“The Hatemonger’s Quarterly” Official Back-to-School

“The Hatemonger’s Quarterly” Official Back-to-School Week: Day the Fifth—Graduating

In fact, we’d argue that our Official Back-to-School Week served up the quintessential pearls of wisdom regarding higher education in these here United States of America. If back-to-school weeks were colleges, we’d be Harvard. Or, even better, Austin Peay. We covered every topic of grave concern: Drinking games; orientation; diversity; dating.

Some of you might be saying to yourselves: But wait, uproarious crack young staff; you left out some consequential topics, like note taking and homework.

To which we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” respond: Anyone who believes that “note taking” and “homework” are key collegiate concerns has never spent a minute on a contemporary college campus. To alter Michael Landon’s famous phrase, where there’s no will, there’s a B+. These days, universities are easier than Paris Hilton.

Still, dear reader, we are left with one subject that needs our attention—something that the great Tom Lehrer referred to as “sliding down the razorblade of life.” And that, dear reader, is graduating.

Sometime during the second semester of his senior year, a college student—when neither torrentially tipsy nor blissfully baked—begins to feel pangs of insecurity. What, he thinks to himself, am I going to do when I graduate?

And there is a reason for such concern. After all, this pupil has spent almost four years during which his most important decisions revolved around where to vomit. Now, however, this same student must face some important life choices.

He must, moreover, face these decisions essentially alone. For some reason, college juniors haven’t the requisite foresight to realize that irritating questions such as “What are you going to do when you graduate?” will soon be visited upon them. As a result, such younger folk offer no succor.

Nor should students waste their time and energy searching out their college’s employment advisors. One must wonder how anyone who himself chose such a laughable profession as “career advisor” at the University of Southeastern Wyoming could serve as any kind of resource for a person who requires gainful employment. One might as well ask Rob Reiner for nutritional advice. (Or, come to think of it, Wilfred Brimley.)

Accordingly, thoughts of graduation continue to vex the college senior until he has dawned a cap and gown, endured an incoherent, bromide-filled lecture by the likes of Madeline Albright, and shuffled home, diploma in hand.

Soon enough, our graduate will round up some ridiculous gig as an ice-cream scoop or a waiter, and live with five other twentysomethings. That’s right, dear reader: Four years of economic theory and sociology can land you a job at a record store. Pretty impressive, isn’t it? Well, if you’re a carnie.