The Top 10 Reasons Boston College Students Skip Class

It’s snowing and you’re narcoleptic. You’ve tried to diagnose yourself with ADHD but you can never get through the long list of symptoms. You look out your bedroom window with a Calvin-and-Hobbesian ache and determinedly announce to your pillow pet you’re not going to waste your youth in a classroom. Unfortunately you lack Calvin’s intelligence, creativity and schizophrenia, so instead of hallucinating aliens to justify your persecution complex, you fall back asleep. Everyone has reasons to skip classes at BC, each stranger than the last.

You listen when the lord calls

Classes are canceled on account of the Holy Spirit choosing a specific date and time to greet us. You’ve been told that God is everywhere at all times, but at every disruption of your noon class, He seems more and more like a Pokémon that can only be caught at certain times of day.

You can’t handle the idea of tomorrow

You fall asleep planning your morning in reverse: “I need to be there by 8:50, so if I want to work out, get up at 7:30 — no. Get up at … 7, Jesus.” Your phone displays a burning 1:22 AM.

You jerk forward, just now remembering you forgot to read. Blood pounds through your ears. You mumble to yourself all the work of this week and the next: career fairs, term papers, preparing for the eventual death of your dog. Will it happen this year? Next year? Is he dead now and they just haven’t told you yet? “Marley…”

“I’m not going,” you announce. You collapse into your pillow, overcome with relief.

You’re hunkering down for Endless Winter

The unofficial US Postal Service Creed: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

If Boston College students worked for the USPS, little Susanna would receive her dollhouse so late she could flip it on EBay as a “Vintage Toy” and use the money to file for divorce. Winter is our ultimate Achilles heel.

You’re tracking A Celebrity Spawn

In 2013 Liam Neeson’s son, Michael, toured campus and we lost our minds. When news of the Neesons hit YikYak, The Hunt was on. Droves of students fled their gen chem discussions to sniff out the fame.

As we came down from our star-crazed frenzy, an anti-circle-jerk against the Neeson-swarmers formed. They condemned Michael’s pursuers so thoroughly that they became just as hateable as the stalkers themselves.

The occasional, “Did you know Amy Poehler went here?” proves we have learned nothing from the incident.

You’re in a Long-Distance Romance

You fell in love with a junior who lives on Sutherland. Each Friday morning you rise to the sound of a bus humming in the distance, carrying students off to a world that doesn’t even seem real. You refuse to join them.

You Hate Your Direct

Hate is a strong word–an appropriate word–for how you feel about this person. His morning routine includes slamming dresser drawers and indistinct metal rattling. It sounds like a cage and your room smells like a rabbit but you’d rather not ask.

You stay in bed until he leaves to avoid the endless ritual of, “What’s the weather looking like today?”

You Lift Your Stress Away

You haven’t started your paper on “Latin American Women with Emphysema in the 20^th Century” and you’re almost certain your roommate now has two rabbits. You head to the gym because you may be drowning in responsibility but you’ll be damned if you fail a class lookin’ saggy.

You’re Afraid of The Admissions Drones

Periodically as you walk through the quad you hear a dangerous whir. The administration tells you the drone is purely for shooting aerial promo videos, but you’re smarter than that. Could it be just another ploy to police free speech via the skies? Maybe. It has no eyes, but you feel it looking at you.

It sees you.

You stop.

You open your mouth for a scream that never comes and run back to your still-warm sheets.

You’re Still Recovering from Extracurricular Shell-Shock

Your step group had you up late you’re worried if you go to class you’ll spontaneously combust into a rhythm so dank it’ll infect the entire class. When your professor calls your name, you whip your hand to your forehead and shout, “SIR.”

“Excuse me?” he says.

“No excuses, SIR,” you bark back.

Your alarm blares and you snap out of your Kafkaesque dream. “Not today,” you mutter as you curl back into your cocoon.