Things I Learnt At College

Things I Learnt At College

1) If you are using an empty coke bottle to clean your brushes while painting never put the full coke bottle that you are actually drinking from with in reach. If the watery paint taste does not make you realize your error the paint brush hitting you in the back of the throat will.

2) The tutors don’t appreciate it when you drink all of their coffee and it is hard to hide guilt when you are really hyper.

3) Toy frogs are good at politics.

4) If you are making a life size dummy for a project never ever leave it hanging in the studio over night to dry. Security will really freak out when they see it through the window in the middle of the night and think a student has hung themselves.

5) If you put your bake potato lunch down on your chair while you clean some space on your desk for it, what ever you do, don’t sit down.

6) If an attractive girl asks you for help with something find out what it is before you say yes. Having your eye lashes dyed brown is not worth it, especially when you don’t end up getting her phone number anyway.

7) Never agree to play strip poker if you are so drunk that you think you are about to play black jack.

8) Never drink the punch at the pre summer ball party. You’ll only wake up in a corridor, wondering how you got there and why your vomit is fluorescent pink.

9) If a tutor falls asleep during the lesson he is giving, there is no harm in letting him sleep for a little while.

10) Keeping score of how many times a tutor says ‘er’ or ‘um’ during a lecture is fun but you might not be able to stop your self cracking up and being found out when they break the 200 mark.

11) Be quick with the alt + tab keys so tutors don’t see you playing solitaire when you should be taking notes.

12) Never ever take the bare wires from a computer fan, stick them in an electrical socket and turn it on. If you do, don’t be surprised when there is a very loud bang (not me).

13) Never use the disc sander to sand a peace of wood the size of a coin. It takes a while for the skin to grow back and they have to change the sand paper (also not me, the same not me).

14) Never super glue a doll on the ceiling above the desk of the girl with a doll phobia. If you do, don’t be surprised when she gets very, very angry.

15) No one died in the old studio theatre, it is not haunted and it is wrong to tell the new students that it is.

16) Never super glue your fingers together, especially while doing number 14 (it makes it harder to hide your guilt).

Believe it or not I graduated student of the year and had to give a speech at the graduation ceremony. The audience was laughing a lot but the college deans were not to happy that I turned it into a stand up comedy routine.

Stuart

Stuart is an accident prone Englishman who has been living in the Netherlands since 2001. Even his move to the country was an unintentional accident, the result of replying to a cryptic job advertisement he found one day in a local British magazine. Since then he has learned to love the Dutch (so much so that he married one of them) and now calls the country home. He started the blog Invading Holland in 2006 as a place to share his strange stories of language misunderstandings, cultural confusions and his own accident prone nature.

15 Responses

  1. Stavanger says:

    awesome stu, perhaps we need a copy of your valedictorian speech?

  2. Jeroen says:

    You are the living proof that the educational system is not at all in decline! Imagine what would have happened if you had to find out these 16-essentials-of-life in the true cold world? Luckely school provided a safe environment for experimentation.

    My personal knowledge top 3 after graduaring the 1st year of highschool was:
    -fireworks and french classes don’t mix
    -suggesting to the headmaster to go home this lunchbreak to beat up his wife only scores political points with the wrong crowd
    -NEVER assume in romance at age 13

    Cheers, Jeroen

  3. Invader Stu says:

    Stavanger – There were a few jokes about becoming McDonald’s employee of the month.

    Jeroen – The list has grown a lot longer since I left college :p

  4. Maikl says:

    Awesome Stu, the one with the doll is the best. My lessons after finishing first year of highschool are:
    – Do not say ‘Erm… but who are you?’ To the schools headmaster.
    – If everyone stands up after a teacher enters a class – you should stand up too.

  5. roxanne says:

    I think every graduation speech should be turned into a stand-up comedy act. Then people wouldn’t dred them so much. I bet yours was awesome. :)

  6. Invader Stu says:

    Maikl – Did you really not know who he was?

    Roxanne – I think it helped that they had just spent two hours being board.

  7. Maikl says:

    …This were my first days at school… He wasn’t VERY angry…

  8. ChickyBabe says:

    Was that your doll that you glued to the ceiling? :P

  9. Invader Stu says:

    Maikl – At least you can say you honestly did not know.

    ChickyBabe – Yes and no. It was a one of the dolls I was using for a horror show project (I was studying theater design).

  10. Tess says:

    Hilarious! #13 is just gross, I have a very vivid imagination. I wish I could switch it off reading this post… too much to handle! ;) And what is this alt+tab thing? Never mind, I don’t think I want to know… :9

  11. Invader Stu says:

    Tess – If you were not a Mac user you would know what alt+tab is :p

  12. Tess says:

    Oh stop picking on me… :9

  13. Invader Stu says:

    Tess – You brought it on yourself :p

  14. Jake says:

    I can’t beleive I plugged that fan into the mains. I honestly thought that they would throw me out for that (and in the first term). They were actually more cross about the bottle of vodka I kept in the studio.

    And the peice of wood was quite large – but the sander flicked it up and the ol’ fingers just kept on going. BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!

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