Department Of is here to save you from your post-holiday blues.
Seven Alternatives to No-Shave November
Holiday Clapbacks to Invasive Parents
Duke Conspiracy Exposed
Fake Kickstarter
What Duke Students Do on Fri Night: A Photo Essay
Class Registration
Cuffing Season
Duke Students Self-Medicate
Classic Duke Exercise Regimen
No-pave November
Students abstain from paving any new roads on Duke’s campus, a ritual that students have called “cleansing” and “absolutely necessary after half a semester of non-stop paving.”
No-slave November
This one is popular among some of the religious groups on campus. From Leviticus 25:9-10: “On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land. You shall make the fiftieth year holy, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.” On November 1, students will drop their S’well water bottles in a big lecture and release all their indentured servants for the month.
No-lathe November
Engineers will abstain from using lathes and instead find other ways to rotate their workplaces about an axis in order to perform difficult mechanical tasks. Tough one.
Going home for the holidays? Consider these responses to your extended family’s loving questions over Christmas break.
Have you secured an internship for this summer yet?
Have you secured a retirement plan yet?
Where’s the rest of your skirt?
Where’s the rest of your teeth?
You need to raise that GPA
You need to raise that hand before you speak to me.
Hi there, welcome to my Kickstarter campaign. My name is Addison McCaughley, and I am a junior at Duke studying Public Policy, Arabic, Chinese, Dance, and I am getting the AMI certificate, and I have a healthy social life, and I exercise 2-3 times a week, but I usually don’t break a sweat, and I read 4-6 hours a week for pleasure, and I eat 1-3 meals a day on average, and I keep up with politics. This sounds like a lot, right?
That’s where you come in!
“Chapter 1: Registration Opens”
It was 6:55 am, and Ace sat hunched over his desk with the night light on. Staring at his computer screen, Ace had the two fingers of his left hand crossed and hovered the fingers of his right hand over the mousepad ready to smash that enroll button like his hand was made for it. The anticipation was causing him more stress than being sober at Devine’s. He couldn’t wait to be done and go back to sleep.
The clock slowly ticked by, and Ace swore for a moment he could hear the 800 other freshmen nervously breathing at their desks too. All these first-registration window freshmen, including Ace, wanted the same thing–their perfect schedule. The perfect schedule was different for each person. Some believed in early classes. Some believed in late classes. Whatever it was for each person that all hung in the balance of registration and the few spots remaining in classes that us sophomores, juniors, and seniors had already vultured over.
Ace’s roommate’s snoring soon tuned out all those thoughts, and Ace was just left with an undercurrent of anxiety. This uncertainty of it all was eating away at him, as the atomic clock he’d Googled this morning ticked down the last 80 seconds until registration. Soon, Ace felt his heart beating along to the ticks. It got louder and faster, until the last 10 seconds, when Ace was pretty sure his heart was beating to the tune of the bass drops at the Louis the Child concert. The clock hit 7:00:00, and Ace’s index finger slammed down on his mousepad like un toro bravo at the start of the Pamplona Bull Run. “No wonder my ex-girlfriend was ‘so excited to hang’ in two weeks,” thought Ace as he again slammed his index finger down on the Finish Enrolling button with the reflexes of a Greek Gd.
Instantly, Ace felt the primal dopamine rush associated with the expectation of reward. And as Ace stared at the screen, a sudden tingling sensation overtook his bones and soon his entire body. Ace felt his body turn into nothing but this sensation. But soon, the sensation took an otherworldly turn as Ace’s body was translated into a series of 1s and 0s, and Ace’s conscious information was absorbed into his laptop and sent miles away to the DukeHub server in a matter of just seconds.
Characters:
Jake: average-looking boy in mid-tier frat with personality the size of my personal space on the 4:00 pm C1 bus
Kelly: girl who is #wokeaf yet is oddly attracted to Jake’s mediocrity
Samantha: Kelly’s friend whose advice is sometimes (always) too honest
Scene One
Kelly wakes up on November first and sees a calendar reminder on her phone. Notification reads: “It’s Cuffing Szn, Bitches”
Kelly: Looks like it’s that time of year again. Better get my shit together and find yet another mediocre-looking frat boy to entertain me (warm my emotionless heart) for the next two months.
Samantha (from the next room over): Bitch, I can hear you. It’s already fucking 10:30, the school’s most eligible bois are being cuffed up by the minute. Hurry up and let’s get on the C1 loser—we’re going cuffing.
The weather is finally (maybe) getting colder and midterm season never stops, which means Duke students are getting sicker. But if you don’t want to walk all the way over to the Wellness Center or fork over money to the medical-industrial complex that is the campus pharmacy center, there are plenty of easy, accessible options for self-medication.
-Suffering from constipation? Order anything from Panda Express and wait a couple hours to see results!
-Have a stomachache? Head over to your nearest vending machine to crack open a cold ginger ale!
-Headache making it hard for you to concentrate? Try banging your head against the desk in frustration over that p-set you’ve been working on for what feels like half your life!
-Worried about getting the flu or catching the freshman plague? Just avoid as much human contact as possible and you’ll never get sick! Alternatively, just start the freshman plague, so you’ll get immunity by the time it hits everyone else on campus!
-Stressing out from the unbearable weight of being alive in a never-ending cycle of work in this educational institution? Try sleeping for a solid 12 hours straight to temporarily escape the horrible reality of living as a gear in the capitalist machine!
-Got a yeast infection? Well, the Div grilled cheese is pretty good, but not that good.
DISCLAIMER: We are neither medical professionals nor pre-med.
Warmup: Edens 2C- You can spend your four years at Duke looking for the non-existent elevator to get to the third and fourth floor or you can use the stairs up to the third and fourth floors as a perfect warmup routine for the grueling workout ahead.
Shoulders and Back: West Union-Why do pushups when you can just do 10 reps of pushing open and closing West Union’s (Richard Brodhead Center of Campus Life) doors? Designer that constructed the West Union doors apparently also designs the doors in Game of Thrones.
Cardio, Legs, and Glutes: Gross Hall- Woke up at 8:20 for your 8:30 chemistry lecture in Gross Hall? Spring out of bed, put on whatever clothes you have stacked on your chair, and channel your inner Usain Bolt for the attendance points.
Lower Body: Bus stop- You make eye contact with the bus driver. The driver smirks and the doors begin to close on you. You and the driver both know that there are only two possibilities moving forward: You make it on that bus or you tear your hamstring trying.
Core: Shooters – Fun Fact: after a night here, you’ll lose up to 90% of your water weight. You are going to be sweaty—you just won’t know if it’s your sweat or someone else’s sweat. Random people might come up to you here and ask you to “spot” their workout—ignore all requests…or accept them because life is too short for worries.
Agility: Bolt- You work out your mind, your thumb (depending on console), and your eyes…yeah, it’s not a workout unless you’re playing Wii sports and we get it…you’re not at the bolt to play Wii sports.
