Can't we build robots to wade through graduation paperwork nightmares?

By David Baker

November 26, 2007 | I'm not sure I want to graduate.

It's not hard classes.

It's not the absence of a plan for my life ­ that doesn't bother me, I have faith I can get by on my genuine good looks for at least another five to eight years.

It's not even some dream to become a Van Wilder-type character, hanging on to the last vestiges of college life until the bitterest of ends.

It's all the damn paperwork.

The endless stream of signatures.

Countless hours marooned in advising offices, generally making an ass of myself to lighten the mood, because I sense my fellow office visitors are about to go all Watts riots on the place ­ starting garbage can fires witt the horns of plenty and the orange, red and yellow fall-leaves-colored decorations. It would all be very tragic.

I can't claim to be above the influence of such paperwork and waiting room frustrations. On at least one occasion, I recall openly announcing my plans to do something completely overblown and irrational, like dousing myself in a flammable, petroleum-based product and lighting myself on fire in front of the HASS advising center's door to protest the whole graduation packet rigmarole.

Honestly, though, there has to be a better way.

Don't they have robots for this sort of thing now? Or was that in a more technologically advanced society? Japan maybe? The Jetsons?

My malice has nothing to do with the advisers. They are just an agent of the savage, soul-sucking machinery. In fact, it's been my experience that advisers are some of the most tolerant, beautiful human beings to grace God's earth.

If normal, less patient people had to deal with an endless stream of whiny, clueless college students every day they would wilt, lose brain function and control of their motor skills ­ possibly just shutdown like the marathon guy who collapsed and defecated on himself because his body had had enough.

I know I was like an Amish man at a Circuit City ­ namely shocked, horrified and baffled ­ when it came time for the graduation paperwork dance. I didn't know the steps and I have the rhythm of Navin Johnson in The Jerk.

The only thing I can relate graduating to is the first time you have to buy condoms. You have a good idea what comes next, and you know after all the business is done you get a certificate that can spruce up any office or home study you will eventually occupy, but you really have no idea how to go about it all.

Where do I go? What's the easiest, quickest, least painful way of acquiring what I need? There are different sizes? Which line is going to be less of a wait and which cashier looks most understanding?

I'll admit the differing sizes thing is a bit of a stretch, but the rest is a solid analogy. Pat on the back for me for making it relatable to the general populace.

The thing is we all had, depending on the redness of our home state, some form of sex education. I was never warned about the awkward, horrifying, tear-jerking experience that is the filling out of a graduation packet.

It was one of the things I never thought I'd have to go through, because I was naïve ­ I thought it was all easy. This surprise has led to some dire events. More, terrible things I'd never thought would happen to me.

Example: It never crossed my mind that one day I would have to watch Riverdance. That kind of thing happens to other people, never to me, but there I was the other day, watching the Lord of the Dance prancing around in an overly puffy white shirt ­ some flamboyant pirate dancing his audience down the plank and into a sea of ballet-related nightmares after robbing them of an absurd amount of their hard-earned dollars.

So now I stare at my graduation packet and all I see is Michael Flatley, which traps me in some mobius-strip cycle of frustration and riverdancing.

I swear to God if I ever make it through this alive I'm going to go back to school, become a robotics engineer, graduate again and create that damn robot.

NW
MS