Columns, Opinion

FONTANA: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Well ladies and gentlemen, if you’re reading this then that means you’ve made it! That’s right, folks. We are now standing in what might appear to be, perhaps the greatest invention since elfster.com, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the reason I was born, the stupendous, the horrendous, that awkward-half-week-before-final-examinations-and-your-inevitable-death-blurgh. Well, we’ve sort of made it. 

Finals are right around the corner, and I’m sure you’re all ready to get off of this planet we call “school work” and head straight into those luscious piles of snow waiting for you back in the “your neighborhood” galaxy on planet “warm bed.” You’re so close! And yet so far. I bet the stress is just eating away at your withering body like an inchworm gnawing on a green leaf, isn’t it? Ladies and gentlemen of Boston metropolis, never fear, for David Fontana is here — and with his new book: David Fontana’s Pocket Guide to Surviving Finals Week (And Also For Use in a Zombie Apocalypse) written for David Fontana, by David Fontana and with all the David Fontana’s across the world in mind. Your survival comes down to these four easy, breezy, beautiful, steps:

Steal:Take out your retainer and put on that ski mask. Put down the pencil and sharpen your pocket knives. Finals week just stopped playing nice and started getting real.

So you’re going to have to pull an all-nighter. A couple of all-nighters. Maybe a few. Alright, so you won’t actually be sleeping at all during the night. But, on the upside you get to play my favorite game of all time: Thief! It’s very simple. All you have to do is go about your regular business, with only one catch — steal as much sleep as possible. Lecture on political upheavals in Lichtenstein during the 13th century: snuggle up to a warm textbook blanket. Have to get to the School of Management from the Fitrec in five minutes: time to enter snooze control. Eating lunch with friends: pasta pillow it is! Ah yes. You’re going to be rolling in so much pasta, I mean sleep, that you won’t even know what to do with yourself at night when you’re wide awake. It’s really a win-win-lose situation (my forte): I win. Sleep wins. And my boss and professors, well, they lose. But I guess when I get fired and fail all my finals, I kind of lose too, huh? So maybe it’s more of a win-win-lose-lose kind of situation (my other forte). Needless to say, Thief is a great game for families and friends too! Especially at those really, really boring parties. Nothing says friendship like drooling together. Also you win the game if you snore so loud that the your entire class (I’m talking a 300 person lecture), stops what they’re doing to “take a little stretch.” Yes, that actually happened. No, I do not regret it. I won Thief, didn’t I?

Drink: In order to perform your Maximus Prime on all your exams you must drink like you’ve never drank before, you should be consuming on average, copious upon copious amounts of, you guessed it, H2O. Water! You thought I was going to say alcohol, didn’t you? Actually alcohol dehydrates you (I bet you college kids didn’t know that!). But sometimes water gets so boring — my advice: mix it up! Ever tried water and a 5-hour Energy? Jim-in-y Cricket, that there smells like some good ol’ fashion sodee pop to me.

Scrap: No, I don’t want you to groove on your scraper bike — that’s reserved for the months of June and July only. Rather, I need you to “I’m a scrap” that big delicious bowl of horrible foods. Finals week is the perfect time to indulge in everything your body knows it shouldn’t have: knock-off hostess treats, deep-fried cheese, fat of leg in a nice bloody soup. Hmm hmm good.

The Final Step (also known as: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious): This is, perhaps the most important step of them all — but isn’t it just fun to say? Yes, it may be superfluous, and it’s definitely a Sesquipedalianism (as in relating to the sale or “pedaling” of the small, furry but ferocious, Sesqui, native to Tasmania —  I digress). But do you know what it means? Well if you ask dictionary.com they will inform you that it is “used as a nonsense word by children to express approval.” Lame. Children already have enough nonsensical sounds they use to approve of things. Where is all the nonsense for the adults? You know what I’m sayin’?  So I went to a more reputable source. Wikipedia showed me that if you break the word down into its roots it actually means “Atoning for educability through delicate beauty.” (This alternate definition was confirmed by urbandictionary.com and memegenerator.net). Simply put, it’s defining me (as seen in the classy new, column photo, eh hem, cough). But since you can’t all be me, you might as well go with Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious-B or rather, Final Step #2: Enter the chalk zone. Mary and Bert did it, so why can’t you? It doesn’t matter where you draw it — a sidewalk in England, in your bathroom, on your arch-nemesis’s extra giant and shiny forehead. Just step-in time, step-in time and jump right in. A stress-free world awaits you.

So, there you have it folks. Finalz in a nutshell. For all you newcomers, you’re very welcome. For you old pros, I hope you learned something new today. But let me leave you with this one last thought for the semester: Finals period is the best of times, it is the worst of times. Actually it just sounds like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious-time to me. 

David Fontana is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences and a fall 2012 columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at fontad5@bu.edu.

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