Currently I am navigating the fifth level of hell, also called “choosing a student loan repayment option.” The process is a sick and twisted balancing act that goes like this: choose a plan whose monthly payments are low enough that you won’t default, but not so low that it takes 20 years to pay off the loan and costs an additional $20,000 in interest. Too high and you end up bankrupt, too low and you want to slit your wrists because that private college degree put you in dept even farther and longer than you anticipated. Oh and if you default, your mother slaughters you because she’s a co-signer on the loan and now her credit is in shambles too. Teeter totter, teeter totter.
As I calculated how long it will take me to buy back my soul from Sallie Mae, my mind inevitably drifted back upon my college experience. I remembered a list of quotes I wrote down from a particularly eccentric professor and decided to post them for your enjoyment:
“When I was in the Marine Corps, we went to South Korea to teach them how to fight, and they made damn fine soldiers. As good as any US Marine Corps. You know why? Because the Japanese occupied Korea for 300 years and didn’t let them be a part of the military. They didn’t develop any bad habits. When we got to Vietnam to try to teach them how to be soldiers, it was awful because the French had already gotten to them. And let me tell you, if there’s anybody who can fuck up an army, it’s La France.”
“Why do we celebrate the French Revolution? I’ll tell you why: because it’s the only war they ever won.”
“Why did the French just build a war ship with a glass bottom? So they’ll be able to see the rest of their navy.”
“Twenty five percent of you are already smart enough for grad school. Fifty percent we can prepare in the next four years. A quarter of you we just can’t help. You were born a princess in Orange County. You were raised a princess in Orange County. And you will die a princess in Orange County. If there’s a Mexican immigration influx, you won’t know where to go — unless it’s in Orange County.”
“Why are you so stupid? Have you given any thought to that?”
“It’s the clinical psychologist’s job to figure out why you’re so fucked up. It’s probably your mother’s fault. If not hers, your dad’s. If not his, your brother’s. Write that down.”
“So all the medical students are pooping and looking for blood to see if they have fatty liver, you know what I mean?”
“God has sent me to punish you because you’ve been a wicked girl.”
“I make sure to say that because if they’re a cop and you ask and they don’t say they are, they can’t arrest you.”
“These are rhetorical questions, so if I say, “How many of you put out on the first date?” I don’t expect you to raise your hand. Unless you really want to advertise it.”
“When do you get the effects of that nicotine? Or THC, depending on what you’re smoking? That’s right, it’s immediate. It makes you feel good — like when that nerd finally stops following you around campus. It’s a sense of relief.”
“This chalk is sticking to the roof of my mouth.”
“I have Alzheimer’s disease; when I walk from here to there I forget what I said over there. Plus if it’s after 3 I’ll be drunk anyway.”
***
That list segued into thoughts about one of my eccentric high school teachers, who provided us with these gems of wisdom:
“I don’t feel the need to apologize for history. The Indians: they lost.”
“You all have been coddled for far too long. This is the austerity program to toughen up the youth.”
“Of course I have my own meat dehydrator.”
“Once you shoot the deer you can’t put it on the hood of your car like they do in the movies. That’ll burn the insides and ruin the meat.”
“If this were a war you would have all stepped on landmines by now.” Said to the class, apparently oblivious to the fact that one student lost his leg when he stepped on a landmine during the civil war in Somalia.
Sign on the wall: “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”
***
Although my USC professor joked about being drunk, the only educator who ever showed up to class intoxicated, that I know of, was at Indiana University. I took French and Italian classes there when I was in high school, and one time a professor was so drunk he couldn’t conjugate “to be”— the most common verb in the Italian language — in present tense, even though he lived in Rome until he was 10 and was pursuing an advanced Italian degree. In his defense, he had broken his wrist the night before, and since this was the first time he had forgotten the different forms of “essere,” the class surmised that he was only drunk because he was self medicating.
I guess what I take away from all this is that however contact-averse, computer-obsessed, or celebrity-stalking we may be, Millennials are not any crazier than previous generations.
2 Comments
July 9, 2009 at 4:15 am
““When I was in the Marine Corps, we went to South Korea to teach them how to fight, and they made damn fine soldiers. As good as any US Marine Corps. You know why? Because the Japanese occupied Korea for 300 years and didn’t let them be a part of the military. They didn’t develop any bad habits. When we got to Vietnam to try to teach them how to be soldiers, it was awful because the French had already gotten to them. And let me tell you, if there’s anybody who can fuck up an army, it’s La France.””
Well, he’s partially right. See: http://www.antiwar.com/lind/index.php?articleid=1702
That’s an awful long quote to copy verbatim.
September 23, 2009 at 6:13 am
All those years of taking interview notes had to be good for something, I guess.