Seven Ways to Get Praise Without Doing Anything

By Christopher Speed '24

1.Overschedule yourself on Tigerhub, and then tell everyone about how you’re taking a 8-course BSE semester as a sophomore. Take two sections of the same class, to show your extra dedication. After a week of “testing the waters,” drop the extra classes. Tell everyone that you decided it was better for your mental health, and that you took an “honest look” at your life and decided that you needed to make more time for yourself. Instead of being bad at planning, you are now a master tactician in the game of life, a modern-day Sun Tzu, for doing nothing whatsoever. 2. Fill your google calendar with obscene amounts of scheduling. Take inspiration from Bill Gates (tell people this), and hyper-schedule your entire day. It doesn’t matter if you actually live by it, so long as every time you pull the calendar up it elicits a guttural scream out of anyone who happens to catch sight of it. Adding any new events should require changing at least ten other appointments. 3.Consider considering veganism. Don’t switch straightaway: instead, begin developing an increasing concern for animal welfare. Have deep thoughts (out loud, in public) about speciesism, and factory farms. Eat a Beyond burger at Late Meal. Attribute it to taking Practical Ethics. If you accidentally eat meat around your friends, act anguished and pass it off as your “cheat day,” to show how much you’re struggling to become a better you. 4. Get an “accountability partner.” Find someone who’s actually productive and get them to mentor you, and pledge to match their level of productivity. Try to have more than one accountability partner; the more the better. Shoot for at least ten, to start. You should be spending at least an hour each day posting to social media about your running, instrument practicing, weight lifting, drawing, meditating, bed-making, not masturbating, flossing, Tiger Confession baiting, and so on. 5. Tell people about your internship plans months in advance. If you’re COS, ECE, or any other tech-related field, make sure to fit MANGA/FAANG into at least every other sentence. Definitely mention how many LeetCode problems you’ve completed, but always be self-deprecating, so you sound humble and unsure of your skills. Pity is an excellent secondary source of preemptive validation. 6. If you’re fluent in a second language, don’t tell anyone, and take an intro language course to boost your GPA. You’ll fuck up the curve for the other students, making your coast to victory even more delicious, and your “before” and “after” will genuinely astonish your friends. 7. If you’re fluent in a second language, tell everyone. CS '24