The following transcript of your last meeting with your academic advisor has been helpfully formatted into a Q & A format for your reading convenience.

Q: Huh?

A: “It’s a damn shame. If I had known you wanted to get in your spring quarter of second year with both parents still alive, I would have advised you to clean the professor’s car by fall instead of winter last year. Generally, in order to get on a first-name basis by spring, you need that extra time to bond.”

Q: But I emailed you about this on my first day of college?

A: “Oh, apologies! I was having a medical emergency at the time: my chakras were deeply unaligned and my fluctuations were not in sync with the heartbeat of the earth itself. For the sake of my own health, I was forced to perform a five-day ritual cleanse from all technology.”

Q: Did you not see it afterwards?

A: “Post-cleanse, I became attuned to the changes in the mana around me, and became aware of the incredible amount of negative energy flowing from my Outlook inbox. I had no choice but to purge it from the digital plane.”

Q: Can I graduate without this?

A: “No.”

Q: Is there a way I can take this my third year?

A: “Will your parents be dead by then?”

Q: Let’s say they will. Could I do it?

A: “If you want a chance of becoming his secret lover by the next fall quarter, you need to convince him to let you babysit his kids this summer. Play your cards right, and your waitlist spot might get moved up far enough to make it in by the end of the add-drop period next spring – but only if you’ve shown a strong commitment to the major up to that point, of course.”

Q: What about fourth year with living parents?

A: “As part of our diversity initiatives, we do allow conditional pre-registration for students with living parents but at least three dead dogs in the past two years. However, this is only on the provision that your parents will be deceased by the end of the add-drop period”.

Q: What happens if they’re not deceased in time?

A: “You’ll have a decision to make.”