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How the Graduation Announcement Turned Me Into a Terrible Person
By Anthony | February 28, 2013
Well, it all started when the commencement speaker was announced…
Mood=Tired
Song of the Week=Domo 23 by Tyler the Creator
Random=Bandwidth
If you haven’t heard the news already, the commencement speaker for Ohio State’s Spring Class o 2013, which I’m graduating in, by the way, is sitting president Barack Obama. Not only does this mean that yours and everyone else’s commencement speaker will always pale in comparison (unless you are also fortunate enough to have the president as your commencement speaker. In that case, congratulations), but it also meant that there would be your normal safety measures: tighter security, traffic to account for, and only four seats for your family.
http://www.wiretotheear.com/2007/12/21/noise-electrical-hum-lp-scratches-and-warping/
I actually bought a record player just so I can scratch it when the situation calls
That’s right, for the first time (as far as I know, I’m not sure if it’s been done before) they put a limit on how many people each graduate can bring. And that was four. They have created more awkward family choices than evening sitcoms without the convenient Dues Ex Machina to fix it.
Now, to be fair, this is our largest graduating class with 12,000 students, so four guests each would fill 72,000 people total and that’s not counting how many sections are unusable due to construction. They also just raised it to six tickets per graduate with a small potential for more. Why didn’t I mention that sooner, you ask? Because if there’s one thing I learned from watching the news, it’s that you put all the sensationalist details at the beginning and bury the facts at the end when people start checking out.
In case any publications or broadcasts are looking to hire me, I am available.
So how did a simple ticket scarcity lead to me becoming a bad person, you may ask? Well, I have a large family. In fact, I have ten from my immediate family alone. Now, a normal person would instantly just pick their parents, and grandparents and call it a day. I am not a normal person. In fact, I went through several possible scenarios for picking four people (this was before they raised the limit) to attend before I came to my census and let someone else do it for me.
This is that list of things. All of them benefited me:
Double Auction
How do you express to your parents that you don’t care while making them pay you to do it? You make them pay to see you graduate! The four tickets would be auctioned off, but there’s a catch—You have to pay just to be in that auction! This, somehow tested poorly with audiences.
Prove their worth by stroking my ego
Ever had one of those days where you just wanted somebody to tell you how awesome you are? I call those weekdays. And weekends. I abandoned this approach once I realized that I actually require everyone to do this at all times.
Straight up bribery
At some point, someone unrelated to me is going to beg me for a ticket. However, I decided it was against my brand image so I threw the idea out. More importantly, I didn’t want to explain what happened. Best I just left this at the drawing board.
Creating a depth chart
Surprisingly, this is actually what I’m still using today. For some reason everyone is okay with it. I rank my family in order of who gets the ticktets. If one person cannot attend, everyone moves up a position.
Lesson Learned: Prioritize things!
-Animal
O-H! I-O!
To see better ideas I’ve had, check out Job Fair is a Cold and Unforgiving Place
To see another example of what may or may not be a good idea, check out After Nearly 10 Years, I Finally Cut My Hair
Topics: Author | 1 Comment »
February 28th, 2013 at 11:06 pm
Domo 23 is more like song of the month. Wolf also has the best album cover of all time.