Above photo: Instead of chlorinated water, the Sembler Fountain runs on the tears of students. Jonah Hinebaugh | The Crow’s Nest
By Anna Bryson
As college students, we’re all bound to have mental breakdowns every now and again, but in the days leading up to finals week, you can break down in public and it’s slightly more acceptable. Here’s the best places on campus to make a spectacle of yourself and display your inability to control your emotions.
- Sembler Fountain: If you sit in the fountain and cry, your tears will blend in with the waters of school spirit, just as USF St. Petersburg intended. Plus, tuition dollars go toward maintaining the fountain, so it’s sort of poetic.
- Office hours: Head to your professor’s office during office hours, sit on the floor and cry. They might not know how to handle it, but I promise it will help your grade. Bonus points if you get tears on their button down and use their tie as a handkerchief.
- On Cheryl the Bull: School spirit? Climb up on top of Cheryl and show her the emotional turmoil she puts you through — really grab the emotional breakdown bull by the horns. Use her as a punching bag. Or don’t, because she’s a solid metal statue. Up to you, really.
- Prospective student tours: Find a group of prospective students touring the campus and follow them around. Use the students as free therapists. They want to know more about the college experience, and you are the perfect example of it. Just avoid the middle school tours — the young ones shouldn’t know the truth so early on.
- While giving a presentation: If you didn’t prepare for your final presentation, just go up to the front of the class and start crying while you present. You don’t have to have any real content prepared — just cry through broken words. Your professor will take pity on you and won’t fail you.
- The bookstore: It’s basically a pit that students are forced to throw money into, might as well sit at the entrance sobbing violently.
- The library: The library has private study rooms waiting for you. You can only cry loudly on the first floor, though, because if you do on the second or third floors, other students will yell at you to be quiet (been there, done that.) They don’t take book returns doused with tears, though. Again, speaking from experience.
- The waterfront: Our bay is already polluted to hell, if anything your tears will help to dilute the sewage and trash. The fish are already crying anyway.
- The College of Business: You’ll forget about your own problems and start crying about the next generation of young capitalists who are going to exploit you and your children.
- Literally anywhere off campus: Because if you’ve made it this far into this pity party of an article, you’ve probably fantasized about dropping out more times than is healthy. Sure, you may already be thousands of dollars in the hole, but a degree isn’t worth much these days anyway, right? Right?
