YOUNG: To flunk or not to flunk?

Even for a writer, I am exceptionally lazy. My inclination toward procrastination is greater than Ron Paul’s inclination toward libertarianism. I have spent many long hours devising ways to avoid spending many long hours solving problems. Being a college student, I have a cornucopia of tasks to neglect, so this is a subject upon which I’ve dwelt extensively. It certainly beats integrating partial fractions.

Of course, it is easy to see why I don’t like working. Every moment I spend determining the tension of a massless string is a moment where I’m not watching “Family Guy,” and that’s a grievous misappropriation of time. Don’t get me wrong, no Thanksgiving dinner is complete until I tell a pumpkin pi joke, so I really do enjoy my studies. But the simple fact of the matter is that kinematic equations will never hold the same appeal as Ultimate Frisbee. So why should I continue to fritter away my valuable goof-off time with calculus and chemistry?

I could return to that notion of academic pleasure. I could say that I just delight too much in the subject matter to give up my education. While that is true to an extent, I think that it is a gross and overly optimistic simplification. My laziness does not merely extend to homework. No, it is characteristic of my person and all my deeds must reflect that quality. Truth be told, I’m simply too bone-idle to become more than a student.

That is not to say that being a student is easy. Quite the opposite. Go ahead and crunch the numbers. Assuming that you’re a BU student in real life and not in “The Social Network,” you work significantly more than 40 hours a week and you have to pay for the privilege. Somehow I don’t think the AFL-CIO would go for that. In all honesty, you’re probably using more of your brain now than you ever will after graduation and you’re certainly reading more books written in dead languages by old guys wearing togas. The boss won’t ask you to analyze the significance of James Joyce’s lack of punctuation. He’ll just tell you to use spell check and hurry up with his soy latte.

So when I say that I’m too lazy to quit doing my homework, I really mean that my reluctance to fail outweighs my reluctance to work. It takes effort to stay in school and the temptation to blow it off in favor of “Guitar Hero” is great. But if I do that, I’ll have to pay for it come semester’s end. Stall on my assignments too often and I’ll actually finish college far sooner than I would have liked. Sometimes one has to quit procrastinating in order to stave off real life.

This is a point that many great men have contemplated throughout history. Collegiate lethargy was at the core of “Hamlet”, Shakespeare’s masterpiece and the bane of high school seniors everywhere. The Prince of Denmark hesitates to avenge his father not because of his Oedipal complex, but rather because he’s afraid it will require him to leave the University of Wittenberg. You can tell simply by reading his most famous soliloquy.

To flunk or not to flunk – that is the question: Whether “tis better on the whole to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous workloads, / Or to take arms against a sea of essays / And, by opposing, ditch them. To rest, to sleep / Once more – and by a sleep to say we end / The headache and the 40 winkless nights / That brain is heir to – “tis a dissertation / Devoutly to be dodged. To rest, to sleep / To out, perchance to fun. Ay, there’s the rub.

Being lazy, I avoid work like vegans avoid cheeseburgers. The problem, as always, is balancing what one wants to do with what one has to do. Swing too far one way or the other, and everything falls apart. There’s no way I’ll ruin things by working too hard, but I certainly could by goofing off too much. College offers plenty of fun along the way without sacrificing schoolwork at the altar of extracurricular activity. After all, my courses are the only reason I get to spend four years on Fenway’s doorstep without having to live in a cardboard box.

How could I give up such an opportunity when all the administration wants me to do is finish slightly north of failing? Sure, the work isn’t much fun, but it gives me the opportunity to shine laser pointers out my window at people on Comm. Ave. during the middle of the night. And if you’ve ever seen a skateboarder panic when a red light starts following him around, you know that it’s a price I’ll gladly pay.