good you can turn down an offer to be on the Oprah Winfrey show because you don’t need her endorsement to top the best-seller list – even though your chosen genre, literary fiction, typically sells about as well as a Derek Jeter jersey in Boston.  Anyway, I’m getting off point with this rampage.

          Where I really want to go is here: there’s an abominable, but brilliant professor character in The Corrections named Chip – and we are told by Franzen early in the novel that his academic success is due to his diligent work every morning while his graduate school peers were sleeping off their “Galloise” hangovers until noon (I believe this is a rather high-falutin’ way to say that they had drunk too much French wine the night before).  And this essentially echoes a maxim that I have seen repeated many times in other college advice books: there is great untapped potential for work in the hours before noon.  Now, according to this ideology – you should all start setting your alarms for 6:30 in the morning, take a brisk shower when you wake up, eat a hearty breakfast in the cafeteria, and be studying in the library by 7:45.  Still, while this may work for some students, biology tells us that for most collegiate-age humans, this philosophy is more or less bullshit.  There is absolutely nothing that says you need to do your work in the mornings if you want to succeed in college, nor is there any scientific proof that you will do better work if you work in the mornings; there is only a law that says this: you have to do your work if you want to succeed in college – and it doesn’t really matter when.

          My father, whom I love dearly, swears that as I grow older I will become more of a morning person, and I will learn to enjoy the brisk pace of the early morning work-day.  I don’t think he’s slept past 5:30 in the last ten years, and neither has my grandfather.  Nevertheless, I’m getting awfully close to thirty years old – and, even though I write professionally for a living, I can’t seem to craft a coherent sentence before noon.  So my schedule is this: I wake up around 9:00, take the dog for a walk, eat a little breakfast, check my email, watch a few episodes of The West Wing, go for a run, and finally, I’m ready to work by the time the sun is directly overhead.  I then put in ten hours at my computer desk banging these 26 little keys (40 if you count the numbers, the comma, the period, the apostrophe, and the dash – I fucking love the dash), and then I pop in The Office and watch a couple of episodes of that.  I’m like a factory worker who works the second shift – because that’s when my brain functions – and, just as my father constantly proposes that he’d have no problem divorcing downstate Illinois from his arch-nemesis, Chicago, I’d have no problem divorcing the concept of morning.  I’d get twice as much done in life if every day had two afternoons.

          So, here’s my concluding point.  The hours before noon are no more or less important than any other hours of the day, just as no one member of Menudo was any more or less important than the others.  If you’re the type of person who naturally functions well in the morning, then do your work in the morning, and if you’re the type of person who doesn’t understand how Regis and Kelly wake up that chipper every dawn, then do your work late at night.  Just remember to do your work – and you can tell those college guidebooks, and Jonathan Franzen, to go to Hell.

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          Editor’s Note: Today’s post now officially concludes our week of jubilee – and like Pedro Martinez in that fateful ALCS 5 years ago, we are officially out of gas.  It was, however, a super-productive week!!!  As promised, we brought you five main-page posts, and if you check out the tabs on the right, you’ll notice that we’ve added new material in almost every section (including an awesome “WWFF” post on The Transporter that works the titles of sixteen John Cusack movies into a 500-word essay).  Thanks so much folks, we’ll see you next week.    

          - A Guest Post by Third Bass

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          I suppose I should start with the admission that this post is really just an amalgamation and extension of two Dr. Wizard directives for collegians: “Buy Organic Apples” and “Box Wine Isn’t Real.” Nevertheless, since my posts are geared for those of you who have recently graduated and are already well on your way to purchasing your first Volvo, I think it’s a good idea for me to add my two cents about the ways you can learn to love grown-up food. You see, what Dr. Wizard doesn’t cover in those two posts – because let’s face it, dorm food consists of three to four main staples (Ramen Noodles, Easy Mac, Pizza, and the Salisbury Steak that is being served in the dining hall that day) – is the art of culinary exploration. And once you’ve mastered the concept of purchasing produce that hasn’t been sprayed with poisonous pesticides and wine that comes in some form of glass container, and once you have matriculated from the dormitory to a living-space with a kitchen, it’s time to move one step further and to start enjoying the full spectrum of flavors, textures, and cultures that food can offer.

          As I write this post, I’m lunching on a homemade grilled Red Snapper with Black Olives, Capers, and Tomatoes while washing it down with a glass of Montes’s 2007 Malbec from the D.O. Colchagua Valley, Chile. Wait…actually…that’s a lie. Right now, I’m staring at a horribly charred piece of fish that was supposed to be a grilled Red Snapper – and consoling myself with a whole bottle of Malbec – because instead of paying attention in the kitchen, I was typing the previous sentence. So, lesson number one – when you spend good money on expensive fish at Whole Foods, and are about to tell people why they should be a better cook: don’t burn the fish.

          Now, staring at this disaster, I know that I’ll have to open the fridge, and let me tell you, last night’s Chinese take-out reheated at 1200 watts for three minutes, and that two-liter of flat Cherry Coke suddenly look downright pathetic. And there are a few reasons for my completely explicable change in perception. First, because take-out sucks; and second, because someone else put in the work. Normally, I’m okay with a little delegating from time to time, but like I mentioned in the previous post about reading Ulysses, there is sometimes little that is more satisfying than completing an enormous and potentially overwhelming project. Fish, of course, shouldn’t be overwhelming – but nevertheless, my feeling of completion satisfaction has now been mangled. In this particular instance, because my dialing a phone last night and tipping a delivery guy was exponentially easier than preparing a meal for myself – and now, because I have to re-live that capitulation. Still, I’ll survive to fight another day – once I’ve cleaned the charred black gunk out of my frying pan.

          Where does this leave us? Well, I’m imploring you to start learning to cook. Sure, there will be some occasional disasters, but in the long run, you’ll be thankful that you’ve tried. Instead of watching American Idol auditions for two hours with a microwaved Lean Cuisine, we should all go to the market more often, get our hands on some fresh produce, head home, put on our Sam Cooke records, and enjoy the act of experimentation and creation in our horribly underused kitchens. If we do this, by the time Portrait of a Legend: Sam Cooke 1951-1964 hits track 16, “Bring it on Home to Me,” we’ll be ready to sit down with our sweetheart to enjoy the fruits of our labor.

          So tonight, why not head out to Borders to peruse their culinary arts section? Grab a coffee or tea from the café and hunker down for a couple hours after finding a cookbook you like, one that is simple enough that you’ll actually try some of the recipes featured in it. Personally, I really enjoy cookbooks that have a narrative accompaniment to the recipes so that I can learn something about the indigenous ingredients, traditional preparation, and local customs. This is also the reason that I watch No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain – well, that, and I like his snarky, no bullshit attitude – which, by the way, he would have turned on me in a heartbeat for trying to type this post while I should have been relaxing and preparing my lunch.

          And now, if I’ve inspired you at all to attempt a more intimate relationship with grown-up food, here’s a website to get you started.

          Editor’s Note: One of the unique little quirks about the way my brain works is that I tend to have an almost compulsive need to remember inconsequential details and lists.  As such, I am particularly prone to lock into my memory phrases that expressly dictate something in the format of “Remember the…”

          For example, because my junior high History textbooks told me I should “remember the Alamo” and “remember the Maine”…I do – in strange ways and at bizarre times.  Likewise, because that crazy guy in the Guy Fawkes mask in the movie V for Vendetta asked us to “remember, remember the Fifth of November”…I do – and every November Fifth I contemplate blowing up the Houses of Parliament (note to MI-6: That’s a joke!).  Finally, because there’s a somewhat obscure call in the background of the chorus after the first verse of 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” to “Remember February Eleventh”…I do – although I don’t have a clue why Curtis Jackson (that’s what his elementary school teachers called him) wants us to remember this date.  Is it his mother’s birthday?  The day his best friend got shot?  The day Get Rich or Die Trying was released in movie theaters?  I’ve got no idea.  Nevertheless, today, we’ll “remember February Eleventh” in the following fashion, because 50 Cent wants us to:

           Early in October, in the comments section of Lesson #19, Matt ruminated on what the anti-list of lessons would look like.  That is, what if, instead of eating an organic apple on that first day of class, I would have been eating one of those mythic Halloween apples that an old witch had put a razor blade in?  Well, of course, I would have been a little pissed at the world, and would have blogged in a completely different style.  Below, Matt has extended his imaginary list of lessons from the alternate-universe blog, which he affectionately calls “How to Suck at Life,” through the current Lesson (#53) for your viewing pleasure.  I have to admit, just reading some of these titles against the ideas expressed in the original posts makes me smile, and I hope they’ll make you smile (or, on occasion, laugh out loud) as well.  Also, as an added bonus, I’ve embedded some of the anti-post-titles with links to things that I think are related and/or funny/sad.  Mostly, I did this because I was afraid that if I didn’t, Fifty would call me a “Wanksta.” 

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THE ANTI-LIST OF LESSONS

          - compiled by Third Bass

Lesson #1: Buy Organic Apples

          Anti-Lesson #1: Beef – It’s What’s Rotting Your Colon (or, Did You Want Fries with That?)

Lesson #2: Start Taking Chinese Now

          Anti-Lesson #2: Ebonics, Because Standard English is so 19^th Century

Lesson #3: Think Bronze Medal

          Anti-Lesson #3: Mediocrity – When Spectatorship Becomes an Olympic Sport

Lesson #4: Recycle

          Anti-Lesson #4: Litter (or British Women, while Often Attractive, Have Bad Teeth)

Lesson #5: Crazy Roommates = Great Stories

          Anti-Lesson #5: Crazy Roommates in Your Fifth Floor Walk-Up (or, Rent Control Was So Not Worth It)

Lesson #6: Ask About Extra Credit

          Anti-Lesson #6: Ask About Extra Credit

Lesson #7: Bridge the Parental Divide

          Anti-Lesson #7: Book Your Appearance on The Jerry Springer Show Early

Lesson #8: Sports Gambling Is Dangerous

           Anti-Lesson #8: How to Lose Like a Winner at the Track, by Charles Bukowski

Lesson #9: Watch Dead Man on Campus

           Anti-Lesson #9: Watch CSI Miami – YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!

Lesson #10: Ditch Your Desktop

           Anti-Lesson #10: Learning to Type is for Girls

Lesson #11: Embrace Diversity (or, The Old, Old Wooden Ship)

           Anti-Lesson #11: Make Sure the Cotton Used in your KKK Robe was Picked by “Authentic Negroes”

Lesson #12: Credit Cards

          Anti-Lesson #12: Paying Off Mastercard with Visa (or, Extending Your Credit Indefinitely)

Lesson #13: Stop Wearing Cologne to Class

          Anti-Lesson #13: Gold Chains, T-Tops, and Old Spice – A Few of My Favorite Things

Lesson #14: Procrastination

          Anti-Lesson #14: Doing Absolutely Nothing At All (and Doing It and Doing It Well)

Lesson #15: Go On Dates

         Anti-Lesson #15: Making a Scene with a Magazine (or, Joe 6-Pack and a Dial-Up Modem)

Lesson #16: Consider Phlebas

         Anti-Lesson #16: Huh?

Lesson #17: Reconsider Math and Science

         Anti-Lesson #17: All the Cool Kids Major in Phys-Ed

Lesson #18: Box Wine Isn’t Real

         Anti-Lesson #18: If Box-Wine Isn’t Real, What’s All this Stuff in My Refrigerator?

Lesson #19: Vote

         Anti-Lesson #19: One Vote Doesn’t Make a Difference (or, Will It Really Matter if Barack Shoots this Guy?)

Lesson #20: How to Write an “A” Paper

         Anti-Lesson #20: The Best Place to Download an “A” Paper on the Cheap

Lesson #21: Your 21^st Birthday

         Anti-Lesson #21: Your 21^st Birthday – Leave the Kids in the Car while You’re at the Nudie Bar

Lesson #22: One Tree Hill (or, The Beautiful People)

         Anti-Lesson #22: Have You Ever Seen an Ugly Actress? (or, You’re Not an Actress)

Lesson #23: Coin-Operated Laundry

         Anti-Lesson #23: Dry Cleaning: Because it Harms the Environment and Costs more than New Shirts

Lesson #24: Kids with BMWs

          Anti-Lesson #24: Kids with BMWs (Are Sleeping with Your Girlfriend)

Lesson #25: Awesome Halloween Costumes

         Anti-Lesson #25: How to Get Roofied at a Halloween Party

Lesson #26: Write In Your Textbooks

          Anti-Lesson #26: Announce Your Ignorance to the World, One Highlighted Sentence at a Time

Lesson #27: To Rush, or Not To Rush

         Anti-Lesson #27: Why You Should Pay for Friends

Lesson #28: Borrow Less Money

        Anti-Lesson #28: Take Out Massive Student Loans to Support Your Drinking Habit (or, The Guy on the Left’s Game Plan)

Lesson #29: Step Outside the University Box

         Anti-Lesson #29: Trigger-Happy Crack-Heads and Drunken Townies – Your Misunderstood Neighbors

Lesson #30: Subscribe to the Economist

          Anti-Lesson #30: Subscribe to the Weekly World News

Lesson #31: Your High School Sweetheart

          Anti-Lesson #31: Your One-Night Stand and the Miracle that is Penicillin

Lesson #32: Keeping the Faith

          Anti-Lesson #32: Everybody needs to Believe in Something (I Believe I’ll Have another Beer)

Lesson #33: Television vs. The Good Earth

          Anti-Lesson #33: Check Out Romany Malco’s Rap-Group Performing “Victim of the Ghetto”

Lesson #34: Visit the Gymnasium

          Anti-Lesson #34: How to Inconspicuously Stare at Hot People While They Work Out

Lesson #35: Cheaters Never Prosper

          Anti-Lesson #35: How to Cheat on Your Significant Other and Get Away With It

Lesson #36: Become a Philanthropist

         Anti-Lesson #36: Become a Father Against Mothers Against Drunk Driving

Lesson #37: Become a Philatelist

          Anti-Lesson #37: Become a Philatelist

Lesson #38: The World Needs Electricians

          Anti-Lesson #38: The World Needs Guidance Counselors who Counsel Against Becoming an Electrician

Lesson #39: Cocaine = Not the Best Idea

          Anti-Lesson #39: Heroin – I Guess a Little Experimentation Never Hurt Anyone (or, Be Like Pete Doherty)

Lesson #40: Engage in At Least One Massive (Harmless) Prank

          Anti-Lesson #40: Engage in At Least One Massive Prank

Lesson #41: Meet Mavis Beacon

          Anti-Lesson #41: Purchase Voice Recognition Software

Lesson #42: Use Your Camera

          Anti-Lesson #42: Record Concerts on Your Camera Phone in 30-Second Increments

Lesson #43: Exams Made Easy

          Anti-Lesson #43: Pulling Consecutive All-Nighters (or, D = Diploma)

Lesson #44: You Know Who Doesn’t Suck? Designated Dave

          Anti-Lesson #44: Aspire to Be the Best Drunk Driver on Campus (or, Practice Makes Perfect)

Lesson #45: Travel In Packs

          Anti-Lesson #45: Why the “It’ll Never Happen to Me” Mentality Makes So Much Sense

Lesson #46: Don’t Be Afraid of Counseling Services

          Anti-Lesson #46: Bottling Your Emotions for Later

Lesson #47: Road Trip

          Anti-Lesson #47: Watch the Travel Channel – It’s Safer and Cheaper than Getting Out There

Lesson #48: How to Get Into a Closed Class

          Anti-Lesson #48: The Secret: How Positive Thinking will Get You Whatever You Want (by Rhonda Byrne)

Lesson #49: Them Smokers Will Test Ya

          Anti-Lesson #49: If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em

Lesson #50: Find the Nook

          Anti-Lesson #50: Find the Bar that Doesn’t Card and Cryptically Refer to It as “The Nook”

Lesson #51: The Entrepreneurial Skill Set (Little Boxes)

           Anti-Lesson #51: Set Your Goals High (or, Mediocrity!)

Lesson #52: Guitar vs. Guitar Hero

           Anti-Lesson #52: Digital Rock Bands Never Break Up

Lesson #53: Taking a Year Off

           Anti-Lesson #53: Taking a Decade Off Will Make You a Better Procrastinator 

I’m super pleased that the Dr. Wizard site has continued to attract steady traffic over the past two years. I hope that you continue to read and enjoy the posts, and I plan to leave the site in its current iteration permanently. In the mean time, I’ve moved to Los Angeles and am now working full-time as a writer. So here’s a link to my latest show, BOOKS. Lesson #53 remains below.

LESSON #53: TAKING A YEAR OFF

So, in every interview I’ve given so far about the Dr. Wizard project, one question has always come up: “Does the University know?”Now, in reality, what most reporters have meant when they have asked this question is not necessarily whether or not the University is aware of this website, but whether or not the University has a problem with the advice (and the occasional profanities) that we choose to dole out.Well, for a long time I was held in suspense. But today, metaphorically speaking, we were called to the principal’s office, and…

…it was awesome!Turns out, after reading the article in Thursday’s Post-Dispatch, the administration would like to bring the members of the Dr. Wizard group on as creative consultants to help juice up the human angle of SLU graduate life in their recruitment materials, and would like to prominently feature and help disseminate information about Dr. Wizard’s Advice for College Students from their homepage.To this, I say…Fuck Yeah!So, in light of this recent development, and given yesterday’s guest post from Myles (or, as he’s known around here, Funktified Acoustic), I thought today would be the perfect opportunity to show my appreciation by writing a post that could conceivably cut into the University’s revenue stream. That’s right, today I’ll be advising students to consider taking a year off from college.

You see, because I am perpetually early for everything, before going to my meeting with the Graduate School Dean this afternoon, I had about an hour to just sit on a park bench in the middle of the quad and watch students stroll by in their shorts and Ugg boots.Of course, it took me awhile to get past this preposterous clothing choice (remember the Tim McGraw and Nelly post?) – but after I did, I began to wonder just how many of these young Billikens would benefit in the long run by staying away from campus for a year.And my conclusion?Most of them.

Why?Well, the four years we spend in college are meant to be an exciting, intellectually stimulating, and amazingly fun experience – but they are also meant to be taken seriously, and are extremely expensive.Some students, upon graduating high school, are ready to take on this responsibility, and have a clear idea of what they want to accomplish in their life, as well as a firm appreciation for the privilege that is being bestowed upon them. These students may be ready for the $100,000 investment that is a college education. This, however, is actually pretty rare.The far more likely scenario is that because we live in an era where college is the expected norm, where movies and television shows play up the fun angles of attending parties but not attending class, and where Universities cater to the consumer experience, most students go to college immediately upon graduating high school (and subsequently stay there for four consecutive years) because that’s just what they’re “supposed to do.”But this is just a ridiculous to do anything. So today, I’m here to tell you this: if you’re not ready for college yet, and if you aren’t capable of maximizing both the social and academic opportunities that college will provide you – then do something else until you are.

Now, I’m not saying that you should wait until you’re the age of Blue in Old School to show up on campus and pledge (like Piven says in the movie – “Did you see this one guy?He’s like a hundred years old”), or even that you should wait until you’re 35 like Scott Bakula in Necessary Roughness – but there’s no shame in waiting a year or two, and taking that year to either volunteer, drift aimlessly through South America, or work at some menial job so that you do, in fact, understand the value of an education when you arrive on the ivy-covered campus of your choosing at the age of 19 or 20.And making this choice doesn’t necessarily signify that you’re not smart enough for college at 18; in fact, it might signify that you’re both smart enough for college and wise enough to know that you’re not ready yet.

Take, for example, our good friend Myles – who was clearly both mature enough for his age (by the age of eleven, he was performing as a paid magician at restaurants and Christmas parties; and by the age of eighteen, he was playing four nights a week in a bar-band while holding down a 44-hour a week job and running his Church’s contemporary music program) and intelligent enough to handle a college workload at 18 (he attended the Illinois Math and Science Academy – one of the most selective high schools in America), but was also brave enough to make the choice to stay away for a few years, and is now hurtling towards his diploma with a lone “B” on his transcript.If you ask him seriously, he’ll tell you, all jokes about Hardly Portland aside, that he’s a better and more appreciative student now because of his “lost years.”The same holds true for a lot of my other friends, who took time off and benefited from the period of reflection, and for me, who sold cars for 60 hours a week in 2003.

By way of another bizarre example, let’s consider the fact that for once, and I can’t believe that I’m going to say this – because I think they’re wrong about so many other things and I think Big Love is crazy – the Mormons may have it right.Before graduating from college, almost every Mormon student takes a two-year mission trip to serve others and to subsequently do a little of their own growing up.The same is true of students in Israel, students in Switzerland, and any other country with required military service (by the way, the U.S. military is also a good choice if you want to put college off for four years. I had friends from high school who left for the military as jack-asses and came back grown men, ready to tackle college seriously – and they almost all graduated Summa Cum Laude). Evidently, both the Mormons and the Israeli military realize that while some people are ready for college at 18, most others can benefit from a little buffer zone of service – and, perhaps because it’s difficult to tell who’s who, they just figure the time away from school won’t hurt anybody, and I kind of agree with them.

Finally, because many of you are neither Israeli nor Mormon, because many of you might be a little hesitant to leave school for a year to drift through South America, and because many of your parents might be hesitant to allow this Amazonian journey – which is something, from their perspective, that I guess I understand – particularly if they’re footing the collegiate bill, (another sidenote: if you want to give this South American experience a shot, like my friend Luke Trautwein did, you might try the angle that you’ll be spending their money on college much more effectively upon your return), let’s close today’s lesson with a practical metaphor about factory life. For this is, truth be told, where I would recommend that you take your menial job if working for a year is the route you choose to go. Nothing will make you appreciate college like 10 hours a day on an assembly line.

In my hometown of Mattoon, Illinois, most of the factories have closed their doors over the course of the past few years and have relocated abroad.There are two, however, that continue to operate effectively – Lender’s Bagels and Kal-Kan Dog Food – because it’s too expensive and inefficient to grow and ship food from outside of America to our heartland (for human or canine consumption).Not surprisingly, given the tenor of this post, I’ve had friends who have elected to stay home from school for a year in the middle of their college careers to work at each of these places.And here’s the great irony: evidently, one of the things about working at Kal-Kan that is crazily bizarre is that the dog-food smells so good it makes you hungry – (gross, right?!?) – and one of the horrible things about working at Lender’s Bagels is that, up close and personal, the smell of a million blueberry bagels is overpoweringly sweet, sickening, and awful.Well, of course, this is exactly the opposite of what the outside world would expect to be the case (which, technically, is what makes the situation ironic). And thus, it’s not surprising that when you tell someone who doesn’t know any better that the dog food, against all odds, actually smells great, they tell you that you’re crazy. But sometimes the truth bucks convention. By the same token, if, after reading this advice, you someday choose to take a semester or two off because you think it will help you academically in the long run, it wouldn’t be surprising for people to tell you that you’re similarily crazy.But it doesn’t mean you won’t be right. Hey, they laughed at Louis Armstrong when he told people he was going to the moon, but now he’s up there, laughing at us. Or wait…anyway, you get my point.

          Editor’s Note: Ever since last Thursday, we’ve been riding the Led Zeppelin here at The Wiz, which is my made up and completely stupid way of saying we’ve been receiving a “Whole Lotta Love.”  Thanks in part to the article in the Post-Dispatch, and also in part to a number of new sites that are linking into the DWCG, we’ve spent the last five days counting visitors to the website the way Sesame Street’s Count von Count tallies anything – which is to say, jovially, and with an Eastern European accent.  ONE CLICK OF THE MOUSE!  TWO?  TWO CLICKS OF THE MOUSE!!!  THREE CLICKS OF THE MOUSE!!!!  Anyway, as a way of showing our gratitude (think of it as a Valentine’s Day celebration – or, if you’re not the romantic type, think of it as a tribute to our nation’s Sixteenth President, whose birthday is on Thursday), this week we’ll be rolling a new post on the main-page every day, as well as methodically updating the content of every tab on the right.  Up first, a guest post from Funktified Acoustic – who will be sharing with you his thoughts on challenging yourself when you schedule your classes for next semester, and achieving “The Moral Victory.”

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THE MORAL VICTORY

          - a guest post from Funktified Acoustic

          Over the past 6 months, my reading of Wiz PhD’s various musings about collegiate success has led me to consider what lessons I could impart to the world’s younger, less funktified, acoustics.  And, here’s what I’ve got.  To all of you students who are just beginning to roam through the halls of various dormitories and/or pass out drunk on any number of campus sidewalks:

          You are not Will Hunting.

          Nor are you the kid that hung out with Sean Connery in Finding Forrester, nor are you Dexter of Dexter’s Laboratory. Please don’t take offense. None of us are – because those people aren’t real people. They’re fictional characters (one of them is even animated), and a natural ability to understand anything and everything that’s put in front of you is a fictional talent. What this means is that at some point in your collegiate career, you’ll have to work hard to get a passing grade in a class, even if you are exceptionally smart. And most likely, you’ll be unprepared for that event.

          If you’re in college, chances are you did alright in High School.  It also probably means that you have enough natural ability that you didn’t have to apply yourself too much and had plenty of free time for athletics, dating, and watching reruns of Saved by the Bell.

          That is not at all a bad thing.

          What is a bad thing is that college is often more academically challenging than your high school experience, and a doozey of a grade will lead to a very awkward conversation with your parents:

          Concerned parents: Why did you get these barely passing grades when all you’ve gotten previously were amazing grades?

          You: I was watching Saved by the Bell and drinking copious amounts of alcohol while engaging in dangerous sexual practices.

          Obviously this is a position you don’t want to be in. So what do you do? I’ll tell you what I did.

          When I graduated High School following the Fall semester of my senior year, Dr. Wizard and I formed a little acoustic duo. We thought we were going places. This was misinformed (at best). Unbeknownst to us (and most of our loyal, highly intoxicated collegiate fan base), we were also highly mediocre. This band and its accompanying falling action led to a two-and-a-half year period in my life I like to call “The Lost Years.” Was I on a long bender a la Ray Milan in The Lost Weekend? No.  But I was floating aimlessly a la Rory Gilmore after her disastrous newspaper internship with Logan’s dad. Unmotivated and underemployed, I then chose to attend college.

          Unfortunately, putzing around for a quarter decade did not place me in a frame of mind well-suited for academic success. So, I made a plan, and it went like this: even though I was a history major, I would take a chemistry class during the first semester of my freshmen term. The reasons were threefold:

1.     I had never taken a chemistry course in my life and felt that the pursuit of some knowledge in the physical sciences would make me a more well-rounded individual (this was true).

2.     The introductory chemistry course at my university is very difficult and is often used to weed out weak pre-med and engineering students (this is mostly true).

3.     I would have to work exceptionally hard just to pass this class (this was very true, much like the accusations against Coach Carr).  Editor’s Note: That’s a Mean Girls reference.

          Between my lack of comfort with science courses and the reputation this class had among my peers, I knew I would have to work harder than I ever did at anything if only to pass.  The result?  It is the only “B” on my college transcript to date. Am I disappointed about that? Absolutely not. Working hard for a B was the best and most instructive experience of my academic career. It hurt my GPA, but it helped me learn to study daily, keep up with homework, go to classes, and go to office hours. These things are all keystones for any academically successful student, and learning to make them a part of my daily life continues to serve me well.

          Short Version: If you’re not used to working hard, academically bite of more than you can chew immediately so you can learn how to do it before it’s out of your hands. It’s like running with weights on your ankles to train, or those crazy strength shoes that Coach Considine made me wear in eighth grade.