What Separates Us From Sheep

At Swarthmore, there is a certain pride in how difficult our academic curriculum is. Many a student who has graduated from this “small liberal arts college located about twenty minutes outside of Philadelphia,” won’t hesitate in professing their bewilderment at the inhumane amount of work that was demanded from them each day. But, these individuals did graduate, right? So how did they accomplish such a feat? How live to tell the tales of what is recognized as one of the hardest colleges in the United States? The way I figure is, there are three options for survival:

1.) Be unusually smart. Yes, I believe that there are some people who just understand concepts, who retain information, who can write better and faster than others. 

2.) Take easy classes. An option frowned upon by the world of academia, and more importantly by the world of Swarthmore.

3.) Work in groups.

It happens to be that the third option is one I have the most qualms with. As I have slowly figured out, if you’re at Swarthmore, you’re probably not interested in taking easy classes, which eliminates option two and if you aren’t a naturally born genius (regrettably most people are not) you are left with one option: number 3. This is all well and good to a certain extent, I must admit, help is most certainly provided for you here; There are free tutors, help sessions, office hours with teachers, etc. but these things require time, an extremely valuable commodity when problem sets take days to finish and when there’s an exam every other week for all four of your classes. And this is excluding any extracurricular activities, you know, if you want a life outside of the classroom and the library.

Even assuming that you currently have/will develop incredible time management skills, the real problem is the style of learning that this environment caters to. There are some students who prefer to work in groups, and some students who do better whilst studying alone. This is, or at least should be, an academic freedom of the individual. It is unavoidably true: some students just don’t/can’t work in groups, solitary study is what they feel most comfortable with, but when the academic demand is this rigorous they are forced into seeking the groups help. It is sort of a joint effort, I know how to do number one, you know how to do number do, together we have the option to finish the problem set by explaining our knowledge to one another. But it should remain just that, an OPTION. Teachers should be providing students with the necessary knowledge to tackle problem sets, essays, or any assignment, ALONE. And yes, in the long run, developing skills for working in a group may be useful, but then again it may not. 

It just seems a little bit frustrating that you are forced to work in a group, you are forced to seek help, because a lot of the time the work is quite literally too challenging for one person to take on alone. Learn to work in a group. Or die. 

Contrary to popular belief, or at least contrary to what I had always thought, the back seat of a cop car is not comfortable. In the slightest. I’m talking about hard, hollow, plastic. And I’ve tried to explain this somewhat disappointing realization to a couple of my friends, but I always get the same response, “Well of course it’s not comfortable. It’s for criminals.” 
… for criminals? Come. On. You expect me to believe that criminals would commit crimes for a ten minute ride in a comfortable seat? That in some alternate universe where the back seats of cop cars have cushioning, there is a new demographic of “bad guys” who are in it for the sweet feel of a car seat? I didn’t think so.
You may be wondering why it is that I know how uncomfortable the back seat of a cop car is. Maybe you’re still preoccupied with the injustice of plastic seating in a vehicle, as I still am. Anyway, the story goes kind of like this: 
Sometime in early February, my Improv Group (myself included) piled up in a busted old rental car and prepared for an eight hour drive from Swarthmore, Pennsylvania to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. With intentions of performing in a big comedy festival, backpacks on our laps, and a trunk full of booze and contraban, we were giddy to say the least. Skip ahead a bit and it is the night after the show (yes, yes I skipped the show. It went well, smaller venue then I had envisioned but hey, were we ever really going to perform in front of thousands?) and we are pretty exhausted but we decide to just walk around the neighborhood and celebrate. We happen to have a bit of alcohol and weed and so things are… good. We come to this dead end, at the top a hill, where the street meets the woods and one of us gets this brilliant idea. “Let’s go running in the woods.” Mind you it’s pitch black, but everyone seems to be into it. For some reason we take off our jackets, something about not wanting to get our clothes caught in the branches. So we do that. In hindsight, a lot of fun. If you ever get the opportunity to blindly run around in the dark with some friends, I’d highly recommend it. 
Eventually we all emerge at the clearing, panting and all talking at once about what we saw in the woods, who got scared, etc. (Clearly something in our bodies is kicking in. You know what I mean) when a car starts coming up the hill where we are. Now this is unusual for a couple of reasons. For one, we are at a dead end, so unless the car is being driven by someone with intentions of running in the woods, there is no reason to be driving up here. Secondly, its about two in the morning. 

The next couple of minutes go by really quickly. Somebody shouts, “Shit! It’s the cops,” and procedes to run into the direction of the woods. Mob mentality kicks in. Panic erupts. And the herd moves. We split up dashing between trees as the car comes to a halt at the edge of the wilderness. At this point its myself, Mack, Jennie and Clarissa (these names aren’t actually real and it might seem paranoid but hey, I don’t know who reads this, and I don’t know if they’re too keen on me sharing this story). We are about thirty feet in the woods, deep enough that the man in car (who has gotten out and is shining a flashlight back and forth) can’t see us, but close enough that we can see him. We are frozen, we are low to the ground, we are talking in whispers. My heart is screaming in my head. We wait for what feels like days just listening to each other breathing. Occasionally weighing our options. Our eyes are frozen on the man with the light. And then it hits Mack, we’ve left our jackets out there. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. So we devise this plan to get them back: Somehow by God’s will, neither Mack or myself have been drinking, we’ve only smoked a bit, so we decide to exit out of a different part of the woods and circle back to get our jackets, pretending that we’re just getting them for some friends. I access our plan, “There isn’t anything to get us in trouble that is in our jackets right?” “No, only alcohol and we haven’t been drinking. Bailey has the weed.”

And now the plan is in motion. We split up from Jennie and Clarissa at the edge of the woods some ways away from the car, who has turned his siren on at this point (So yeah. It’s the cops) and we (myself and Mack) start walking toward the car. We keep going over the story so that we don’t expose our lie. Mack says something like, “I feel like a free man.” Mistake. As we get closer to the car, the man starts to walk toward us. He shines the light into our faces and then he says my name. My mind begins to race, do I know this guy? “It’s your ID, I found it in your wallet, take a seat on the curb, you boys must be tired from all that running.” We stay strong, “We don’t know what you’re talking about.” I should mention that this is the only time when we “stayed strong,” because after this we buried ourselves in lies. He starts us off with some threats, about how if we don’t tell him who we were with, we’re going to jail, blah blah blah. He doesn’t have anything on us. And then he brings up alcohol. Blah blah blah. “Breathalize us,” we say. Blah blah blah. “What about the weed I found in one of your pockets?” Wait. What? Weed? Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Suddenly we have a change of heart, sort of, “Okay we know a couple of the people, but not all of them [lie].” “Weed was in a girls jacket, who are the girls” “We don’t know [lie]” “How many people were you with” “four [lie], six [lie], we don’t remember [LIE].” Finally the officer, who is a narcotics officer mind you (he must have told us 10000 times) tells us to stand up. To walk to the car. He opens the door and herds us in. “We’re being arrested,” I think.

We sit in the car. It’s uncomfortable (I’m also pretty high). But seriously, I’m squirming in my seat. I think to take a picture of myself. Then I remember we’re in trouble and that that would be stupid. No cuffs. The cop just sits in the drivers seat. Doesn’t turn on the engine. Finally he tells us that we’re going to direct him to the house where we’re staying. We have no choice but to oblige. The house, which is lived in by another member of the Improv Troupe is also home to his mother. Fuck. We pull up to the house. We walk up to the door and ring the bell. Buster opens the door and tries to bring us in before he realizes there is an officer of the law behind us. Our expressions of guilt say it all.

Begin scare tactics. This part of the story is pretty difficult to remember, but only because it was filled with more lies and bullshit threats. All I know is, eventually, we came relatively clean about everything. The cop got the two girls, who had made it back and who had been hiding under the covers (I kid you not), downstairs. The other two guys still haven’t made it back yet. So it’s me, Jennie, Clarissa, Buster and Mack and the cop. Oh and Buster’s mom, God bless that woman for being so understanding and wonderful. And we are going over the alcohol, and the running away bit. Luckily Buster and Jennie are both of age and can own up to the liquor. And then he drops the Marijuana bomb and Bailey let’s out this defeated sigh that just sounds like, “Who the fuck left weed in their jacket?” 

The cop has found his niche. Nobody can explain the weed. Nobody will own up to it. We all avert our gazes. He is making us uncomfortable and he loves it. The officer is focused on the two girls, because as he has told us, the weed was in a woman’s jacket. They (Jennie and Clarissa are in tears they’re so nervous). He goes out to get the jackets. I ditch my lighter in my influenced state. He comes back and tosses me my jacket and then holds up the other one. We all silently giggle. Mack reaches out, “That’s…uhmm… actually my jacket…sir,” he squeaks. The officer is genuinely surprised. It’s even funnier. “So it’s your weed?” Now begins Mack’s greatest performance. Never have I heard the words, “It’s not mine,” used more frequently or convincingly in speech. “You expect me to believe that between the time you put down the jacket, and when I picked it up, someone put marijuana in it?” “It’s not mine. I guess so” “I can put you in jail so fast. I know you didn’t buy this here, which means you brought it over state lines…” “It’s. Not. Mine. It’s. Not. Mine. It’s. Not. Mine.” The words are like the droning buzz of bumblebees at this point. 

FInally the officer gives up (which I think he had originally planned to do the entire time) He brings Bailey into the bathroom with him to watch as he mercilessly  flushes sixty dollars of green down the toilet. He says something pseudo macho like “I’m going to pretend I was never here” and he departs. Needless to say, everyone was pretty shaken up at this point, so the night was pretty tame from this point on. Just lots of talking. Lot’s of consoling. Eventually Tim and Bailey return. Turns out Tim ran much further into the woods and Bailey took a nap (not a joke, the boy literally was lying down in the woods hiding and fell asleep). We all swapped stories for the rest of the night and agreed that as scary as the experience was, it was also kind of cool. I wish I could have watched the weed get flushed. I was going to ask if I could join, but I thought that would be just as stupid as taking a picture in the back of the car. But no one was arrested and everyone was pretty content with that.

…fucking uncomfortable back seat though. Maybe it’s a crime deterrent.