L is for Laggers

CHARLES HOPKINS
Volume 1, Issue 9 (Originally Published on 30 April 2012)
 
There are two types of people in this world: those who have done the readings, and those who have not.
 
My problem is not with the latter per se — I regularly fall behind with my readings and I don’t hate myself. I mean, there was that time I chose to enrol in law, but otherwise I treat myself with respect.
 
My problem is with the people who fall behind and whinge about it. To you people I say, “No one cares about your progress through a particular subject! If I ask how you’re going I don’t want you to bemoan the state of your printed materials, I want you to respond with something insipid so I can blow off our conversation and go back to daydreaming about installing a zip line from level 3 to Seven Seeds.”
 
These people are the Marissa Coopers of the law school. Everyone in The OC stuffed up here and there, but it was Marissa’s problems that were laboured. She dragged down everyone around her, and got away with it because she was a babe... On second thoughts, you can whinge if you’re a babe.
 
What’s the point in the complaining? I think it serves some innate desire to share in pain, it talks to our deepest sense of humanity and dependency; which, as the law school teaches us, is pathetic. I’m actually pitching to campaign; my proposed slogan is “Suck it up and get it done, bitch!”
 
Given it’s week 9, the whinging is reaching its peak. At this point, the incidence of whinging gets so intense that you have whingers complaining to whingers. It’s like an AA meeting; or I should say I imagine it’s like an AA meeting because law certainly hasn’t driven me to alcoholism, or at least alcoholism that I’ve chosen to be treated for.
 
I like to play a game with these whingers, a game of one-upmanship, to see how far you can push them: “God I haven’t done any reading for Crim in two weeks”, “You think that’s bad, I haven’t taken any notes for Trusts, like, at all”, “Yeah but Trusts isn’t that bad, like I haven’t even opened by Admin Reader yet – it’s still in its plastic wrapping”, “Well I haven’t even been to law school all semester because I contracted cancer and I’ve had both legs amputated.”
 
I must say I have a confession to make: sometimes I whinge about being behind (actually two confessions: I killed that guy last summer). So I have decided it’s time I turn over a new leaf because my old leaves are looking really shabby, and also to redress the error of my ways:
“I, Charles Walsingham The Fifteenth Hopkins, hereby pledge that I will ne’er again lament the progress of my homework to those who shan’t give a shit.”
 
Charles Hopkins was going host The Voice, but was fired due to personal fallouts with each and every one of the douchebag judges.