Guest Blog Appearance: Write a Thesis or Physical Challenge?

This is a "special-guest" blog post by Jaclyn's classmate Charles. This morning we took advantage of our time off from Senior Seminar to have brunch at Sugar and Spice, a quaint little diner near campus that dates back to the 1940's or 50's. In between disappointing bites of pancakes that contained neither the bananas that Jaclyn requested nor the blueberries that I requested, we lamented the coming weeks of school and the tasks that lay ahead. I started explaining how I would rather do anything else besides write this thesis, including but not limited to feats of strength and other "physical challenges" similar to the old show "Family Double-Dare" hosted by Marc Summers on Nickelodeon.

This got our mind off of the plain pancakes and anxiety brought on by our "capstone" class, at least momentarily. Thinking of kids and parents dressed in matching spandex outfits with helmets, elbow and knee pads, reaching up inside a giant nose full of "fake boogers" to grab a red flag. Or crawling hands and knees through a sewer filled with "fake slime" to grab a red flag. Or diving into a giant ice cream sundae and swimming around to find a red flag. I am tempted to approach the chair of the English department and suggest that rather than complete this paper, I will accept a physical challenge of equal or greater difficulty. Seriously, I would rather do pushups, run laps, or reach into a giant nose filled with boogers for a red flag, than sit and do this assignment.

Whatever anxiety Jaclyn feels about this paper is negligible compared to my own. She is holding eleven pages in her hand right now, waiting to go meet with our teacher to get some feedback. She is practically done as far as I'm concerned. I have spent most of my academic career sliding through English classes on sparknotes, procrastinating until the last second to write 5 page literary analysis papers the morning that they are due. If anybody knows Goofus and Gallant from the magazine Highlights for Kids, I would be Goofus and Jaclyn would be Gallant. This semester started with an ambitious goal of achieving a 4.0 GPA. Eventually, that was revised to making Dean's List (3.5 GPA). At this point, I would just like to pass my 5 classes and advance to the final semester of my senior year. And I am willing to endure as many physical challenges as it takes.