An open letter to Denny’s. And the Universe.
January 22nd, 2010
Dear Denny’s,
While I sometimes take issue with your food (and, to be fair, your food sometimes takes issue with my stomach), I want to publicly thank you and your stalwart team of food research engineers/friggin’ geniuses who invented the syrup shot:
True, the syrup shot is an easy way to drizzle the sweet stuff over your surprisingly delicious wheat pancakes. But what’s more, if you’re looking to skip the pancakes the syrup shot is still a brilliant way to grease one’s gullet with the sugary nectar of happiness. And on a day like today, that happiness—though fleeting—is much appreciated.
After my hearty breakfast courtesy of Denny’s and one very generous Severin T. Nelson, Severin and I went to Timpview High School to speak to the kids about law, government, and why law school is so awesome. This all made perfect sense because if there’s one thing that rich Utah Valley kids need, it’s more opportunity to succeed.
But for fear of being misunderstood or possibly prosecuted, I don’t want to talk too much about hanging out with high school kids. It sufficeth me to say that I didn’t think I was old enough to say this, but high school kids are practically fetuses. I don’t know if it was their basic misunderstandings about American government or their complaining about not being able to drive, but I felt really, really old.
The day managed to move beyond this epiphany when grades came out at 4:00PM. This was the first year that BYU distributed grades through that Internet thing, and 450 people attacking the same site at the same time caused BYU’s ancient server to explode instantly. This led to an email from the registrar asking us all to “Go off the Internet” for twenty minutes to let the server recuperate. This valuable advice, coupled with last year’s advice to watch for problems with the “Firefox Wall,” has given me new insight into and appreciation for the Internet.
When I was finally able to check my grades at 4:45PM, I found I had dropped in my overall GPA by 0.02 points. Given the host of personal issues I was dealing with last semester, I counted this as a win until I realized that those 0.02 points dropped me from the 30th percentile to the 50th percentile.
0.02 points.
20%.
What. The. Hell.
Few things can take me from syrup shot to suicide watch in twelve hours, but this was one of them. For those of you who aren’t in law school, let me explain class rank thusly: Being in the top 30% of the class meant that I would be able to scrape into a moderately respectable job in Salt Lake or some other metropolitan center. Being in the top 50% means that my children will starve and I will die penniless, miserable, and alone. I am prone to hyperbole, but this is not one of those times.
I was feeling a little bad about launching this site with its sparse, 5-minute WordPress theme, but the upside being a total law school failure is that my future unemployment will give me plenty of time to work on a new theme. I am also on track to becoming the smartest homeless guy ever, so take that.