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Friday, October 24, 2008

Stupid College Assignments

My sister is taking a writing course at Penn State and she has one of these stupid assignments in which she has to write a 5 paragraph essay making some argument about a work of prose or poetry they've read. So her thesis is something like "Robert Frost uses symbolism, imagery and rhyme scheme to develop his theme in the poem The Road Not Taken."

I'm sorry, but I find these types of papers to be boring, stupid, pointless, and other not good things. I have no idea why so much time is spent in our schools on this silliness. Anyway, at the university I am going to create, assignments would be more like this....

Go to the airport, fly to Italy, and research the best pizza places. Write a report sharing your findings, and be sure to include plenty of photographs (even better, create a motion picture documentary, and include re-enactments of the Allied invasion of Fascist Italy [bonus points will be given for all live-action photography as opposed to CGI]).

Go to the airport, fly to a major city overseas, and just generally involve yourself in various intrigues. This may involve finding yourself on the guest list for some extravagant gala at a wealthy political figure's home, sneaking into his study and copying the contents of his hard drive onto your USB drive, perhaps extracting information by whatever means necessary from his beautiful wife, etc. It could also entail a thrilling rooftop chase. Or, feel free to come up with your own international intrigue.

Go to the bus station, take a bus to Richmond, Virginia; Atlanta, Georgia; and one other southern city of your choosing, and eat as many chicken sandwiches as possible, and then compare these to the McDonald's Southern Style Chicken Sandwich. (This assignment is for our low socioeconomic status students).