FORSTER, GLANDER AND SAUER: Guest meals

Dear Reader,

People you haven’t talked to in years are sending you pictures of their children. No one is complaining about the guy who keeps his Christmas lights up all year. ‘Stuff my stocking’ is a socially acceptable phrase. It all points to one thing: the holiday season. Instead of getting them real presents, we’re letting our interns take over the column this week. Be kind to these Guest Nancies; they’re not very good at this.

Forthcomingly,

The Nancies

Dear Nancies,

The girl I intern with at an international relations office is always sucking up to the employees, showing off all the languages she knows. All we need to do is file papers! How can I get my office’s attention off her and onto me?

-Cry-lingual

Dear Lingual,

When life in your workplace isn’t going right, it can leave you screaming, ‘Why, why?’ But life can get better if you train yourself to scream ‘???????, ????????’ Behind speech interpreters and Disneyland monorail operators, figure skating is the career in which being multilingual is most advantageous. I feel qualified to help you out, having made it big in the skating community while only knowing eighth grade-level Spanish. It can seem unfair knowing that you have performed the best Xerox-job in your life while your coworker gets all the praise because she thanked the judges in Russian. I’d understand your frustration, especially if your internship evaluation loses half a point due to your coffee spill, even though your heel didn’t slip.

The point is, you can’t blame the girl you work with for your own flaws. The only way you will get the judges’ – excuse me, your superiors’ – attention is through work. This may entail playing hockey with your brother until you are able to afford your own private language instructor. If nothing else, just wear a flashy sequin pantsuit to work. That always worked for me.

Just don’t take your insecurities out on your co-intern. She has worked long and hard too, and the last thing she needs is a bratty comment after work or a collapsible baton to the knee. With this new outlook, you’re bound to be more confident in your daily routine, and even if your boss isn’t impressed with your Russian, know that the ‘eight’ in your evaluation is a Canadian ’10’.

Olympically,

Nancy Kerrigan

Dear Nancies,

Recently we formed groups for our final project in writing. I wasn’t even considered in the election for group leader. It went straight to Jake, and I can’t help being jealous. Is being a leader all that it’s cracked up to be?

-Less than Jake

Dear Less than,

I’ll bet you didn’t think this query would catch the eyes of the nation’s most leader-like woman, but I’ll bet you didn’t think I could be Speaker of the House either. Let me be the first (it’s becoming a habit) to tell you that how you act now will change lives.

Ever since I lost hall-monitoring duties to a dashing blue-eyed boy in overalls, I haven’t looked back. After that, there was nothing I couldn’t do better than any male counterpart. I was guzzling down Gatorades and trouncing Michael Jordans before Mia Hamm even knew ‘Anything You Can Do’ was a song (because she wasn’t born yet; I also did that first). Grow some backbone and take out the patriarch because that leader spot is yours. That’s the mentality that made me the first woman Speaker of the House and now, in a post-Michael Jackson world, the most powerful woman in the United States.

Dominatingly,

Nancy Pelosi

Dear Nancies,

Every day at lunch my friends follow me around like geese, and it’s getting old. I’m tired of being a role model – how can I break away into the freedom of anonymity?

-Whining Star

Dear Whining Star,

At the risk of sounding insensitive, whiner, you don’t know the half of it. Try being the nation’s go-to golden girl. I’m breathtakingly gorgeous, skilled in skills (all of them) and immortal; crack open a Nancy Drew Mystery and you get yourself a Greek goddess fit to make the Hardy boys a little harder. I can do no wrong; I have so much sunlight blasted up my derri’egrave;re, I don’t use flashlights anymore. I’m doomed to serve as a shining beacon to elementary girls in tents and teenage boys in heat.

But what non-literary girl seeks anonymity? An interesting desire to say the least, and I think I’ve seen this exact tactic in ‘Nancy Drew: Miami Spice.’ You’re looking for advice on covering up a crime. You don’t realize you’re talking to Nancy Drew, and I’m talking to a girl guilty of lunchtime homicide with two butter-knives and a bad attitude. Case closed. Enjoy anonymity in the slammer. I’m heading to the burger joint with Ned pronto. This lightning-fast metabolism doesn’t know the meaning of weight.

Mysteriously,

Nancy Drew

Dear Nancies,

‘ ‘ ‘ There’s a pair of galoshes Christopher Walken wore in ‘The Country Bears’ on eBay for $650.00. I’m a huge fan, but is it worth it?

-Solemate

Dear Solemate,

Those boots were made for Walken.

Fantastically,

Nancy Sinatra

Dear Nancies,

While working on final papers, my roommate and I discovered we have different strategies for meeting the page requirements. She likes to write more thoroughly, and I like to make the periods bigger, change the margins, etc. They’re both popular methods, but I wondered, what if they fought?

-S. A. Writer

Dear S.,

This is the perfect week for your question: if there’s anything the regular writers of this column know nothing about, it’s things fighting.

Your roommate’s way has its advantages. For instance, a recent study revealed that as many as 15 percent of all college professors enjoy reading their students’ papers. Make the call: is your instructor the one out of every six whose life is so empty he must escape to a world of spelling errors and parenthetical citations? If so, try developing your topic, enriching your original thesis and illuminating new concepts. Be careful: you risk overstating your point or learning too many facts (which can be harmful to a petite female brain).

Making the margins bigger can make a professor feel as if the walls are closing in on him, as if he were trapped in the garbage compactor from ‘Star Wars’ (the film, not the successful and groundbreaking missile-defense program). Eager to escape such claustrophobia, he is likely to give you an A- and move on (Boston University no longer gives As). It’s also entirely possible that making your periods bigger will draw your professor’s attention to them, subconsciously implying that you were on your period when you wrote your essay. If he’s a man, and I’m sure he is, he’ll give you high marks just to preclude your inevitable hormone-addled complaints. Some more tips for increasing the physical size of your paper without saying anything: utilize block quotes, go straight from three to five when numbering your pages, and say ‘utilize’ instead of ‘use.’

S. A. Writer, your artificial lengthening techniques win this round. Deceiving a professor demands far more creativity, ingenuity and cunning than properly completing an assignment. You should consider a career in politics.

Victoriously,

Nancy Reagan

‘

Dear Nancies,

I want to ask my lab partner on a date, but I feel like after finals week we won’t have anything to talk about. What should I do?

-Petri or not Petri

Dear Kyle,

I am so proud of you for getting your very own column this year! It is always fun to see what you kids are doing and, thanks to Facebook, I am able to see all the way to the East Coast! (Thanks for accepting my request, by the way. How come it isn’t letting me see your pictures?) I was just talking to your mother about my weekly ritual: I watch any of cousin Heidi’s updated cheerleading videos, then read your column, then finish up browsing cousin Jonathan’s homemade jewelry website. He is so talented, as are you and those other boys! Honestly, I am so overwhelmed sometimes while I read. Your insights just knock me out, and you have such a strong voice. I don’t always get your pop culture references (Is CommAve Running Man a rap artist?), but I definitely appreciate your mission statement.

Your grandfather always said, ‘If someone asks for advice that you can’t answer, point them to someone who can.’ I am surprised no one in your family ever told you this – it may have helped you in the beginning of the semester. But whatever you write about in the future, know that I’ll support your creativity and send you boxes from Popcorn.com. Your address is still in Boston College, right?

Familiarly,

Nancy Kissinger (Kyle’s Aunt)

Dear Nancies,

I can’t believe this [crap] gets printed. Every Thursday I open the FreeP hoping for anything but your dreadful, pretentious column. You Nancy boys have no grasp of comedic writing and are nauseating in your verbosity (which I’m sure is straight from Webster’s onto Word). Here’s some advice: for the sake of the readers, stop. Nobody wants to hear your snarky, self-indulgent attempts at clever answers to stupid questions.

Angrily,

BU Junior

Dear Angry Lee,

Thanks for writing. What was your question?

Conclusively,

Julian, Kyle and Nick