Kiana Cole (to YAFI what Nick Weiler is to UNC football) and Alison Krug (to YAFI what Alison Krug is to UNC football) are the writers of UNC’s premier (only!) satirical advice column. Results may vary.
You: I accidentally slept through one of my midterms. How do I make it up?
You Asked for It: It’s a sleep-eat-sleep world out there once it’s midterm season and you realize you haven’t been properly rested since Aug. 22. Even though you’ve been harvesting precious seconds of slumber, sleeping through an important exam or event is inevitable in your college career.
The most promising solution is bringing the fun fact you had to give on your first day of class full circle. Can you juggle flaming torches? Great! Bring them with you to office hours, distracting your professor by switching the dynamic from “negligent student/concerned professor” to “daring performer/surprised spectator.”
If you consider yourself “not much of a crier,” it’s time to swap that storyline for “willing to spill tears of exhaustion very unprofessionally on the floor of my professor’s office if it means she’ll possibly shine a splinter of sympathy on my cold sleepless soul.”
You: How do I cope with having a doggone hard time leaving my pets at home?
YAFI: Life is brutal and unforgiving in the harsh pet desert that is on-campus living. It is hard to know how deeply you’ll miss your sweet pets until you depart for college, for, as Kahlil Gibran said, “Ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”
Don’t spend your days green with envy that your fam still gets to hang out with your furry/feathered/scaly/cloven-hooved friends, though, for as Drake said, “Jealousy is just love and hate at the same time.”
You just need to find the right pet or pet substitute for you, for as UNC’s Squirrel Girl once said, “It wasn’t like I was an experienced squirrel handler, but I always liked having pets when I was a kid.”
University housing may forbid all pets besides fish, but there are still some loopholes. Rebrand your pup as your “UNC patronus.” A pet rabbit is a University-underwritten expense for your Pit Magician work-study job. Your cat is now performance art, complete with a placard proclaiming, “Title: Lease violation in an allergen-filled world. Medium: Cat.”
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