College Daze Apply For School, Kill A Forest: The Monster That Is Known As College Junk Mail

When I registered for the PSAT, I bubbled in a special box to receive mail from “colleges interested in students like me.” Soon, my personal contribution to the deforestation of the planet began with thousands of form letters from assorted colleges attempting to persuade me to attend their schools. Obviously, these prefabricated letters, so personal that they were signed by an autograph machine and photocopied onto letterhead, will strongly influence the most important decision of my life.

Most of these letters also contained “information request cards” asking for my name and address so I could receive more information. Now, why does a college that personally contacted me by mail need to know my name and address?

Taking no chance of being denied FREE junk mail, I sent in the cards and received enough mail to fill up a spare bedroom, the basement, Italy and a garage stall. In fact, that’s why three-car garages are so popular. Families with teens find a house with a three-car garage, use two stalls for power tools and broken appliances and save the remainder of space for mountains of college mail. In case you’re wondering where they keep the cars, they don’t. After paying college costs that surpass the gross national product of Nicaragua, the average family can’t even afford to tastefully arrange rusty cars on cinder blocks in the front lawn.

Anyway, the next onslaught of mail consisted of viewbooks and glossy pamphlets filled with photographs. These photographs always depict students of various ethnic backgrounds holding hands in courtyards surrounded by quaint brick buildings, not unlike soft drink advertisements.

The biggest problem with these viewbooks is that they ignore the negative aspects. A good rule of thumb is that for every nice place on campus there are 10 that resemble downtown Los Angeles after the riots. How much vermin live in these quaint, 200-year-old brick buildings, which probably lack air conditioning or even indoor plumbing? Is there a relationship between tight budgets, rats the size of Saint Bernards and campus food?

I was planning to explain the college admission process, but I’ve just been assailed by another load of college junk mail. Sorry folks, but my keyboard’s blocked, and I’ll be spending my afternoon clearing a path to the door. If you have a shovel, I’d appreciate the help.