TSID's Ultimate Back to School Guide

We’re two days away from the start of the Fall Semester, The Black Community, and now is that time to get back in the school mode. Everyone is out making their final preparations for REAL school to start again (Summer doesn't count), by consuming copious amounts of alcohol, making terrible decisions, and spending late nights with ISIS, constantly spamming the refresh button until "History of Jazz" opens up. That class is crucial. Kinda. As the semester approaches, we return from sitting on the couch all day during Summer Break to impart some imperative tips to ensure adequate preparation for the upcoming school year. We present "The Set Is Dead's Ultimate Back to School Guide". In four paragraphs, mind you.

Clear The Bench – The Summer is over, so now all those Summer Flings will be cut off in favor of some new potential. Hell, there’s a new batch of Fall Freshmen who weren't here for the summer, and are uncorrupted and blind to the ways of The Black Social Structure. Don’t worry new Freshman Girls, he likes you just as equally as the other 10 girls he’s talking to. Damn. This happens every year. Creepy upperclassmen spend more time planning how they are going to fool the new crop of Freshmen girls, than they do planning their school schedule. Face it, all the girls who stayed for the summer are already old news. If they haven't already ruined their reputation in the past 6 weeks, guys have realized they aren't "about that life" and have already stopped buying them free drinks in the club. It's a shame. These summer girls have been seen at every pool party of the summer, each time rejecting the same ninjas, who will then try and fail again next week. It's time to broaden horizons. The same crop of girls can only be recycled by the community so long before everybody has the same STD. It's a small world out here. Prepare to see a lot of salty status updates and retweets of relationship quotes, as girls don’t make the final cut. It’s like the NFL Draft all over again. Football Back.

Scholastic Insurance – Of course Scholarship is the most important, even though it’s the second on this list. In all seriousness though, it pays to be prepared, just in case Organic Chemistry doesn’t go the way it’s supposed to. If all else fails, there are those “Scholastic Insurance” classes. Those courses with little classwork that are mind-numbingly easy and guaranteed to render an “A”, no matter how many tests you fail or hangover days you miss. And they don’t necessarily have to be African-American studies classes. The Holy Grail is COM1000. It's the classic post "bad semester" class. It's similar to jail, where everyone is enrolled for their own personal reasons. Too much partying last semester? COM 1000 to the rescue. Realized that the Pre-Med track required too much effort? Need 15 credits to keep a scholarship and continue to spend Other People's Money? COM 100 solves all those problems. You could literally show up and sleep in that class and still pass. Anybody that shows up proclaiming "I'm taking this class to expand my experiences" is a damn liar. Intro to Engineering, Linguistics, Med Terms, and ALL Anthropology classes are no exception. For any further suggestions for classes of this sort, go ask one of those Greeks that have been here 5-6 years. They know all those courses.

Get Your Outfit Ready – Admit it, you know you still have your outfit planned out and ready for the first day of class. It’s that habit we are all embarrassed that we still kept from high-school. Someone is going to be awake Sunday night, giddy and unable to sleep, just like on Christmas Eve, thinking about that new outfit they bought and how fly they’re gonna look the first day. They got their clothes lying on the bed, nicely ironed, sitting right above the matching shoes on the floor. It’s a first day tradition. People are going to be trying so hard to be noticed in their outfits, it’ll look like a FACES show or something. Guys and Girls will be walking around with the outfit that they bought from Forever 21, or worse, Citi Trends, with the belief they are God’s gift to Earth. Until they realize about 4 people are wearing the same outfit. It happens every year. That's what happens when you shop at the Oaks Mall. Then they’ll try to avoid each other all day, praying with all their might that nobody else noticed. Spot the Freshmen by noticing those people who only dress up on Monday Wednesday Friday, and look busted Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Find a Hobby – During the semester, you’ll most likely have some free time to entertain yourself, and a hobby is the perfect non-alcoholic time waster. There are a few popular options that have manifested themselves in the community. With a few clicks and the creation of an Instagram account, one instantly gains the credibility to claim themselves as a photographer. As if. Buy a few $600 cameras, do a random Wikipedia search about lenses, add an over the shoulder carrying strap and make sure everyone knows the extreme dedication that is about to last 2 weeks. Youtube Superstardom is a growing field as well. There are numerous videos of attention-deprived students staring awkwardly into a Webcam babbling about stuff only they would care about. If the videos get real popular they’ll end up on Facebook, where they’ll garner 10 “likes” from assorted friends. Good Job, future Spielbergs. The most quickly growing hobby however is the blogging. Tumblr, most notably. There’s no better way of expressing yourself than a constant stream of items reblogged from other Tumblrs. Interests and aspirations are made completely clear through random pictures of bears and meadows. How Deep. But Tumblr is to be applauded however, as we are spared the mindless thoughts of the authors, lest they finally stop re-posting just pictures and actually write something. Blasphemy! The other side of Blogging is the Blogspot. Half of the blogs focus old stories about celebs, as if we’d check their blog for the breaking stories instead of Media Take Out. Cmon Son. These are easily spotted by the summaries of no-named actresses and musicians, with comprehensive research done on Wikipedia. The rest are just filled with throwaway poems, terrible songs from aspiring rappers, pictures of lunch, and salty relationship advice from single women (LOL). Then there are those blogs with some pompous asshole imposing their thoughts on everyone. Huh, What?