American University of Mediocrity
The American University of Mediocrity is a college devoted to helping people with exceptional talent become more like everybody else. They offer courses in WalMart navigation, fast food consumption and other basic skills (see Classes below) necessary for achieving mediocrity, which the school president has praised as "An honorable virtue for anyone, but especially for those unfortunate few who were born with great intelligence and longed to fit in by becoming as mundane and dull as possible."
Reasons to attend[edit]
Being a remarkably intelligent person is difficult. It means being different from everybody else in the United States. It's almost as bad as being black. That's why the American University of Mediocrity is devoted to the three "gets": Getting laid, Getting drunk, and Getting a minimum wage job at WalMart. So if you are an amateur philosopher and you spend your days ruminating on the meaning of life, and you consequently have no friends, you should strongly consider attending the university and learning to be the same as everyone else.
The school has 5,000 students selected from over 45,000 who apply every year. This shows the tremendous desire among many intelligent people to become more like everyone else. This college alters thought patterns so that any student who enters as an expert in calculus will leave laughing because the word "calculus" reminds them of the word "cock." So if you constantly befuddle your friends with big words like "interdimensional physics," "Middle-Eastern antebellum economics," or "independent thought," you should strongly consider the university. They'd gladly admit you, unless you don't have enough money to pay tuition, in which case they'll probably just laugh at you.
Classes[edit]
The American University of Mediocrity has criticized middle and high schools as "too focused on education." A pamphlet for the school reads: "Small children are taught that they can accomplish anything that they want if they put their mind to it. We believe this is wrong. We think the truth is that people can become whatever they want as long as they work in an office job or a gas station. There are two types of people, those who accept their mediocrity and get dead-end jobs and then die, or those who strive for excellence before realizing that excellence isn't normal, and then getting dead-end jobs and dying." The school is devoted to helping the latter.
The curriculum is based around a set of core classes that all students must take, including Using a cash register, Swearing, Eating fast food, Ignoring all literature except Playboy and some comic strips, and The stapler: an introduction. Many students have difficulty at first, especially since some classes require the destruction of classic literature such as the works of Shakespeare and Dickens. "I set a very rigorous syllabus," says one teacher, "Many students have a lot of trouble with burning the classic plays at the beginning of the year. But by the end of the year, if you hand them a Shakespeare classic, they'll throw it away without second thought because it's too big for rolling paper."
Success stories[edit]
John Kendle, a student at the University, was asked to write an essay about a trip to the beach before he started to study mediocrity. This was his essay:
"Today I drove down to the beach, and as I walked along the sand I allowed my thoughts to wander to the nature of humanity in this vast, confusing world. I turned around and watched the waves obliterate my footprints. It seemed an allegory for something much more vast. No matter what we accomplish in our lives, humans are ultimately tiny and insignificant, and all traces of our existence will eventually be wiped out by the endless flowing waters of time."
After four years of majoring in Ignorance (with a minor degree in Sexual Obsession), John was asked to write another essay about the beach. This was the result:
"Today I drove down to the beach. I thought it would be a great place to fuck my girlfriend."
Clearly the university successfully drove all traces of intellectualism from Mr. Kendle, who said in his graduation speech: "God, back when I was smart, nobody ever talked to me. I was so ashamed of who I was. But now, I get invited to parties every other day. And I've been getting laid! Sometimes even by women under 40!" Kendle's is only one of hundreds of heartwarming tales of people who came to the university burdened by excessive intelligence and came away from the university as scholars in stupidity. "I used to be a nerd," says Jane Svenson. "I was interested in all kinds of taboo things like the world around me, the climate, history, science. But this school taught me what was really important: football games, fast food restaurants, and paychecks. I used to be really unpopular. I'm still unpopular, probably because my boobs aren't big enough. But at least I'm the same as everyone else!"
Beer College[edit]
Beer College is a smaller college located near the university. Beer College has abandoned classes altogether and teaches solely about alcohol consumption. Like the larger university, beer college has a strict moral code under which acts of honesty or kindness are strictly forbidden, and acts of violence against women take place every Saturday in the cafeteria as part of a school sport, competitive raping. In classes at beer college, students are taught about different brands of beer and how to open the cans. However, most students are actually penalized for attending class.
When looking at a student's application, admissions officers at Beer College look for evidence that the student has been as uncommitted as possible in his or her high school days. "We prefer students who've had at least three DUI's," says one admissions officer, "And we are especially impressed by any student who has killed at least five people in drunk driving accidents."
Discipline[edit]
Students are expected to devote all time to mediocrity. Any textbook not devoted to traffic jams, fast food, or other class subjects is banned. Students caught with books on philosophy, painting, or calculus are immediately suspended. "I had one student who really, really wanted to shed her genius and become a common sheep," says a professor in Housewife 101, "But she kept doing calculus equations in class when she should have been practicing her sweeping technique, which was poor at best. She wasn't showing the commitment necessary to become a stereotypical housewife. She was still showing signs of abnormal intelligence, which was unacceptable. We suspended her. She vandalized the school before she left. She wrote the Pythagorean Theorem on a wall of my office."
Students who graduate receive a gift certificate to Burger King, a stick of chewing gum and a bottle of suicide pills.