A couple of years ago, the University of Michigan conducted a study that determined, much to everyone's surprise, that college students drink alcohol. Recently, the U-M conducted another study on student drinking. Given that the opening of one's eyes is not a valid research method, here are some other behaviors the University might wish to suddenly discover among the student population:
1. Skipping eight o'clock classes.
2. Bragging about alcohol intake (ex.: "Twenty beers? Dude, that's nothing! I had a whole fifth of vodka, and I wasn't even buzzed, man!).
3. Skipping nine o'clock classes.
4. Putting off that 10-page paper on Shakespearean uses of phallic imagery until eight hours before it's due, thinking, "Hey, I've got all night to do it," and then surfing the Net until there are only three hours left.
5. Skipping ten o'clock classes (most likely to finish that all-night paper).
6. Ripping research articles out of journals in the Grad library stacks instead of Xeroxing them, and then getting pissed when something you need is missing.
7. Making fun of seniors who still live in the dorms, while saving a whopping $20 a month to live in an apartment building: not even saying hello to the other people on the floor, paying one's own utility bills, and insisting that one can get every necessary nutrient from Ramen and Beefaroni.
8. Ordering pizza every other night, and then wondering where the "freshman" 15 (or, in my case, the "senior 25") came from.
9. Upgrading one's $2000 computer at a cost of $300 (and six or seven hours of painstaking effort) just to knock 10 seconds off the time it takes to download all of those "free" porno stills off the Internet.
10. Radically changing one's drinking habits as a sophomore after being stuck on a substance-free hall freshman year.
11. Insisting that the only people that will find jobs after leaving college are those in your field of study (engineering students only).
12. Claiming that you can do just about anything with a women's studies degree (LSA students only).
13. Getting a 5 on your second-year AP physics exam, then enrolling in Physics 140; getting an easy A while blowing the curve for everyone else (smart-ass students only).
14. Leaving every weekend to spend time with that fabled "boy- or girlfriend back home" while endlessly flirting the other five days of the week.
15. Putting off doing the laundry until there's nothing to wear; then reaching into the dirty pile, pulling out a garment to which the fermenting process has not yet spread, and saying, "You know, I can wear this one more time."
16. Denying ever having listened to heavy metal in high school, claiming that CIA agents broke into your dorm room and wedged all of those glam- rock CDs in your music collection while you were asleep (as well as putting that doctored photo on your bulletin board of you with long hair in a black t- shirt and torn, skin-tight jeans shaking hands with Kip Winger).
17. Paying more attention to hairstyles on "Friends" than campus issues, then asking "What is the Code?" or, even worse, "What is Hash Bash?" whenever the topic comes up.
18. Passing by the Diag as often as possible hoping that an intelligent speaker will eventually show up.
19. Exaggerating natural intelligence (ex.: "I never even opened a book in high school, and I got a 4.0 and passed out of Math 116. I think Michigan is a joke.").
20. Walking down an eight-foot wide corridor or sidewalk, side-by-side in pairs, in such a strategic manner that someone in a hurry cannot pass by without, embarrassingly, saying, "Coming through."
21. Finally getting one's act together during senior year, when it's already too late to change one's GPA by anything more than a third of a point.
22. Growing a goatee, taking up smoking unreal amounts of pot, getting your body pierced in 20 or 25 places, shaving one's head, becoming a vegetarian, taking up Whateverism - then, when speaking to one's friends from back home on the phone, saying, "You know, I haven't really changed that much since high school."
23. Balancing a full-time class load, while working two or three 15-hour a week jobs and sleeping three or four hours a night - and not dying!!
24. Joining sororities because of the supposed leadership opportunities they offer women - then, not being allowed, for whatever reason, to throw parties the way fraternities do and having to beg (sometimes bribe) their male counterparts to be included in Greek Week.
25. Watching Beavis and Butt-head.
26. Changing one's bizarre answering machine message only when expecting a call from a prospective employer, then afterwards changing it back to the original clip from the Great Cornholio or whatever.
27. September: "I'm a little behind, but I'll catch up in October." October: "I'm really behind, but I'll work hard in November." November: "I'm critically behind, but I'll work non-stop during Thanksgiving weekend." December: "I'm screwed."
28. Developing that permanent, irreversible caffeine addiction that contributes to all those statistics about America being a caffeine-addicted nation.
29. Keeping your stomach sucked in all day and wearing really loose clothing when your parents come to visit to hide all the weight you've gained.
30. Flocking like lemmings to a giant bowl with seats to watch big guys with helmets run into each other, then singing some fighting or conquering song about it, or something.
That $50,000 study from two years ago determined that college professors drink as well. Some other faculty behaviors in need of a study:
1. Putting practice exams in coursepacks WITH THE ANSWERS ALREADY MARKED!
2. Telling students not to be embarrassed to speak out and interrupt their meticulously-planned and rehearsed lecture in front of 500 other students.
3. Voting themselves raises
Okay, I'll stop here. When it comes to grades, it's much safer to pick on students than faculty. But, you get the point. I guess it's easier to run a study on behaviors we all know exist. I mean, how hard is it to determine that students drink?
4. Ask for grant money for studies as obvious as...nah, too easy.