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I am your average college student, who, like you, once worried about the pressures of being at prestigious UCLA, what with unweighted GPAs, impersonal lecture halls, cataclysmic finals and all. It may sound rough, but really it's a piece of pie in the sky. But what often get lost in this college equation are the merits of staring at paint on a canvas, tapping fingers on a piano, and gluing eyes to a television screen (no, not literally). College is the delicate balance of one on top of the other. The plan therefore is to have no plan.

After waking up and skipping breakfast (things to do, people to see), I join my study group, because my friend Yan Yan is there and I think it would be nice if she posed nude for my art assignment. Next I'm off to Ackerman Union's dining areas for some ice to console Yan Yan's hearty slap to my face. Boy, if only my parents knew how I suffered for art. The truth is that my assignment was for my class, Heideggerian Hermeneutics 101, where we are supposed to use words to incite passion. My professor sure would be proud.

My next class, an Honors Collegium which studies the effect of Brazilian rainforest ant migrations on the Enron scandal, requires in-depth research on chaos mathematics, biology and economics. Luckily, last night I rented "Jurassic Park" for the chaos theory, "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" for biology and "Wall Street" for economics. Powell Library even has a room for watching movies, and there I sit through them one by one.

Alrighty then, after learning that greed is good and dinosaurs are undesirable, I go to choir practice and sing my heart out on a Verdi aria. The lyrics are from Shakespeare's play "Othello," which helps since we're reading "Othello" in my English class.

Walking back to the dorms, I see a crowd of people at the Ackerman Grand Ballroom waiting to get inside. I elbow my way in and find that Adam Sandler is singing his newest incarnation of the Hanukkah song on stage. Did you know that Spock and Captain Kirk are Jewish? Sandler also points out that Heidegger was a supporter of Hitler, thus explaining his abandonment of phenomenology and dasein analysis in the 1930s. I jot this down on my hand and remember to use it for tomorrow's essay question.

Now it's time to go clubbing and I start dressing to impress. My pseudo-punk rocker roommate bangs on his guitar and I watch him gleefully rip through Metallica choruses. I high-five him and drive off to meet my date. We go to Miyagi's on Sunset only to realize that its dance floor resembles a sardine can more than a dance floor. Some underage drunk vomits on my arm and I wash it off.

Panic-stricken, I realize the Heidegger notes on my hand are washed away and I frantically call my roommate's cell to see where he is. Hopefully, our high five left a trace of my notes on his hand.

I travel across town to the Paladium to meet him at a Green Day concert and copy down my notes. Reluctant to miss the fun of the gig, I join the mosh pit and get spit on by Billie Joe Armstrong. The spit obeys the laws of chaos mathematics, flying randomly into the fractal image that is a rock concert. That does it for me and I go home.

I take the finals the next day, and I don't need to tell you that I haven't flunked out of school (if I had, they wouldn't let me write for the Daily Bruin). I may have exaggerated how easy classes are, but life is for living, for relationships among friends and lovers, for whimsical decisions to chart unknown places, for exploration into the heart of what it means to have a heart. In other words, Heidegger, Sandler, clubbing, Green Day and Yan Yan all mix into this goo which is my life.

Since goo rhymes with shoe and shoes are required for heroic journeys of the UCLA kind, I suggest you drop those books once in a while, skip class and see some of the art and entertainment that's going on in the world around you. Hey, it may even make you smarter.