Alright, it’s 11 p.m. Wednesday night. You had a long day: class at 9:30 and lunch in the Marketplace, where you nearly had to stab someone to get a seat; you decide screw it, hanging out and having fun is way better than doing school work at school, so one thing leads to another and now it’s 11 p.m. And you have a five-page paper due tomorrow at 8 a.m. for your Humanities core class, the one you forget to go to sometimes, because what in the world is a Nicarry?

You pop open SparkNotes, get some caffeine in your system and load that paper up with enough malarkey to make an Irishman’s head explode. Turn it in. Get an A.

We all know this story, and sometimes we’re even the star. On top of that, we all know the rush that comes with pulling it off: I didn’t care, I put in the minimum, got the maximum and that poor girl who spent a week on the same paper I sneezed out the night before it was due got a lower grade than I did. Is it fair? Furthermore, is it fair to our classmates, teachers, the subject itself or even more “whoa that’s, like, deep” — is it fair to ourselves?

I’ve mentioned it before, but one of the few things that Bruce Wayne and I don’t have in common is that I have parents. Even more importantly is that my parents, for whatever reason,  continue to think that I’m worth funding, at least until my time at Etown comes to an end. So, for me, my abhorrence of mixing poppycock — nonsense, malarkey — with school work comes not only from a mixture of my not wanting to disappoint my parents or become a poor investment, but also with my busy schedule of fighting crime in the evenings I’ve grown into a “no nonsense” sort of guy.

But listen, I get it: some classes can be coasted through, whether the coursework is easy or it’s not your cup of tea. Sadly, those classes tend to fall under the umbrella of the humanities, or what society would stereotypically label “liberal arts” or “useless,” and chances are you’re taking it for Core, so why would you care? But for a guy like me, who is afflicted with having nearly every one of his major-required courses being offered as Core, it’s actually borderline cruel and unusual punishment. The intellectual apathy that pervades our campus, where students are required to take courses that aren’t piquing their interest, causes the quality of the classroom experience to suffer for people who actually want to be there.

Why is that? And we can point fingers and say it’s because colleges now only care about pre-professionalism, there’s more money in particular fields than others (which obviously makes them superior), or maybe so-and-so shouldn’t teach such-and-such course because he or she can’t present things in a universally interesting way. I don’t know and I don’t care, because I, as a student, can’t change the way things work within the administrative system or on the faculty level.

But I can control me. And I can look within myself and find some way to make a class work, even if I’m staring down the barrel of comparative politics. I’m (my parents are) paying money to go here, and I might as well get as much out of this as possible. We all should, because if I see #HowMuchDoWePayToGoHere one more time, I’m going to throw a computer.

So at the end of the day, it’s about personal pride. “What if I’m proud of my ability to get by without working hard?” I can barely hear you mumble from behind all of your swag, and you’re right. It’s all subjective; it’s where your moral lines fall.

I’d love for you to read this, nod your head vigorously and say, “You know what, he’s right! No more hokum and reindeer games when it comes to schoolwork for me!” But that’s up to you, because who knows? Maybe I wrote this two hours before it was due. So do what you want, but keep in mind that every time you don’t care about that one William Carlos Williams poem you’re reading for WCH-core, there’s an English major alone somewhere, crying into a book. And that thing costs money.