I hope that all you pre-med students cure cancer some day. I truly hope that the School of Engineering students fix the MBTA in the near future. I really hope that the physical therapy majors keep Curt Schilling’s and Pedro Martinez’s arms in strong condition come October for years to come. I even hope that the SMG students make a load of cash in building much deserved Wendy’s and Krispy Kreme on the BU campus. These matters, however, are not in my hands.

I, on the other hand, am a revolutionary. I started a strike. Unlike Major League Baseball and grocery store unions, no one was hurt in my strike. The Players Union did not request more money, the owners did not abhor the Luxury Tax and, most importantly, no one had to bag their own groceries at Shaw’s. In a very Homer Simpson/Martin Luther King, Jr. “I have a dream” notion, one month ago, I started an AOL/AIM Strike. You may laugh and try to turn your attention to the next article, but AOL is about as contagious as the plague. The Black Plague for that matter.

I had a problem and I decided to do something about it. I sat in front of my monitor day after day, hour after excruciating hour, clicking on people’s profiles to see what their away messages read. I cracked up when a friend left “still battling the hangover,” or “sooooooooooo much work…ahhhh!” I read all 67 lines of a buddy’s Dave Matthews lyrics. I even scanned through philosophical quotes by Virginia Woolf, John Updike, J.D. Salinger, Einstein, Shakespeare, Sawyer and Jessica Simpson. I clicked on links that were supposed to be “the funniest thing ever!” Even if they were not the funniest thing ever.

When I would see people in class, I would say: “Hey, nice Lady and the Tramp icon,” or “I got a 14 out of 15 on your personal quiz.” Now in typing that, I realize how ridiculous it all sounds. But, that was the truth. That was my life. The scariest thing, however, is that it is a lot of other peoples’ lives as well. I ask everyone to try to give up (sign off because away messages do not count) AOL/AIM for one week.

Coming from someone who is now on his fourth week, that one week will be really, really difficult. If you do not believe me, one of my best friends, who I inspired to call it quits, can attest to the brutality that is giving up AIM. I wake up one morning and check my email to find this from the cold turkey buddy: “So Metz … last night I drank a little and when I got home, I accidentally signed on. I said ‘hello’ to one person and immediately signed off. I then yelled at myself. Quitting this is like quitting smoking, man.” And they do not make patches for AIM.

Do it anyway. Try it – test yourself. I guarantee that 70 percent of the BU population cannot give up AIM for a week. Most of us simply do not realize how much we rely on the program for instant communication and constant time wasting. In the time that you usually sit online sending “what up” to all 139 people on your buddy list, you could: write a paper, watch “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” call your aging grandparents, make swans out of computer paper and still have time to bake a three-tier chocolate cake. With sprinkles.

There certainly are some negatives to giving up AIM. Friends tell me that we “never talk anymore” because I’m no longer online. Also, spontaneous decisions made by my buddies online sometimes never reach me. Fortunately, all I’m asking you to do is to give it up for a week. A measly seven days or 168 hours or 10,080 minutes or 604,800 seconds, depending on how big of a dork you are. But if AOL’s corporate partner, Time Warner, decided to drop the “AOL” from the beginning of its name, don’t you think it’s time you give it the boot as well? I certainly do.

I hope the international relations majors work out this whole Iraqi situation soon. I truly hope the advertising majors keep the Super Bowl commercials interesting. I really hope School of Hospitality students take over the Hilton Hotel enterprise and drop that annoying Paris branch. I even hope the hockey players make it to the NHL and earn more money than me.

We will leave those accomplishments for them, but for the rest of us there is this strike. And I hope that you are willing to join the revolution and, in classic AIM fashion, I hope you say “Goodbye.”

Michael Metz is a sophomore in the College of Communication.