Terry McMahon's Awesome Blog

Ok, imagine this scenario: your college has an intensive freshman orientation program. You enjoy it a lot, you feel like it helped you adjust to college. You apply to be one of the sophomores who lives with next year's freshmen and shows them around, and you get in. You get to know one of the students running the program, he becomes a friend, you and his then-girlfriend share an apartment for the summer (mom, it's not how it sounds). The next year you apply to be one of the students running the organization, with this guy as the chair. Again you interview with him, again you get on, and you proceed to spend 50 hours a week hashing out what it means to orient freshmen, who the hell should be doing it, and what everyone should be doing to get trained and oriented. Eventually the hours, the conflicts of interest and the fact that college kids shouldn't be running this themselves gets to everyone, and the committee functionally collapses. Everyone gangs up on the chair, you try to play it down the middle with vague amounts of success. After more late nights than anyone cares to remember, you wrap up the program. You stay friends with the chair, take his advice not to become chair yourself the next year, start getting more sleep. He graduates and goes to New Mexico to study computer science, you graduate and write press releases for losing political candidates.

All told, it's enough to think you know someone. At least until they become a contestant on Average Joe. You could say I consider this an unexpected event. Will it be enough to make me actually watch Average Joe? Developing...

Thanks to Aaron Clauset for sending a vague email about an Average Joe watch party without mentioning that he's a fucking cast member, and to Mike Ranen, his spirit still in college four years after his body graduated. Thanks for reading the blog, Mike!