Op-€d the other press Gotta Question? Get Online! Shannon Boisvert OP Contributor October 9, 2002 There is still twenty minutes left before the class starts, but already a third of the group arrangements. The only problem with this is that there are a lot of peo- class is grouped at the side of the room comparing assignments and asking each ple out there who either don’t want to admit they need help, are too shy to ask other for help. It doesn’t matter that no one knows anyone else’s name, and all social barriers are down as they all humble them- selves and crowd around the class geek who knows all the answers. While it’s great that every- one is getting help, how much are they actually learning? In this frantic pre-class scramble, not much information is absorbed. Let's go back to the beginning of the week when the work was assigned. The keeners all went home that night and had it done within an hour or so, memorized the notes, and started studying for the test coming up in two weeks. The A-For-Effort students went home, struggled with the homework for a good four hours, and collapsed from mental exhaustion. They will continue to struggle with this work until it’s due, going over and over the problems, hoping that an epiphany will jump out at them sometime between 2 and 3a.m. the night before class. Then there are the Last-Minute-Crammers—students who toss the homework under their beds and then panic the night before class when they realize they don’t know how to answer the questions, and throw the textbook across the room in frustration. There are a few options for students who require learning assistance. Most obvious is the Learning Centre, where they offer tutoring, workshops, or study The Tao Té Pee (The Way of Urination) Bryan Johnson OP Rantibutor So I was in Value Village the other day, though don’t ask me why I go there ‘cause I don’t think I’ve ever found anything worth using as a toilet-rag never mind wearing, but it’s like playing the lottery: there’s fourteen million pieces’a shit in that place but there's gotta be one decent item and my number's gotta come up eventually. So I’m looking through the shirts on the totally-fucked-up size rack where every- thing is for people with 78-inch waists and two- foot-long arms and made in 1953 when I hear a splashing sound. So I figure someone's done them- selves a favour and thrown out one of those gaudy pretend fountains you find in your average utterly tasteless wasteland drywall-mansion but I can’t see it anywhere and besides it sounds like it’s coming from inside the shirt rack. But I figure that given there are 10,000 specimens of the latest in poorhouse fashion extruded from god-knows-what chemical slop hang- ing there, one of them has probably just hit the 50 year molecular-stability limit and is disintegrating into a greasy puddle on the floor. So I’m looking around for green gases or bubbles popping over the rack but the only thing I can see is some broken loser out on a day-pass with a look on his face like he’s talking to God. I take a second look and realize he doesn’t look capable of a conversation with any- one, never mind God, so he must have found that one good thing in the store and damn it but I might as well go home. But come to think about it, to get that kinda demented grin on his face it’s even more likely someone’s on their knees in amongst the creamy shirts with his dick in their mouth. But real- ly, what are the chances of His Weirdness swinging a blowjob in Value Village when most guys can’t get one unless they pay for it? On a third and hopefully last look (‘cause he is one sad ugly fuck), I realize he looks more like he’s been saving up his meds for a very long time and then he took them all at once on the bus here, washed down with a gallon cup of 7- 11 caffeinated battery-acid. (I mean what do they do for help, or simply don’t have the time. Not to mention that trying to arrange a study group with five or more people who all have conflicting schedules is a daunting task. The other option, offered by the majority of fac- ulty at Douglas, is to phone the instructors or see them in their offices for help. Unfortunately, the instructor isn’t often available when the stu- dent needs to ask a question. Explaining a prob- lem over the phone can be frustrating, and many students don’t want to harass the instruc- tors by phoning once, twice, or three times a day. While both these options are great ideas, they just don’t work for some students. Well, now there is another option available, in the form of an online forum. At , students can post questions for other students (or even faculty) to respond to. There’s even a chat room where users can talk to each other real-time. So the keeners can help more people more efficiently, the A-For-Effort students can spend less time develop- ing an ulcer and more time studying, and Last-Minute-Crammers can get the answers they need and preserve the resale value of their books. The more people using this service, the more successful it will be, so this college newbie encour- ages everyone to check it out! to their coffee to make it taste like a Nazi experi- mental diuretic that’s been drank once before?) But that splashing sound is still happening and it’s been two or three minutes now and I still can’t see the cheesy fountain so maybe it’s really slurping and not splashing and I look under the rack ‘cause who knows, maybe there is someone on their knees in there and I can at least watch. And what do I see but a little waterfall dripping from the shirts and landing at the guy’s feet and a river running down into a floor drain and I can only think, “that’s considerate of him.” Maybe he even regretted pissing all over the shirts but it was preferable to making an exhibition of himself. And he looked like he was in bloody heaven. Unparalleled bliss. His eyes were rolled up so far into his empty head I could only see the whites. And I look at his vacant grin...and then look at myself...in Value Village...at four o'clock on another wasted Saturday afternoon with nothing better to do than flip through a million coat hang- ers, and I think “gee...I should try that,” ‘cause he had the look of a junkie as the smack careens into his brain at the speed of blood, only he was getting his for free and junkies have to blow four or five guys behind dumpsters to afford to get that high and that’s a lot of torn jeans and bloody knees. But all he had to do was drink an awful lot of anything wet, not pee (or breathe) for a couple of hours, saunter into some store where he looks like he belongs, snuggle into the polyester, and then let himself go in one very long ecstatically-relieving gush. God, all life’s pleasures should be so cheap and easy. page 7 ©