My favorite slacker story- the summer before last I had to take ballet to fill my P.E. credit. I'm not super coordinated, so I figured I'd be bad at it, but anything is better than running. I never run. I would be the first to die in a zombie apocalypse.
As I predicted, I was bad and not nearly as flexible as I thought. That being said, I actually liked it. I almost bumped into people when we were "learning" the choreography (which I really sucked at remembering) but it was pretty cool.
The shit thing about this class were the research papers. It was a month and a half course and we had 2 papers. I think I tried on the first one because it was really short/not supposed to be as detailed. I don't remember what it was about, so either I worked on it the honest way or it wasn't worth bullshitting. The research paper though. GAH. 5 pages on a famous ballerina with I don't remember how many sources.
I hate everything about research papers. Literally everything. I purposely avoided the super famous ballerinas (Isadora Duncan, for instance. Practically invented modern dance, had an unfortunate love of scarfs) because there's far too much info I didn't want to have to sift through. I went to the Houston opera website and picked a random person. I thought it'd be cool to see her in a performance later if I ever got the chance.
Amy Fote. I found where she went to school, that she was graceful, she was the star of a particular ballet. That's all I had. That's not even half a page of information and that's all I could find. I tried writing it multiple times, fully intending on being an honest student, but I couldn't stretch that little amount into five pages. So I did what any other college kid does in that situation- I procrastinated and did it the night before. Rephrase- the morning of.
Yep. I started the paper at 6am and bullshat 5 pages in about 5 hours (mostly because I have annoyingly high standards for myself, so everything had to be perfect). I said she was a beautiful, graceful dancer at least ten times. It's all about synonyms. Find a part you like and just rephrase it again and again and again and again and again until you have enough of that one thought. Move on to the next piece of info. Rephrase that one again and again and again...
I ran out of information to bullshit on, so I had to look up and explain- in great detail- what her most famous role was, how that character fit in with the story, what the story is actually about. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I don't think I made up any sources though.
I finished the paper right at the time I usually left and I thought my heart was going to explode. I've never done anything so close to the deadline up until that point and didn't have time to second guess myself. I just hoped for the best.
A week or so later the professor gave the papers back. I miraculously got a 98. She only knocked points of for getting someone's job title wrong, mostly because the person to whom I was referring to was a giant dick and a personal enemy of my professor.
After class, she asked me to stay behind and talk. I knew I was dead. She was going to murder my face off so hard.
Amy Fote is her son's best friend's girlfriend. They talk regularly. They've known each other for years.
She said she called the best friend to let him know one of her students wrote a paper about his girlfriend. It was really cool hearing that...until I remembered just how much I made up. I offhandedly asked if she had let Amy read it. She said no, but did joke that now Amy is famous.
I'm still a bit surprised it worked, but now I have another BS tactic. Small world though.
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