Every U of T student possesses the skills necessary to compile a lengthy list of school-related items that drive one a little over the edge. Given thirty seconds such a student could enumerate no fewer than 7,004 university elements that cause unwanted changes in his behaviour or help him slide closer to insanity.
Popular items include Robarts stacks, Sodhexo pricing, and the odour of Chinese food wafting from the suspicious trucks on St. George. No one in their right mind would dare to suspect the university course calendar as a source of crazy, unless they had just come off reading it themselves. But anyone who had just done so would not be in their right mind. That glossy-covered, flimsy-paged demon is indeed a major inducer of panic, distress and madness.
On average, every three hours a student’s head spends inside the confines of those rough-and-tumble pages means an additional six hours afterwards spent winding down- preferably in a padded room, and definitely removed from heavy machinery.
The symptoms developed from deciphering course descriptions, weighing literature versus Russian as a Second Language, and accepting future prospects as being either a grade-school teacher or a Nobody is enough to produce a high sustainable for a dangerously long time.
There are theories explaining the catalyst of madness: some say it’s the cryptic encoding of letters and numbers designed to tell you which courses occur where, when, and with whom (providing the update available online doesn’t negate everything you just read); others cite the choice of font. Most popular, however, is the conviction that the pages are lined with some mind-altering stimulus, perhaps Speed. Scientifically, activities related to the course book are roughly equivalent to drinking six cups of Turkish coffee.
Producers of the calendar are considering warning labels, such as the ones available on cigarette boxes, to caution student readers about possible side effects. The only debate remains whether or not to include a picture of a crazed student darting frantically from side to side, bug-eyed and panting.
The accidental results of this non-experiment may be useful for other fields; English buffs are reevaluating the madness displayed by Hamlet in Shakespeare’s classic play using the new findings. Experts are considering the idea that Hamlet might have been applying to the University of Denmark at the time of the tragedy.
In terms of your own life, dear reader, be forewarned that the lovable and detestable book you need call your crux during September (and its evil sidekick the timetable) may have devastating effects on your sense of mental stability and on your ability to control the volume of your voice. Consider yourself as having been warned, and hold on to your marbles.
