Reading “10 Stupid Things College Kids Do” by BISD spokeswoman Jessie Haynes is an education in hyperbole, followed by a little tutoring in crimes against the language.
“10 Stupid Things” is meant as an educational booklet intended to prepare young adults entering university life. In some ways, such as with sections on student credit cards or general advice about managing one’s academic course schedule, the publication succeeds in its goal. In other ways, such as the many exaggerated bits of narrative peppered throughout the text that feature anecdotes filled with outlandish and laughably unbelievable consequences for certain actions, the book is an abject failure. It’s funny, though!
NOTE: This is a sort of director’s cut version of a story I originally wrote for the education blog of The Beaumont Enterprise. Visit Hall Pass for some backstory, then click here for live blogging, live tweeting and live video of the Beaumont ISD school board meeting tonight at 7:15pm.
The first batch of these anecdotes can be found in Chapter 1: Alcohol and Other Drugs. Over the course of four pages, Haynes tells five narrative-driven stories that all end in tragedy. The first of them, “Riding High” is simple (and, unfortunately) believable enough: five students spend an evening “dancing, flirting with the ‘babes’ and drinking more than a few 40-ounces each.” By the end of the night, three of them “went home in body bags” and two were hospitalized for weeks of intensive care, all because they were drinking and driving. The next story, however, takes a wild turn near the end.
In “Nothing in life is free”, Haynes tells the story of Lisa, who is out one night, drinking and dancing with her friends to the choice tunes of “The Thong Song” and “Back that Thang Up” when she returns to her table to find a “super fine, six-foot, four-inch tall, wavy haired, bronze skinned, brown-eyed dreamboat” waiting to buy her a drink. He brings her a ginger ale and, as a result of drinking the terrible beverage, she awakens “…in a strange place and feeling sore all over. The blood on the bed let her know that she was no longer a virgin. She had been raped over and over by the handsome two-legged animal.” A tragic ending, to be certain – but it’s not over yet. Not only was Lisa drugged, raped and deflowered, but drinking that ginger ale was also responsible for her becoming pregnant and infected with gonorrhea that same night. Too much hyperbole tends to ruin the ‘scared straight’ approach, but Haynes isn’t done yet.
Her next story, “Now that’s cold” involves an unfortunate soul named Dexter, who just wants to fit in with the guys. So, he drinks a little too much one night at a fraternity party before tragedy strikes. “He apparently found himself vomiting, so violently in fact, that he went to the back of the nearest building, fell down a short stairwell, drowned in his vomit while freezing snow covered his body that wasn’t discovered until a week later.” Yeesh! I guess no one ever told Dexter that first step is a doozey, or that drinking would lead him frozen like poor Han Solo at the end of Empire.
The crimes of rape and murder are highlighted in different areas of the book. In a large number of anecdotal stories, people with names like Malcolm, Lisa, Dexter, Eric, and Larry are either killed or murdered. In one story involving two people meeting in an online chatroom, Haynes writes, “When he arrived, Larry found that Susan was not Susan, that she was a man! Susan was really Sam, who ended up killing Larry.” In the next story, two characters named Linda and Robert meet online before Robert pins Linda to the bed and attempts to stab her to death before washing himself, getting dressed and taking a flight back home.
The stories continue like this throughout the book, again featuring heavily in later chapters. Chapter 4: Violence, for instance, could easily be retitled as Chapter 4: Men Will Rape And Kill You, since the majority of its contents involve men committing horrible acts of rape and violence against women. Haynes advises new college students that power outages, for instance, are highly dangerous and can easily lead to a quick and unfortunate rape scenario involving a twisted version of a panty raid:
“There is also a more dangerous type of panty raid occurring at some college campuses,” she writes. “This panty raid happens during power outages. When all is dark on the campus, the guys raid the women’s dorms, grabbing as many pairs of panties as they can. Some are worse-they grab the panties while the women are in them. This gets more dangerous because the women are raped in this sometimes brutal raid.” Haynes then wraps up with, “WARNING: Whenever there is a power outage, immediately lock the door to your dorm room.” Danger, Penny Robinson! Danger!
The chapter on “Booty Calls and Ignoring Health” (Chapter 6) is again laced with hyperbole, such as on page 58, in which magical sperm appear. Haynes writes, “And yes, you can get pregnant on the first try, even if you are unsuccessful in having intercourse. I know, I did. Yes, the very first attempt at sex left me pregnant. Somehow, that sperm can detect a fertile egg and jump loops through panties and all.”
Other chapters involve subjects such as Internet Foolishness, Too Much Materialism, Trading Family Ties, and something called Evil Worship, wherein Haynes takes a moment to preach the gospel. “For awhile,” she writes, “it even seemed cool to be an agnostic. But on reflection, I now remember praying extra diligently before an exam and whenever I faced trouble. To whom did I pray? I prayed to God and in the name of my Lord and Savior.”
In the same chapter, under a heading titled, “Religion and cults-knowing the difference” Haynes includes a bulleted list of statistics from various belief systems ranked in descending order from those with the highest number of followers to the lowest, presumably to indicate that the difference between a religion and a cult is how many followers it has. Judaism falls next to last on her list and shares the same bullet point with Scientology. If her point is to state that more followers=religion and less followers=cult, then by listing Christianity and Islam at the top and Judaism and Scientology at the bottom, one is forced to draw the conclusion that she considers Judaism as less than a proper religion. Perhaps this wasn’t her intended meaning, but by providing no further information to explain her section heading, there is little else to go on.
Grammatical errors and awkward phrasing are spread throughout the book, sometimes providing unintentional comedy. For example, while making one particular cautionary statement, Haynes writes, “Yes, gambling is legal. So are smoking, driving and diving off dangerous peers.” I guess that means no jumping off of your dangerous classmates, kids.
Other errors include a note suggesting readers consult the chapter on academic foolishness for information on cheating, yet no such information exists anywhere in the suggested chapter. The book is poorly printed, with enormous inner margins and barely perceptible outer ones to the point that, on some pages, it almost feels as if the words are trying to escape by leaping off the paper’s edge. All things considered, both the writing and printing of “10 Stupid Things College Kids Do” give distinct impression of amateurism.
As a whole, I found the book most entertaining when it was at its most hyperbolic. The stories of wildly compounded tragedy once provoked me towards an unanticipated ten-minute hiatus from my reading while my wife and I read from the book and laughed ourselves into a stupor. It is true that there are real and terrible consequences to poor decisions, but Haynes layers on the exaggeration so thick that her original point is lost amid the absurdity. At one point, Haynes goes so far as to describe a long-standing urban myth as fact by describing “a lonely college student who accepts a drink from a stranger and later finds himself waking up in a hotel bathroom with his kidney carved from his guts and a note saying ‘call 911 immediately or you will die’!” Haynes credits an individual by the name of Jimmet Lawrence with having done research for the book, but lists no contact information. Pity, because I’d like to send him a link to snopes.com.
Haynes concludes with a chapter on suicide, titled “Giving Up, Quitting”. She advises readers to never give up, to never quit, and to always look for the silver lining. She quotes Little Orphan Annie when urging readers that tomorrow will be a better day. She writes, “Believe me, there isn’t anything that has happened to you that hasn’t happened to someone else. They survived and you can, too.”
I guess she forgot about Malcolm, Lisa, Dexter, Eric, Larry, etc…
Don't you wanna be cool, too?
