Don’t let finals ruin your coconut-sippin’ good time

As I walked down the cold-ass street to the David Lawrence 24-hour Convenience Computer Lab to… As I walked down the cold-ass street to the David Lawrence 24-hour Convenience Computer Lab to get some much needed paperin’ done, I must have jaywalked more than 15 times. I know this because I was jaywalking in front of nine or 10 Pitt cops conferencing in front of the local 7-Eleven.

I had hopes of being ticketed, then resisting arrest, which would result in being jailed for the night, so I could have a rock-solid excuse for not doing my paper. I even thought about grabbing one of the cops’ guns and just bolting; I bet that would get me thrown in the clink. “Sorry, Prof, I was behind bars and I couldn’t complete the required 13,000 pages for this final paper.”

I could slam my hand in a drawer and fracture bones, which would make typing impossibly tedious. Or I could throw my roommate out our window to verify if the urban legend I have heard so much about is true or not. He smells pretty bad, so I’m ahead either way. I could pretend that this reality was simply a hallucination induced by all the peyote I found in Schenley Park. Or this could actually be a hallucination induced by all that peyote I found in Schenley Park. Maybe my recent enthusiasm for the gym has lead me to become too much of a chick magnet, and I have no time for the trivial pursuits of higher education.

Or I could actually study for my classes, all of which I am interested in, and be well-prepared and relieved of the stress that accompanies last-minute work. But that’s probably asking too much.

Being the late-night, last-minute, start-the-paper-the-morning-that-it’s-due kind of guy that I have been for 19 — 20 in November — years has biased me towards the utter immediacy in which a paper gets itself finished, especially when the deadline is spoken in terms of hours rather than days. I am pretty sure there’s someone else at this school that has this same affliction. But I am pretty sure I have it the worst.

It’s almost clinical in nature. My hands start to shiver if I begin an assignment before the night it’s due. So what should I do? Hard liquor can get people to do many things they don’t do normally, but I feel that the positive or negative effects of alcohol — depending on which way you look at it — would undesirably influence the work that I must undertake. I guess I could always pop speed, giving me energy that I would have to use up some how. But I’ve seen “Requiem for a Dream” and I know what the harder end of drugs can do, so I guess that’s out. One thing is for certain: I need a solution quick, as I have final exams and final papers coming out of every one of my orifices.

I figure that the more time I waste, the easier it will be to get these papers done when I finally begin. But that fire under my hindquarters has been made three million times worse because I have multiple things due on the same day. This does not bode well for me or my hindquarters.

Yet I think I have a solution to the procrastination problem. There is one fast and easy solution to this important and seemingly unsolvable predicament: Give up now and forget you had any work to interrupt your college. Then sit back watch reruns of “The Sopranos” or “Sex and the City” — depending on your gender — and sip delicious beverages out of coconut halves. It’s springtime, baby. Relax.

For tips on how to dispose of your report card so nosy parents never get a hold of it, e-mail