Those of you who have accessed the internet since 2006 may be familiar with one of the most basic internet meme templates of all time: Advice Dog, whose cute puppy face plastered across a rainbow pinwheel background offers large-text “advice” like “It’s terrible / to be alive” or “Drink bleach / live forever.” Since the rise of Advice Dog, countless advice animals have followed in his sarcastic footsteps, most notably the Philosoraptor and Socially Awkward Penguin.
Recently, a series of other Advice Animals have sprung up Tumblr. None of these is as clever as Philosoraptor or scarily relatable as Socially Awkward Penguin (is that just me?), but they all revolve around something with which we are intimately familiar — college majors and the trials of academia. So far, I have located:
English Major Armadillo: “This vest is nice / but do you have it in tweed?”
Art Student Owl: “Want bud light? / Sorry, I only drink PBR”
Anthropology Major Fox: “Application wants to know my race / fight urge to write ‘homo sapiens sapiens'”
Psychology Student Platypus: “Fail exam / claim locus of control was external”
Science Major Mouse: “Attempt to make science major mouse macro / realize that years of jargon-filled technical writing has left you unable to come up with a witty punchline”
History Major Heraldic Beast: “Library closes while you’re still inside / nobody thought to check the microfilm room”
Political Science Major Gecko: “So you’re going to be a politician, right? / eye twitch“
And many more!
A lot of these are not funny at all, and a lot of them make me feel like I must be the only English Major Armadillo in the world who sometimes dreads doing the reading or doesn’t actually write more than the assigned page length on every single paper. But there are gems in there, and you can always make and submit your own. Maybe some enterprising person can even start Yale Student Yeti, or something, which will have a lovely blue-and-white background and say things like “Dormitory? / Don’t you mean Residential College?” or “Christmas? / Fuck that, try Hand Breaded Chicken Tender Day” or something.
Clearly, I suck at this, which is why I have not submitted anything to English Major Armadillo. Someone else should do it, though. Just call me Responsibility Avoiding Rodent.