With only three weeks of school left and summer break drawing near, everyone has the same thing on their minds:
‘Let’s mess with all the kids taking tours of the campus!’

In recent weeks, we’ve had an open house, and high school seniors have taken the tour of UT’s campus.

Now, of course, when I see one of these tour groups, you know I’m not going to pass up an opportunity like this.

Sometimes, I jump into one of the groups and pretend like I’m on the tour and just make comments every few seconds about how much I hate whatever is being presented.

‘So this is the Vaughn Center huh? I hate it, it’s stupid. It reminds me of jail but dirtier.’

After some ignorant comment like that I like to make eye contact with everyone else in the group for a few seconds as if I’m trying to get one of them to agree with me as if I made a very valid point nobody realized.

Or, I’ll take another approach to the situation and be very picky about everything.

I’ll be really particular about the locale or Plant Hall’s architecture and say something like:

‘Minarets really? I’m more a steeple guy.’ Looks like I’m going to Carson-Newman College!’

(Look it up).

Or, if I’m really lucky, I get into a tour group right when it’s start.’

When the tour guide announces we’re taking a tour of ‘the University of Tampa,’ I make a disgusted look on my face as if I’ve just been offended somehow, shake my head and say:

‘This is not for me,’ and proceed to walk the opposite direction of the tour group.

Sometimes, if a group is walking by, I’ll grab two kids aside and whisper:

‘Seriously, don’t go here. I don’t have time to explain but trust me; you don’t want to go here. If anyone asks, we never met.’

Then quickly walk away.

Or as a group is walking by, I’ll turn to a friend and say loudly enough so they can hear:

‘Oh wow, I’m surprised kids are still applying to this school after what happened. It makes me mad that the university keeps secrets from them like this. Those poor kids have no idea.’

This really gets a good rise out of them.

Besides the recent increase of tour groups on campus, as the summer draws closer, we as the students also learned that tuition is going to increase next year!

This is understandable, of course, because the school couldn’t keep it as low as they did forever, right?

They were barely getting by with the current tuition fees.

I’m surprised this didn’t happen sooner.

Do you know how much it costs to keep a Dairy Queen AND a Chick-Fil-A running year round?

It’s not cheap, guys. There is a silver lining to this situation, though.

Jazzman’s Caf’eacute; is now open all day!

Raise tuition by $1000 or so to have Jazzman’s open all day?

Now that is a trade off I’m willing to make.’

And based on a survey (done in my head) 80 percent of students don’t even know what or where Jazzman’s is, so that’s more for me!

Along with tuition and tour groups, Easter arrived, and it was more fun than ever!

My family didn’t come down to visit me, and I wasn’t able to go home to see them, so I spent the day illegally watching ‘Fast and Furious’ online.

I treated myself to a wonderful Easter brunch of Trix cereal, Asian rice and a ‘Buffalo Meltdown’ (WTF does that mean?) from the cafeteria.

I also remembered Easter egg hunting as a child and realized, what does that have to do with Jesus rising from the grave?

There may be some reason behind it, but I’ll share with you some of my own theories.

Maybe the eggs represent Jesus and by hiding them the kids have to ‘find Jesus.’

That sounds good, right?

But, what about the part where it’s either a fake egg filled with candy or money?

Is the child ‘opening up Jesus to find his treasure?’

Or, if it is a real egg and the child eats it, is he ‘eating Jesus?’

I guess that wouldn’t be much different than communion, but it still seems strange.’

So, yes, these are the signs that summer is within reach, and soon we’ll all be out of here.

Oh yeah, there’s also something like final exams and studying, but nobody really cares about that.

John Jacobs may be reached at jjacobs@ut.edu.

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