Everyday starts the same for me. I set 7 alarms with two-minute intervals. I have a trigger finger on the snooze button, and I fight the good fight for at least 20 minutes. When it’s finally time to face the harsh reality that I need to wake up, I ease myself into the day by checking all of my social media feeds. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat. There’s nothing new since I glanced before bed a mere 6 hours ago, but I still want to procrastinate. That’s when I open my email. It’s at least productive procrastination, right? Besides for a few meticulously crafted JetBlue emails targeted at millennial audiences, Brown Morning Mail is the only other thing in my inbox.
To say the least, Morning Mail is overwhelming. The first scroll through the Announcements section might not seem too intimidating, but that’s just the precipice. Once you start the Events section, you’re in it for the long haul. You might not have time for that quick morning shower after all. Don’t worry, no one can tell that your hair is greasier than last night’s mozzarella stick binge at Jo’s, right? Or maybe that’s just what the masterminds behind dry shampoo want us to believe.
In order to survive Morning Mail and make it to class on time, you have to learn how to skim through the excess. Look past the CAPS LOCK, the extraneous ***asterisks***, and the exclamation points!!!!!! There’s only one thing you need to look for, and it’s: Free Pizza.
With the promise of warm, fresh-out-of-the-delivery-bag stuffed crust on the horizon, I am motivated to get my lazy self out of bed and hurry to my 9 AM class. Free pizza gives my life meaning and structure. I could get pizza for a meal credit anytime at Andrew’s Commons, but trekking to a foreign building on the other end of campus for a free pizza makes me feel like I’ve earned it.
As if the (somehow) pleasurable carb-induced food coma wasn’t enough of a selling point, the events that use pizza as their marketing ploy aren’t too shabby after all. I enter the lectures on a blind hunt for pizza, and leave as an accidentally more informed student. It’s not delivery, it’s an education!
Sure, free pizza probably should not be the selling point to lure students to attend academic lectures by renowned professors, but I respect that Morning Mail has no shame in its transparent advertising ploys. I refuse to attend a lecture through my own volition. I’m way too pretentious to acknowledge that I actually don’t know everything after all. But the beauty of being vulnerable to the promise of free pizza means that I might just learn something in the process of polishing off an entire box of Domino’s.
Image via Allie Tsuchiya and Brown Morning Mail.