Life in colledge

$160,000

. . . so as to end up flaccid, immobile, alone on the carpet of a dorm room, shirtless, wheezing, intellectually menopausal, cutting lines on an iBook with a pre-paid Discover card, watching consecutive hours of user-generated porn, in the dark, in a hoodie, apolitical, remorseless, eating salt-and-vinegar potato chips from a bag without a napkin: like some hero, pretending to be otherwise, on a Wednesday, during discussion section.

That's the text of a sign created by Adam Delehanty, a Brown student, as a comment on life in college, or in what I call colledge, "the vast simulacrum of education that amounts to little more than buying a degree on the installment plan."

As University Diaries has pointed out, the model for this catalogue is likely Allen Ginsberg's Howl. With, I would add, this difference: Howl is a chronicle of endless, frenzied action, while Delehanty's catalogue is a chronicle of torpor.

Sign of the Times? (Inside Higher Ed)

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