Getting Good Grades is like Robbing a Bank

This morning, my friend Chase sent me this text message:

listening to junior kickstart getting ready to car-chase down a badass grade in the fluids midterm. fuck yeah.

If you don't already know and live your life by it, "Junior Kickstart" is a song by The Go! Team that legitimately sounds like a 1970s car chase. I first showed Chase the song when my friend Rex and I were helping Chase move. Chase said that we needed to get more pumped up. I told him I had the perfect song, explaining beforehand that the only way it'll really get us moving is if all three of us play along. "We all have to act like we're being pursued by the cops after a bank robbery," I told them.

Chase and Rex, as I expected, agreed before I was even done with the sentence.

As soon as the horns came in, Chase, behind the wheel, started speeding up. We were doing well over the speed limit through the hills of San Diego within seconds. Rex was armed with an invisible bazooka until Chase yelled for Rex to take the wheel, while he leaned out the driver's side window with an invisible shotgun, shooting backwards with fury. I was leaning out windows with invisible pistols that I had found in the backseat. At some point, I think we had invisible grenades. And, the entire time, we were yelling, swearing, making sound effects and appearing like delusional anarchist motorists to any car we passed or swerved around with vigor. Needless to say, I've never been more ready to help someone move in all my life.

Anyway, since then, that song has been an/the anthem for getting stoked and ready to seriously fuck shit up and/or robbing fake banks.

When I read Chase's text this morning, I started going through my college memories and realized that I very often tried to approach my exams like a bank robberies. Sure, if I was really nervous about a test, I listened to something mellow to calm me down, but it was rare. More often, I had either studied or just didn't give a shit (it was usually one of those) and I would listen to some bad-ass jams speeding on my way to school. I'd screech my tires through the parking lot and then storm to class while listening to songs like "Junior Kickstart." Exams are ruthless, so you have to be more ruthless. You have to be cut-throat.

Every college exam is a bank waiting to be robbed.