By: Amal Javed Abdullah
The semester might have just started, but it’s never too early to begin crying at the sorry state you will be in sooner rather than later. Here are the four best places to cry on campus.
- The quiet section of the library
What better place to cry than the library? Go up to the fourth or fifth floor of Bennett and unleash a high-pitched howl like a werewolf during a full moon. The louder you cry, the louder the echo, and the greater the chances of your plight reaching the SFU heavens.
Ignore any glares you might get from nearby students — they were most likely procrastinating anyway, and you just gave them another excuse to be distracted from their work. Really, they should be thanking you.
- By the pond
The idea here is to be as melodramatic as possible. You buried your dreams for theatre to get a crappy degree that won’t get you a good job anyway, so you might as well milk every opportunity to let your dramaturgy shine.
Sit at the edge of the pond at sunset, and weep sorrowfully into your hands, occasionally blowing your nose noisily in an embroidered handkerchief. Stare into the water at your reflection and let a sad teardrop fall on your watery visage, breaking the image and making ripples in the pond — metaphorically, these ripples are the disruption of the waters of your life.
- In the middle of a bus
Pretend you’re a super popular singer and the bus is your stage at your own personal concert. At some point, go into your audience of hangry commuters and pull out a pissed-off passenger to cry with you.*
- In the middle of a lecture
For this one, you will need to do some prep work. Sneak into the lecture hall before class starts. Hack into the sound system, and hook up your phone as a mic to the speakers, which you will turn on right when you begin to cry. Now, find a seat smack-dab in the middle of the lecture hall, and try to look innocuous, whatever that means. You want to start at the right moment, exactly when your prof is discussing the most boring part of lesson — though it may be debatable which part is the most boring.
Begin softly at a low decibel, and slowly build up like a symphonic one-person orchestra. Develop your pitch and melody with care, and weep from the heart with passion, as if you are front stage at Carnegie Hall. Revel in the sonorous echo of your sorrow as it emanates from the crappy speakers. Bonus points if you can start a flash-mob and get other students to cry with you. Your prof will get enough of an evil laugh out of your afflicted state that they will at least try to mark slightly easier on your midterm… probably. **
*We are not responsible for revoked transit privileges, or any bodily injury that may result from this experiment.
**I’m lying. You’re failing, Bob. Cry harder.
