As winter quarter at Stanford enters its fifth week, experts have begun to wonder if anything even somewhat smart will ever be said again in Sociology 22N: the Roots of Social Protest. The last sign of any worthwhile critical analysis was reported in week two, when the guy who wears a lot of hoodies pointed out something about civil unrest in Yemen or something. Little more than pseudo-intellectual dribble and unintelligible grunts has been heard since.
Sophomore Noah Chomberg confirmed, “There’s that one chick who does that cool thing where you flip your pen around your finger, and that dude who picks his nose sometimes. They don’t say anything. Then there’s this one dude who talks like he put the script for Pirates of the Caribbean 2 into a shredder, took out a random handful of the shredded remains, pasted them together, and decided to read that page to the class.”
Not everyone shares Mr. Chomberg’s pessimism, however. Freshman Rachel Horowitz reported, “We talked a bit the first week, at least. I’ll admit that the second week wasn’t great, and neither was the third. Sometimes we spend the whole class in complete silence. Last Wednesday someone farted though, and that was exciting. And Trent just got a cold, so I think there will be some sniffling over the next week. I think things are about to get a lot better. They sure as hell can’t get any worse.”
Experts are unsure if it’s even worth attempting to break the silence with completely made up nonsense that shows an understanding of neither the reading material nor the English language. However, others have suggested that it could be a good stepping-stone toward the development of coherent sentences. As one student from the class so eloquently put it, “I think that definitely there is little doubt that the evidence of therefore, by that token, where the thesis presented contains and, moreover, furthermore.”
