It’s good to be back in The Hatchet. My semester off really helped me sort out some spiritual and physical problems I had with my Spanish-channel habit. It was tough, but my three-month stay at La Iglesia del Cabr?n, located deep in the rainforest jungles of Idaho, really helped me establish my sense of self outside of the twisted, bubbling world of Channel 31.

Now that the New Year has come and gone, I thought that we should discuss our resolutions for 2002. My resolution is quite simple. It has been the same since I was 6 3/4 years old: to learn to whistle. Oh, so you’re saying that the crackers and pebbles in my mouth won’t help. That Science Guy Bill Nye is full of it. I suppose that having lips would also help me whistle? Well, there isn’t much I can do about that, so why don’t we just move on to GW’s list of resolutions.

First, the University hopes to someday make study abroad an academic experience instead of the laced-with-hashish, drunken travel-ganza that it is. It is clear to me that kids who study abroad refer to the semester or year abroad as the best they’ve ever had because they didn’t do squat for work. All they do is party all night and sleep all day, and I am the one getting fat eating Veg-Out sandwiches from Einstein’s Bagels and slurping down Fatkicker Jamba Juices. Hint to underclassmen: if you go abroad, avoid GW’s programs because the credits will transfer but the grades do not.

I actually contemplated a study abroad experience in Uzbekistan. I would have interned for a goat herder for six weeks and then actually been a goat for the remaining 4 weeks, but I couldn’t get a work visa. Perhaps if GW sticks to its first resolution, then by the end of 2002 the Study Abroad Office will no longer be dubbed “Get Drunk in Foreign Place Program.”

Second, the University will no longer hold cockfighting matches in the back of the Honors Program office. They will be moved to the basement bathrooms of the Marvin Center, Corcoran Hall and Bell Hall. The lighting is worse, it smells worse, but the atmosphere is exponentially better.

The third and final resolution of the University for 2002 will be to move its troops out of the Foggy Bottom neighborhood. The hard-line community militants of the Historic Foggy Bottom District have entrenched themselves in a manhole maze of the city’s sewers that could take years to map out. GW is currently dropping pro-GW propaganda and rations of Chick-Fil-A and Cranberry Farms down them. Two soldiers have already been wounded when they were knocked unconscious by 8-pack and 12-packsof chicken nuggets. Having recently returned from the front, Joe Colonial had only this to say, “I should have studied abroad.”

-The writer, a senior majoring in philosophy and minoring in creative writing, is a Hatchet humor columnist.