Van Flip Times a Thousand

WARNING- Today's blog may contain explicit content. Viewer discretion is advised.

It is 4AM, and I'm beat. Spring break is just around the corner, and while this may sound like a good thing, this is not the case directly. For students, spring break is a magical place filled with sunshine, rainbows, scantily clad females, and dudes with washboard abs, like myself, but for college professors, spring break is a far more than a 1 week break. It is a highly functional phrase that serves as a mental alarm which triggers unforeseen amounts of papers, exams, and quizzes coupled with minimal leniency. Watch closely.

My spring break alarm will sound on March 13, 2008. My professor's spring break alarm sounded last week. DID YOU CATCH THAT? You probably didn't. One might ask, "Well Erik, how do you know this?" Here's how- I've got 2 papers due Thursday, a Biology exam next Monday, and an Art and Culture exam next Thursday. Boom. Spring break transforms every college professor into a giant beast who seeks to squeeze every ounce of academic life force out of you so that the days before your break is as awful as humanly possible. If you care to know what my week before spring break will look like, scroll up and focus on the largest of the 3 images above. Get a good look. See it? Chances are- your week will look something like that also.

The the increased work load before breaks, whether it's Thanksgiving, Christmas, Spring or Summer, causes increased anxiety in the student body. Viewers, brace yourselves. I'm about to make a conjecture so powerful and voluminous that it deserves to be a law. I call it The Law of Undergraduate Students which states the following "Undergraduate students seldom keep their problems to themselves and seek to publicize their issues/struggles/complaints in a manner that adds to other people's issues." Phew. That's a mouthful. What I'm getting at is this- around this busy time where everyone has a series of seemingly infeasible tasks to complete, colleges are filled with complainers. Since no one likes to keep their problems to themselves, expect your peers to pour out unimaginable complaints even if you don't ask to hear about it. Even the most strong willed and adamant individual will fall prey to this onslaught. Know how?

FACEBOOK

Facebook is the floodgate that EVERY student will use to complain. I'm sure I'm not telling you anything new here. But it's not the means that people use to complain that I find amusing- It's the generalized way that people choose to express their completely different and unique problems. It's amazing really. You've probably noticed this also. Somehow, somewhere, by some means of which I'm not sure, students have figured out that ALL of their problems can be neatly fit into a most time efficient acronym- FML.

Here comes the inadvertant profanity.
For those of you that don't know:
FML = Fuck My Life.

But what does this mean?

Well, people have been fucking for centuries, to be frank. If people didn't we all wouldn't be here. Now, in our advanced age, the F-word, as I called it in middle school, can be used as a noun and adjective but never as an adverb, to my present knowledge. Be that as it may, somehow fucking came to my life. And it came to yours, too. And since then, cyberspace, especially Facebook, has never been the same.

I have loads of friends, whom I love. I love to talk, walk, eat, sit, watch, etc. with them. But for argument's sake, viewers, lets suppose fuck is a friend. If fuck was a person, I'd imagine he'd be the kind of friend I always want to avoid. I'd never eat with fuck, and I probably would never, voluntarily, talk to fuck. One thing's for sure- I never would fuck fuck, not even for Fuck's sake. That's how bad fuck is. By saying, "FML", as far as I understand it, you're inviting fuck into your life. Or maybe he's already there! And just like a feline, he's peed over every hope and aspiration you once held dear. The end result - he's fucked your life, and you've given up all hope.

I think sometime in the future, FML will transend its mainstream use by adolescents and undergraduate students. I think professionals of every discipline will observe this term and see something special about it. Heck. I think it'll make it to the Oxford Dictionary. I think FML will eventually have its own index. Just like for pollen or UV radiation, there'll be some months where the FML index will be particularly high. In fact, the FML index is quite moderate right now, and I'm willing to forecast that by this time next week the FML index will be in the RED, expecially in the Georgia area.

Keep your eyes peeled for this, viewers since you're now in the know. Mark my words, towards the end of next week FML will be in everyone's Facebook status. Now that you know about this social phenomenon, don't get caught up in the pomp and circumstance of the moment. Use FML with discretion. Please. If anything, use this troublesome time to practice sublimation. Turn your fucked life into something more warm and cozey. Take a walk. Ride a bike. Read your respective religious book. And if you're married- fuck :)


Thanks for reading, viewers!
It is now 4:53AM, and I'm even more beat than before.

Has your life been fucked? Are you addicted to using FML? Am I completely wrong in my analysis? You know what to do. Please leave comments below.