Cheatcode.

I realise I never blog when I'm having fun. I only blog when I'm bored, when I have nothing to do, when I'm pissed (but you all know about that), and when I have monsters I need to kill. Both literally and figuratively.

The latest monster is "IhavealotofassignmentsbutIalsowanttoplaybecauseIhave4monthsleft." It's getting kind of crazy because I have assignment deadlines and I'm trying to holiday at the same time. It sounds like a good life but seriously its not. Planning holidays is a bitch. The holiday though, is something else altogether. This is the part where people get pissed off because it's obvious I'm rubbing it in.

Now though, I have to figure out ways to create 1500 word essays in the blink of an eye and pretend that I thoroughly researched it. This is where I start using some of the lifeskills that I learnt in university. Let me detail them and see if they sound familiar to you.

1) Wikipedia, one book and something my lecturer said in lecture last week are closer to my real references than the pile of garbage I've put in my reference list. If only academics worldwide knew how many students actually use Wikipedia as a source in their research, but fail to mention it because it's not "credible"

2) I pore over books looking for the single sentence that validates my point. I never read the damn books. I just want to quote as many single sentences from as many books as possible so my reference list looks longer. It's not my fault even if I use a counterexample to support my point. If it's printed in the book I can use it as a reference.

3) I fill in random things in my APA reference list for sections where I have no information, in the hope that my list is so long, nobody notices that I've actually used a company name in the "authors" section. Nobody checks the damn list anyway, and I know that or someone would have pointed out to me by now that some of my sources are obviously rubbish.

4) I paraphrase similar points as far apart as possible in different paragraphs to create the illusion that I have more things to say when I'm actually saying the same thing twice. I don't seem to do badly in the end so I guess either paraphrasing works, or the lecturer just skimmed through my essay and didn't realise I'd repeated things to make up the word count. I also make myself unnecessarily verbose. If you can say the same thing with 30 words instead of 10, why not?

5) I add title and content pages, headers, page numbers and footers and try to make my work look as presentable as possible in the hope that it will create a good impression, even if what I've written inside is rubbish. Presentation is key.

6) I write my essay before I start looking for references to support my stand. In other words, it is actually my personal opinion, but I selectively find evidence that supports my stand. So the academics are actually marking the opinion of a smartass 22 year old trying to pass off his work as "research". The best part? I get good marks for it. Thanks really to the academics for letting me know they value my opinions.

Often, a university education is more rubbish than it seems. It claims to be many things, but when you're faced with the daily grind to rush out assignments, sometimes the quality of assignments become a moot factor next to the need to produce something so that you don't fail.