YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED THESE AGGRESSIVE, STRESS-INDUCING DEAN’S DATE POSTERS AROUND CAMPUS. THE INK’S INSIDER INFORMATION TEAM HAS CORNERED THE CREATOR(S) OF THIS PROPAGANDA AND ASKED THEM THE REAL HARD-HITTING QUESTIONS.
Name: The Committee to Motivate Students to Do Dean’s Date Work (CMSDDDW) Hometown: Grover’s Corners Major: General Club and Residential College Affiliation: Club Foot
Are you an animal, mineral, or vegetable? We are argon-based lifeforms, straddling the boundaries between what is alive and what is merely sentient. So kinda like all three.
Who’s your favorite Princetonian, living or dead, real or fictional? Goku from Dragon Ball Z. He’s a Princeton alum in many Dragon Ball fanfictions, which we hold as canonical.
What’s the best meal you’ve eaten in Princeton? One of us once distracted Nancy Malkiel and gulped down several spoonfuls of some clam chowder she was eating.
Why are you posting such intensely fonted posters? It is inexplicably acceptable at Princeton to procrastinate on papers, then wail and moan on Facebook as you pull an all-nighter and produce some half-assed essays on Dean’s Date Eve. We somehow find a perverse sense of camaraderie in this self-destructive tradition, punctuating it with fanfare and pageantry and silent discos. Our posters are meant to encourage skepticism about a culture in which we all act as if we’re all academic martyrs crucified on the amount of work we have to do, when we nailed ourselves there in the first place. We all have work. We all have time to do it right. It’s hard, but complaining makes it worse. It’s a privilege to have the education we do, one that hundreds of thousands of applicants wanted and were denied. Acting as if Princeton is pulling us through school by our hair disrespects that privilege and lowers the quality of the work that we do. If we saw Dean’s Date work and exams as challenges to be met rather than curses to be endured, we would write better papers, score higher on exams, and live happier, less stressful lives. If inculcating that kind of living takes some aggressive words in Impact font, so be it.
In one sentence, what do you actually do all day? Acquire currency and the hatred of the entire Princeton student body.
What is your greatest guilty pleasure?
Snarky answers to journalists’ questions.
Who is “sponsoring” your posters? Microsoft and Mr. Pibb.
What is your relationship like with the font IMPACT? Monogamous.
What’s hanging above your desk and/or bed?
The last reporter who divulged our identity.
What is your biggest fear?
An unwritten paper. Also, spiders.
What would you do if you were on the Presidential Search Committee? Install the dictator android ENLIGHTENED DES-BOT and enjoy a thousand years of peace.
Have any tips for us? Drop us a line at pressclb@princeton.edu
5:00 PM — Everywhere
Brian Wilson, after pitching the winning game of the 2010 World Series, expresses all your emotions perfectly in a single sentence.
Congrats guys, another Dean’s Date managed. Now please, for the sake of your sanity, either go to bed or start having fun.
– WAS
4:47 PM — Underneath the invisibility cloak
Did you see us make it disappear? We thought we’d do Princeton a solid and rid it of one more procrastination tool during the final stretch, so we put the invisibility cloak over the Dean’s Date post. Some may call this a “technical glitch.” Semantics…
If you missed it, keep clicking the refresh button to see if the magic happens again…
– SJP
4:42 PM — McCosh Courtyard
There is currently an insanely long line for these sweatpants stretching from the mouth of the cathedral to (last I checked) to around Murray-Dodge. Good luck if you’re planning on getting a pair. I just did. They are silky smooth.
As we head into the final painful stages of sleep deprivation and prolonged mental activity, we can use some tips from others trained to push their bodies to the breaking point—marathon runners. While DCW may insist on a divide between the cool sporty kids and the dorks who wear their allnighter badges like Olympic Gold medals, I maintain that we share some common ground with our athlete friends.
Here’s what Mary Wittenberg, president and chief executive of the New York Road Runners, the group that puts on the ING New York City Marathon, has to say about competitive marathon runners:
“Mental tenacity — and the ability to manage and even thrive on and push through pain — is a key segregator between the mortals and immortals in running,” Ms. Wittenberg said.
You can see it in the saliva-coated faces of the top runners in the New York marathon, Ms. Wittenberg added.
“We have towels at marathon finish to wipe away the spit on the winners’ faces,” she said. “Our creative team sometimes has to airbrush it off race photos that we want to use for ad campaigns.”
If you’re covered in slobber and waiting for your towel at the end of this finish line, you’ve done us proud. Keep kicking.
–SJP
3:19 PM — Cafe Viv
So I was looking for a little inspiration (for this blog post, not for my actual Dean’s Date papers, mind you – I am an upstanding follower of the honor code, and let’s face it, if you’re still looking for inspiration at this point you have no business being on a blog site. Just kidding, we want you here anyway.) A little poking around the dark recesses of the Internet brought out this gem: EssayGenerator.
Type in any phrase, and it gives you a more or less grammatically correct, albeit very short, essay on the subject of your choice. Fun! Let’s see what it has to say about Dean’s Date…
“As soon as a child meets dean’s date they are changed.”
“Though I would rather be in bed I will now examine the primary causes of dean’s date.”
Don’t let me get your hopes up, though. It goes downhill pretty fast:
“Let us consider the words of that silver tongued orator, that most brilliant mind Elijah Bootlegger ‘A man must have his cake and eat it in order to justify his actions.’ [2] I argue that his insight into dean’s date provided the inspiration for these great words. To paraphrase, the quote is saying ‘dean’s date wins votes.’ Simple as that.
The question which we must each ask ourselves is, will we allow dean’s date to win our vote?”
It sure doesn’t have my vote…and neither does this essay machine, for that matter.
Two hours – it’s go time.
-LEZ
3:10 PM– Second Floor Frist
As the final hour draws ever closer…
Still have a bajillion words/pages to write?
All the nearby print stations are broken?
Operating on less than .5 hours of sleep?
Embrace it.
–VC
3:03 pm – Delirium is a funky place
If you’re like me, you’re anal about saving your work. You ‘save as’ your essays multiple times, hoping that the extra copies will ensure that the labor of your love/desperation won’t suddenly get up and disappear.
Sounds good and all, but the problem with this approach is that you get a folder full of papers titled:
‘Yoga in Prisons’
‘Yoga in Prisons, second draft’
‘Yoga in Prisons, updated for reals this time’
‘Deans Date copy’
‘FINAL JRN paper!!!’
‘NO PICK THIS ONE. FINAL FINAL COPY’
‘JRN story HERE LOOK HERE’
Don’t ask me why I don’t use the streamlined system of titling them ‘Draft 1,’ ‘Draft 2,’ and so on. I assume my mind doesn’t think in such ordered terms early Tuesday morning. I like my titles to have Punch. Energy. Pizzazz!
So anyways, here’s what happens. I open ‘FINAL JRN paper!!!’ ready to edit and submit. Shocked to find gaping holes (read: at least 5/18 pages) in essay. Wonder, “OMG, did I fall asleep and not finish the paper like I thought I did? Did I really not finish it? I DELUDED MYSELF into thinking I finished?!?” Panic ensues as I frantically start writing, anything- anything really, to fill up the space.
Twenty minutes later, for some reason, I go through my notes, and revisit my alternate drafts. Realize that ‘FINAL JRN paper!!!’ is not, in fact, the final one. ‘Deans Date copy’ is. Everything is there.
All is well.
-SG
2:33 PM — Firestone Trustee Room
Guys, you’re so close! But, I know the last stretch can be grueling. Are you lacking motivation? Let this guy rev you up.
If HE can do it, YOU CAN TOO.
– WAS
2:30 pm –Back to the hallway with the Turkish Alphabet poster.
So, when professors say that we must include our signature of the Honor code with the electronic copies of our papers, they mean that we can sign in Paint, right?
Right.
Here are some of my greater samples.
–LRW
2:17 PM — The Internet
Like us on Facebook. Don’t pretend like we’re not friends by this point, we’ve been up all night together.
– UPC
1:33 pm — In my room (uh, still…)
The only workouts I ever manage to squeeze in on Dean’s Date are a few chairside jumping jacks to break up the blood clots in my legs.
Thankfully, a tipster sent in this video from the Princeton Crew Team. It’s a first-person view of some strenuous-looking speed gauntlet, and it’s pretty (vicariously) invigorating.
Sayeth our tipster: “You feel like you’re actually getting dizzy with him in the beginning, and if you go to 1:18, the guy FALLS and skins his hands. I feel like I just exercised.
– DCW
1:21 p.m. – The minds of LMNT
It was the A-Teens last night, LMNT today. I fear that I will forever be known as the girl-who’s-obsessed-with-teeny-bopper music, but please, this is as good a day as any for flashbacks to my junior high glory days.
I couldn’t find the official music video, but this is so much better. How old are these kids, anyways?
*TRIVIA: LMNT, pronounced “element,” was chosen as a band name because the musicians liked the symbolic meaning. The four basic substances that make up the universe – earth, wind, fire, and water – are completely different, yet coexist in harmony…wait for it…just like the band members themselves!
Gotta love diversity.
-SG
1:00 PM — Cafe Viv
Time’s getting pretty tight, but can you spare three seconds? You’re here, so I’m guessing yes.
For extra giggles: Open the video in YouTube and keep pressing ’2.’ Repeat ad nauseam.
Try not to fail as hard this Dean’s Date.
– WAS
12:55 — Still in bed, still working, still living, still blogging
According to Brian No ’10, while the liveblog post may have 1,250 views, the homepage here at www.universitypressclub.com has over 2,100.
“So, like, wouldn’t it be accurate to say that something along the lines of half the school has read the liveblog?”
The fourth Google Image result for "dean's date"; from footballnews.com.au
You know the question. You might even fear the question. But, sooner or later, you have to face the question.
“How’s your Dean’s Date?”
Yes, at the end of every semester, these four words are tossed around – as a conversation starter, as an awkward silence filler, but generally just as an awful reminder – and the responses can be pretty telling. You know the ones.
There’s the asshole: “Oh, it’s fine. I timed it all pretty well, so I managed to write 50 pages over reading period.” (This is usually accompanied by a self-satisfied, smug smirk. Thanks, bro.)
Then there’s the engineer: “I don’t really have anything due on Dean’s Date.” What! “But I have 6 finals and a problem set and I have to split a molecule that week.” (Then you realize your life sucks less in the grand scheme of things.)
There’s also the chronic procrastinator: “Well I have like 60 pages to write, but I just can’t get started… I dunno. I’ll just pull some all-nighters and crank it through.” (Which doesn’t sound, you know, healthy.)
And, of course, the regular, run-of-the-mill, everyday Princeton student: “I’m fucked.”
