The time has come to profile the senior theses of the Class of 2014.
The reason that this article is being printed now, as opposed to January, February or March when the theses should have been completed, is because most seniors (by the time Spring semester rolls around, at least) turn into cagey little boogers more worried about fulfilling the necessary amount of appearances at Machoo-choo’s on Thursday nights, reviving their non-existent careers…
And of course, where the hell do we stuff Aunt Sharon so she doesn’t get out during Grad Nite, but like OMG I haven’t seen any movies in the past four years and the sun in the last ten.
Despite the difficulties this particular writer at The Flail encountered trying to track down these elusive creatures, I had high hopes for their theses.
After all, this graduating class is of the generation that legalized gay weed…
Er I mean, gay marriage and weed (although the distinction doesn’t seem to matter the closer you get to Capitol Hill on the weekend, says Yolo Ono, staff writer and ten-time winner of the Smokin’ Rainbows contest)…
Anyway, they’re more sympathetic towards environmental and immigration/border issues than have been past generations.
In fact, over 50 percent of the previous graduating classes report that they’ve even taken to living in cardboard boxes. Cheap Kate (‘12), a former Green Advocate who was famous during her time here for her sustainable clothing and dorm furniture (entirely made from Divergent Cafe coffee sleeves and Oppagangnamstyle Cafe coffee grounds), had this to say on the subject: “It’s just like Occupy Tacoma all over again! Except this time, we can’t just return to campus whenever we get hungry or bored of Downtown Hooverville. You might say we’ve taken up permanent residence.”
Talk about commitment to your ideals!
We at The Flail were eager to discover whether this year’s senior theses reflected the same level of enthusiasm for their subject.
However, we found out that the theses instead focused on much the same sorts of things that seniors had been preoccupied with their freshman year: naps, snacks and YouTube videos.
Ethan Daroche’s thesis, “All My Life I Wanna Be a VineStar: An Interdisciplinary Compilation from 2012-2014”, made very little waves in the scholastic community but enjoyed a certain (short-lived) fame last month when the first compilation clips premiered on YouTube.
Daroche commented on the compilation via his webmail account, “What it is is basically one minute of crack-fic. I employed such interdisciplinary devices like a camera-phone, a laptop-computer and an editing-software-thingy to put the clips together, and then put a laugh track in the background to make it more cohesive.
The first entry is called ‘Toupee & Me’ where I go around booping University administrators on the head to see if their hair falls off.”
YouTube user @FOSHOFOSHO has viewed Daroche’s clip over 80 times, and said, “’Toupee & Me?’ That’s a classic! And it’s for a good cause too!”
Daroche then asks the admins if they’d like to donate their toupees to a worthier cause besides their own vanity.
“You know, like Locks of Love, that sort of thing,” he specified.
Daroche’s other compilations include the fun-loving “Derping Outdoors,” a comedy-sketch which seems to involve a lot of roasted marshmallows and falling down, and “Napping in Stupid Places,” a humorous but sensitive portrayal of Daroche’s narcolepsy and his inability to fall asleep in conventional settings (his bed, a couch, in-class, etc.).
The only other thesis that has been turned in this year is Mitty Cheese’s gender-studies/socioanthropological study, “Spring is Stupid: Or, Why Winter is Coming.”
The study has generated some interest among the campus community, most of which generally agree with Mity Cheese’s thesis but also agree that the topic did not necessarily merit an entire thesis.
Cheese was heard to lament, “I hate spring! I don’t trust it. First people start taking their clothes off and then they start being—” he shuddered, “—social, and standing around outside blathering on about their Spring Break plans. It’s disgusting and unnatural.”
Certainly for those who have grown up where the sun don’t shine, e.g. up their butts, etc., Spring is a calamitous time of uncertainty, fear and dread.
Even those from Down South agree that Spring in Tacoma is a problematic season.
Cheaper Kate (‘14), sister of Cheap Kate (‘12) and grand-niece of the Broadway starlet Kiss-Me Kate (‘53), says, “It’s so much easier to get laid between October and March in Tacoma because people actually have a reason to want to stay overnight.
I think there’s an opposite correlation between the Likelihood of Getting Laid (LGL) and the Number of Days Before Day Light Savings (NDBDLS): the closer Tacoma approximates a temperate season, the less likely you are to find someone (or someones) at a bar, or at a friend’s party or even to get your best friend to agree to an afterwards regrettable one-night’s stand.
The likelihood decreases even further still the more naturally-occurring mechanical obstacles there are to sexual success—things like not having a condom, not having lube, not having toys, not having a queen bed or even not having a sober friend to come take drunk-you and your new beau to the nearest point of rendezvous—hardly stops you in November when it’s 29 degrees outside.
In the Spring you get all picky and lazy so that sort of thing hardly ever happens.”
“Wow!” I said, impressed. “Looks like you’ve put a lot of time into thinking about this—even Cheese’s paper isn’t this statistically accurate!”
Cheaper Kate snorted.
“That’s because he’s a senior with a senior thesis—there’s no way he’s gotten laid in the last twelve weeks. I don’t have that problem so I’ve had more time to practice statistical accuracy, so to speak,” she concluded, ever so smugly.
