Just for reference: this is MOSTLY fiction and exaggeration :)

Diary of a College Slacker By "LesliWeird"

Mornings suck.
Somehow, nothing drives home this fact like waking up to the angry buzz of an alarm clock and seeing pentagrams scrawled on the ceiling in ketchup.

9:45 AM: The Awakening.


The day began much like any other, except for the occult condiments smeared across the ceiling, which, admittedly, was something new. I rolled out of bed like a cripple and landed softly in a pile of old jeans and T-shirts. Mornings have never been easy for me. Getting up before the crack of noon is like ripping out one's own intestines: messy and inadvisable. I've never understood how any arguably sane person manages it.
And speaking of debatable sanity... I cast a chameleon-eyed glance at my roommate, Amy. At least, I assumed her name was Amy. She hissed at me from behind her overturned bed-fort and waved something through the sheets she had glued to the wall and the corners of her bed. I blinked, my hazy eyes focusing on a totem-stick with a Barbie head on it. I let out a deep sigh of relief. At least she wasn't doing anything weird this morning.
Amy is... well, Amy's different. I'm not really sure what her name is. I worry that the lack of communication may be partly my fault. After all, she does a lot of talking to me, if you count hisses and growls. I'm not really even sure what she looks like; I've never seen her leave her secluded fortress. I KNOW that she must, since I certainly didn't smear ketchup on the ceiling and she claims to have a 4.0.
I waved a congenial good morning to Amy and tugged myself into the top pair of worn jeans on my pile. I was already ahead of schedule: a whole eight more minutes to eat breakfast and get to class. I hopped over my dirty clothes to the dresser and opened the top drawer. Dozens of beautiful ramen bricks gleamed dully in the light of my lava lamp. The real breakfast of champions! I picked one up and bit into the crunchy wholesome goodness that only dehydrated food in bulk can provide, then scanned the drawer for any important papers I might have put there so I would remember them.
There was only one this time: marked "scholarship application". I shoved it into my pocket as I waved goodbye to my feral roommate and skipped out the door.


10:02 AM: Literature of the Oppressed.

"Ms. Marks, you're late. Again." Professor Spottedhorse is a tall Cherokee man with a perpetual scowl and an entire army's worth of southwestern style shirts. I like him. He has charisma. And even if he didn't I would still need this class to validate my five hundred dollar scholarship from the gay and lesbian rights association, who had given me their money despite my sexual leanings on the promise that I would help fight the oppressive religious right.
"Sorry, sir," I answered honestly, with an innocent smile, swallowing the last bit of dry ramen. His dark eyes remained dubious.
"I don't suppose you did your reading assignment?" I winced visibly, struggling for something to say besides a terrified echo of "reading assignment?"
"Uh... Fredrick Douglas?" I gave myself a mental pat on the back.
Fredrick Douglas was always a good answer in this class. Heck, as far as I'm concerned, Fredrick Douglas is always a good answer. There was no possible way I could go wrong with Fredrick Douglas. He was the ultimate answer, he was the-
"Your reading was not Fredrick Douglas." I felt as if I had been struck by lightning. My mind worked franticly for another, equally viable answer to whatever question professor Spottedhorse was asking.
"Virginia Woolfe?" I petitioned timidly.
"And what did you think of the reading?"
"Um... she sounds a lot like Fredrick Douglas...." I offered, worrying that I MIGHT have to settle for a B in this class.


12:00 PM: Introductory Theories of MicroBiology.

I didn't feel like I was introduced too much in this class except the occasional joys of sadism. I was on time, but sadly, no one offered the applause I so richly deserved for this achievement. I need this class to keep my grant from NERF, the National Earth Restoration Foundation, which pays for my individually packaged Styrofoam cup-o-soups. Last year, when I was taking "the Binomial Nomenclature of Biology", it paid for more, but NERF (tree huggers) is currently involved in heavy litigation with NERF (Styrofoam toys), and the scholarship is greatly reduced until the blood feud comes to an end. Meanwhile, I was stuck in Introductory Theories of Microbiology.
"I knew I should have taken Ecosystems of Sudan," I grumbled as Professor Hermupht droned on about prokaryotic life forms. I looked hopefully at the clock. Fifteen minutes. This was taking longer than usual. I put both hands to my head, in cartoon psychic fashion, and drew on my years of watching Star Wars to touch the illusive power of the force.
Professor Hermupht's head hit his padded desk with a soft thump.
I congratulated myself on my Jedi powers and scribbled "Fredrick Douglas" down as the answer to my homework, which would be graded by an apathetic TA, and would probably get me at least a B. After a moment of thought, I also scrawled "Virginia Woolfe" into the extra credit space.
I was assured an A. The entire class dumped their papers onto the desk and filed out the door, setting the clock to 12:50 on the way out, the same way we always did.
I used to feel really bad of taking advantage of poor Professor Hermupht like that. He couldn't help it if he had a case of narcolepsy from studying microbiology, after all. Luckily, he had a ten-year contract with the university before it started, so he's comfortably employed as well as well rested, and I really do enjoy getting out of class early. Like I said, I used to feel terrible about walking out on him. So bad, in fact, that once I actually went back to class. He had already slipped out of his yellow and brown blazer and into a leather jacket, and was in the process of hopping out the window when I opened the door.
Professor Hermupht is my hero.
I pulled out the wadded up scholarship application from that morning and looked it over carefully. It read "The Makava Pizza Perfect Student Award." I was a shoe in! My eyes quickly digested the paper. Five thousand dollars and twenty-five free pizzas! That would pay for the whole next year, and save me about a dollar forty in Ramen! I tore out a pen and a mostly fresh sheet of notebook paper and began to write.
"Fredrick Douglas always said..."


1:00 PM: British Literature

Fredrick Douglas is not the answer in this class, nor am I actually enrolled.
Frankly, I wouldn't want to be. The professor, Abigail Brockville, is a relic from the Victorian era who always wears completely covering librarian dresses and spectacles she doesn't actually need. She believes sex and irreverence to Forster are unforgivable crimes that should be punished by public flogging.
I come to this class as Claudette Beaux, an exchange student from Nice, France and an ardent existentialist. I periodically burst out with passionate comments, half in French, about the British stupidity of attempting to find an objective reality in their literature. Claudette Beaux, incidentally, is failing English miserably, the poor dear. I, however, am receiving an A in Drama and French, and completion credit for Western philosophy, because the respective professors of all these classes also detest Professor Brockville.
"So, can anyone tell me what Coleridge is trying to advocate in this po-"
"Va te faire fourte! J'aurais jamais du te rencontrer!" I belted out halfheartedly, still looking down at my scholarship essay. It wasn't like I was missing an unfamiliar site in Professor Brockville's eyebrow twitching spastically.
Somehow even upsetting her didn't dull the nagging feeling that I didn't actually deserve this scholarship. The essay was excellent; you can never go wrong with Fredrick Douglas. But for some unfathomable reason, when I looked down at the pepperoni-stained notebook paper, I got the sensation that I was cheating someone out of the money they needed to find a cure for cancer, or to get the training for a job that would feed their family.
"...inherent morality..." Professor Brockville was saying.
I felt my throat sink down into my shoes. Morality? Everyone was expecting me to be something, to learn something, and to make something of my life. People kept giving me money in the hopes that I would make the world a better place, and what did I do with it? I wrote Fredrick Douglas twenty times a day, ate instant ramen, and drove an English professor crazy. Was the world a better place for having me in it? I wadded the essay into a lump and stood up.
"J'ai passe de tres bons moments avec toi. Je serai de retour!"
No words in either language could describe the professor's happiness as I left the room. I tossed the essay into a trashcan and took out a fresh, clean piece of paper.
"I don't think I really deserve..." I began, my pencil scraping away furiously...


Four weeks later
6:00 PM: Mail Call.


I plopped down onto my bed, smiling at Amy as I slid her package cautiously over to her with my toe. She hissed at me and a black gloved hand slunk around from behind her barricade to grab the box. Whatever was in there had smelled funny and croaked, but I figured that was Amy's business, not mine, and I needed to respect her privacy.
I flipped through my mail, most of it magazine subscriptions and free sample credit cards. My eyes came to rest on a single envelope from the Makava Pizza Company. I swallowed hard and tore it open. It was a form letter, with all the pertinent information filled into blanks.
"Dear _Ms. Marks_, congratulations! Your excellent essay was the best of the _ 1_ essays we received, and thus you have qualified for the _ $5000_ Makaza Pizza Scholarship. You have no idea how much your help will mean to us in filing our corporate income taxes..."
I let the paper drop, stunned. For the first time in my life I had had a flash of morality and idealism, and it had turned out to be completely unbased! I laughed out loud and dropped the paper.
Maybe it was just a flash of teeth as she ate whatever croaking thing had been in the box, but I could have sworn Amy smiled.