Ruminations on College Life
By Aaron Karo
3/5
()
About this ebook
anecdotes on everything from partying all night, to learning
to do laundry, to falling asleep in class, Aaron Karo
has captured the college experience like never before.
It took college freshman Aaron Karo only one week to realize that college was a joke -- an especially funny one that he could share with his friends in a regular email newsletter about life on campus. By his senior year, Ruminations on College Life had become an international phenomenon. Now, for the first time in print, here is the best of the original ezine, previously unpublished material, and brand new introductions to each section by the author. Share in the absurdity and insanity of the college experience with Karo as you read his outrageous inside account of scheming students, crazy professors, confused parents, and rowdy frat boys.
Perfect for anyone who is destined for college, currently surviving it, or already a veteran, this book is a cult classic readers can enjoy alone or read out loud at their next party for tons of laughs.
Aaron Karo
Aaron Karo is the author of Ruminations on College Life and Ruminations on Twentysomething Life, and has been writing his celebrated email column Ruminations since 1997. Also a nationally headlining comedian, Karo has performed on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and Comedy Central Records released his latest stand-up album, Just Go Talk to Her, in 2008. Originally from New York, Karo lives in Los Angeles, where he runs Ruminations.com, the web site he founded to make sure no one gets anything done at work.
Read more from Aaron Karo
Ruminations on Twentysomething Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI'm Having More Fun Than You Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to Ruminations on College Life
Related ebooks
From Bridal Designer to Bride Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Struck: Stupid Cupid; Flirting with Disaster; Pucker Up Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Bachelor's Baby Surprise Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Tale of Three Lions: An African Adventure Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Highland Affair Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHis Blind Date Bride Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBreathe: A Guy's Guide to Pregnancy Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Have You Heard the One About . . .: More Than 500 Side-Splitting Jokes! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Will, a Wish...a Proposal Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMe You Us Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwenty Years an Ex-Pat Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSomething Beginning With Mistletoe: Something Borrowed, #3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWoman in Love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Blue Lagoon: A Romance: Book One in the Blue Lagoon Trilogy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Highlander Walks Into a Bar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dear Molly: The Complete Series Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOne Hundred Almost Hilarious Jokes Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One Hundred Crazy Crazy Jokes Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Hot Cougar Sex: Steamy Encounters with Younger Men Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Angels of Mercy: Diary of a Quarterback - The Boxed Set Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dear The Man Upstairs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFalling for the Rebel Princess Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStories from Elsewhere Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Valentine's Ghost Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRanger Daddy Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Let's Talk About Fictional Sex Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLong Distance Lover: Tender Tarts, #4 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All Classic Blonde Jokes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOne Day Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Humor & Satire For You
Love and Other Words Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anxious People: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Screwtape Letters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5101 Fun Personality Quizzes: Who Are You . . . Really?! Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Swamp Story: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don't Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: the heartfelt, funny memoir by a New York Times bestselling therapist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mindful As F*ck: 100 Simple Exercises to Let That Sh*t Go! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing the Guys Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln: A Nutty Story About Edwin Booth and Boston Corbett Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My Favorite Half-Night Stand Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar...: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Solutions and Other Problems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Best F*cking Activity Book Ever: Irreverent (and Slightly Vulgar) Activities for Adults Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/530 Interactive Brainteasers to Warm Up your Brain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Soulmate Equation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Will Judge You by Your Bookshelf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 2,548 Wittiest Things Anybody Ever Said Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Go the F**k to Sleep Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tidy the F*ck Up: The American Art of Organizing Your Sh*t Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sex Hacks: Over 100 Tricks, Shortcuts, and Secrets to Set Your Sex Life on Fire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Casual Day Has Gone Too Far: A Dilbert Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 2,320 Funniest Quotes: The Most Hilarious Quips and One-Liners from allgreatquotes.com Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related categories
Reviews for Ruminations on College Life
14 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Supposed to be funny, was stupid. A truly enormous disappointment.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Terrible. Supposed to be funny journalistic look at college life but really just trite, forced, and crappy.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5As a current college student, I have to say- Karo speaks the truth and makes it completely hilarious. Everyone needs to take a break from the stress of life and laugh, and this is the book that will do it for you.
Book preview
Ruminations on College Life - Aaron Karo
When I first arrived on campus at the University of Pennsylvania, I quickly gained the Freshman 15
—the ability to drink fifteen beers in one sitting.My first couple of weeks as a freshman were typical. I wandered around completely clueless and partied so hard that it made even my wildest high school nights seem tame in comparison. I rarely stumbled back to my tiny dorm room before 4A.M.
On Sunday nights I would try to take a break from the drunken mayhem and rest up for the coming week. However, since my body was so messed up from the weekend’s festivities, I could never fall asleep. As I tossed and turned for hours, all these funny thoughts and observations about college life kept bouncing around in my head. One Sunday night I finally decided to write them down, and the next day I emailed them to twenty of my friends from high school.Ruminations on College Life was born.
Each month throughout my freshman year I continued to email out an issue ofRuminations . The emails consisted of all my funny stories and anecdotes about college life that I thought up on sleepless Sunday nights. Soon my friends began forwarding it to their friends, who then emailed me to be added to my mailing list.
As I kept writing during my sophomore year, my mailing list kept growing and growing, and I created AaronKaro.com to hold all the old issues. By my junior year,Ruminations on College Life had become an international phenomenon as thousands upon thousands of pre-froshes, college kids, and alumni joined my list. My issues were used to teach English to students in Finland and Austria and were the subject of term papers and class projects from Syracuse to UCLA.
By the time of my graduation from Penn in May 2001, I had over 11,000 subscribers around the world. The drunken ramblings of a sleepless college freshman had evolved into something I could never have imagined. After graduation I tried to get all myRuminations published, the right people saw them, and the result is in your hands right now.
If you’re reading this in the bookstore, take a look around. There are tons of books about college. Some will tell you what classes to take and others will tell you how to deal with an unruly roommate. But none will tell you what really goes down in the tiny dorm rooms and frat-house basements of colleges across the nation and around the world. This one will.
I hope you will read my book and laugh out loud. Because whether you’re going to college soon, currently surviving it, or already a grizzled alum, the college experience is universal. It is also absurd and ridiculous. So get comfortable on your extra-long twin, crack open a case of cheap beer, and read on. And whatever campus you call home, always remember, college is a joke!
Your freshman year of college is supposed to be a new beginning.You emerge from the summer following your graduation from high school pretty much hating your hometown and everyone in it. You look forward to college as a chance to start fresh, to make new friends and begin a new phase in your life. Then you get to college and immediately start hanging out with everyone who goes there from your high school, and you’re constantly instantmessaging and emailing your friends from home. That’s because freshman year isn’t a whole new phase of your life; it’s really just another place to participate in underage drinking and trying to get laid.
As a freshman, you’re the lowest of the low. You don’t know anybody, you can’t find anything, and no one seems to want to explain anything to you. But everyone knows what it’s like to be a freshman, so you have to use it to your advantage: Excuse me, young man, why are you twenty minutes late for class?
Your response: I’m sorry, I’m a freshman and I got lost.
Yo, dude, you just threw up all over my girlfriend!
Your response: I’m sorry, I’m a freshman and I’m wasted.
And they’ll understand.
In the end, being a college freshman is like being a fetus. You’re helpless, you still rely on your mom for pretty much everything, and you have no clue what the hell is going on. By the end of the year, you’re wasted off your rocker, still completely clueless, and passed out on your dorm-room floor in the fetal position.
THE FIRST WEEK of college feels kind of like camp. You’ve got enough clothes to last you a few weeks, you’re sleeping in a little bed, and you write letters to your parents and friends. After two months I was like, OK, this has been fun, but the summer is over now, time to go home.
The RA was in the hallway stopping dazed kids from leaving. They were all packed up saying, Wait, you mean this isn’t camp? But it feels just like camp! What? Four more years?
WHEN I FIRST got to college, I was still kind of in that high school gotta get involved
mode. You know, like when you used to join clubs just so you could put it on your college application. Anyway, for some reason I decided to run for freshman class president. Of course, I got trounced by some kid who was also still really into getting involved,
even more than me. (I think he needed it for his grad school application or something.) Even though I lost, I think I still had the best posters. They readVOTE KARO FOR PRESIDENT. PLEASE, I ALREADY TOLD MY MOM I WON ! I thought that alone should have won me the election.
I WAS PRETTY prepared for college life right from the start because I had visited as a pre-frosh many times. There’s nothing better than being a pre-frosh. You’re so clueless but you have all of college still ahead of you. I’ll never forget my first visit to campus. I got absolutely wasted and ended up on the floor of the dorm bathroom. This cute college girl comes in and asks me if I’m OK. I could barely respond. She said, So you’re a pre-frosh?
I nodded. She said, OK, let me help you out,
and proceeded to stick her fingers down my throat until I threw up, which made me feel much better. I never found out who that mysterious girl was, but I think of her every time I vomit.
HOW HOT WERE the first few days of school? I had like fifteen fans going at once in my room and one mini one that I kept directly in my face all day. That’s basically who my good friends are now—the ones who had the best fans, because I was always in their rooms. This one kid had an industrial-size fan and a grilled-cheese maker. He’s my best friend now.
IN EVERY GRADUATING class from high school, there are always like five couples that decide to stay together when they go away to college. This always baffles me. Of all the couples from your school that did this, how many are still together? Zero! That’s because it never works! Who are you kidding? Instead of talking to your boyfriend or girlfriend who is a thousand miles away on the phone (Oh, I can’t wait to see you over Thanksgiving break
), get a clue and start randomly hooking up like the rest of us.
A COUPLE OF weeks into my freshman year, when my mom asked me if I knew my way around, I said yes. But what I really meant was, I can only find the one room I have class in, in each of only four buildings, the frat houses, the places that sell beer, anything open twenty-four hours, my room, twelve other kids’ rooms, and the cheese steak place.
ARE YOU GOOD with names? I forget them as soon as I hear them. Might as well not tell me at all! I have no idea what anyone’s names are except my own, the kids I went to high school with, and that one hot girl who I have never spoken to but stalk from afar.
I HAVE NO idea how to do laundry. No, no, not like I have some idea but just don’t know how much fabric softener to use, I mean I haveno idea how to do laundry. I just had this vision that there would be some cute chick in the laundry room every time I went there who would show me how to do it. Dreams die hard, but I have no underwear.
CAMPUS IS REALLY a communist society. I own nothing, it all belongs to the university. I have no money—it’s all my parents’. My meals are served in little square portions