Two things I wish I'd known before coming to college: 1) Professors of liberal arts rarely provide worthwhile readings, and 2) The risk of clogging a friend's toilet is never worth taking. The latter has an easy remedy: Never poop in a toilet of someone you know. The former leads me to engage in what I call academic warfare.
What is academic warfare, you ask? Well, it's creatively interpreting paper assignments in such a way that puts your professors in a quandary. Let me give you some examples of what I mean.
My first strategy for dealing with an irksome liberal arts professor is to include intense engineering discussions in my papers for that class. For instance, I was not a fan of my international relations class (mostly because of the clicker). As a final assignment for the course, the professor required students to write a paper evaluating an anonymous argument on an international issue.
I chose the one on climate change and described in detail how a crisis situation would lead all nations to pool their resources and design a rotating settlement in L5 orbit that has the means to construct a solar shield in L1 orbit — using Superadobe derived from lunar regolith — to reduce sunlight to the Earth by a mere .5 percent. (I also cited Captain Planet.)
Another technique is to cite awkward sources and frame your argument in a manner that makes your professor uncomfortable. I previously took an English class on how viral videos circulate that was taught by a professor whom I greatly respect. Our first big assignment for class centered on a paper discussing the use and abuse of copyright for corporate purposes.
I generally believe the current state of copyright law gives copyright holders way too much control over culture to the point where it's restricting speech. However, changing this has an unsavory implication: legalizing for-profit "toon" pornography. Disney may want Jessica Rabbit depicted only as a lady in the parlor, but broadening fair use would bring out her inner whore on the street. So I framed my argument against corporate control of copyright in such a way that agreeing with it — by implication — required the reader to consider the freedoms this would give to "toon" pornographers.
Even further, when writing papers, I try to make them as dense as the readings for the class. Not long ago, I received an email from a friend maligning a judge for using the words "withal," "pellucid," "asseverates," "integument" and "lacunae" in his judicial opinion, reminding me of a reading I had for film theory.
While my friend unfortunately was at the judge's verbal mercy, I was lucky enough to have the professor at mine. I noted all the ridiculous syntax and diction in the article and used all the same sentence structures and words in my essay for the class. If a professor requires I wade through a pellucid swamp of academic obscurantism, I will make that professor do the same.
When people hear of my antics, they're typically shocked that I would be so ballsy. To that, I say, "Engaging in academic warfare is only dangerous if you do not have a valid point to make and don't know the material." Weird looks usually follow that proclamation.
But if you know what you're talking about, framing it creatively usually secures an even higher grade. On all the papers I mentioned earlier, I received an A.
So when a class bothers you, first make your assignments flawless, and then craft them in a way that bothers the professor. The power is yours.
Chip Skambis is an English and telecommunication junior at UF. His column appears on Mondays.
