HOW TO FAIL AT LIFE IRL

SCHOOL, GO TO IT.

When deciding between English Literature and Journalism for your University application, think to yourself, what kind of job could I get with an English Literature degree? Don't come up with an answer. Write short stories and throw them away by printing them first and then crumpling them up in a ball. Press delete on your computer only after you've done this. Don't empty your trash can until there are paper balls around your feet too.

Apply to reputable English Literature programs anyways just to see if you can get in. When letters begin arriving in your mailbox with University emblems and they all say something about extending an offer, decide to accept at the local Journalism school in the city you grew up in, instead of the schools you got into in New York and Washington, because you're a chicken shit 18-year-old. Proceed with your decision to live at home because you have a lofty apartment in your parents attic and you don't want to live on Gerrard St. with crackheads for neighbors, because it's all you can afford - and you're a chicken shit 18-year-old. Drive a really embarrassing Acura to school everyday. Ignore the pangs of anxiety when you examine people's boredom death faces, in their cars, in a traffic jam. Look straight ahead and not in other people's cars for the next three years.

Half-way through the program when you have almost been expelled for making up a story in your magazine feature class -- because you decided it would be more edifying to pretend it was a creative writing assignment -- decide to make up a persuasive argument to the Dean and six other professors sitting in front of you about having an abortion when the assignment was due. Try to cry and fail but put your hands over your face and take deep breaths like you are about to. This makes everyone uncomfortable and they mostly feel sorry for you. Make a note in your notebook before leaving the room to remind yourself to tell your 'story references' that your professor might phone them. Send them a copy of the article and say, Thanks for doing this, you're a really great friend! the next time you make up a story in your magazine feature class, which you do. Don't write any real stories for the rest of the year, make them all up.

Leave the room and light a cigarette outside, at first with a smirk as you text your friend all about the meeting, making a really bad abortion joke. When there is no one to text or talk to but you're still not finished your cigarette, imagine telling them you couldn't give less of a shit if you tried and then yelling, I quit!, really dramatically. Think about this over and over again and then really start crying. Go back to class for the next two years. Don't go to convocation and instead spend the day getting drunk by yourself while looking at your face in the mirror at least forty eight times.