Phew, thank the high heavens for a long weekend. Poor old me is feeling the strain of school. No la, not the schoolwork kind of strain (seriously us high flyers – yes they call us high flyers, don’t get stressed by school work, we just say so to act cool and to be charitable so that we can seem more human to the rest of the clowns), but muscle strain. That’s right, big fuck me kena muscle strain. Let me explain the series of unfortunate events and catalogue the fateful timeline that led to the collapse of my muscle – My calf muscle, to be exact.

But first, let me take you through my regular class routine as a high flyer big timer can’t accept no A minuses SMU student. I come to class on time (not early as I don’t want to look like a nerd) and sit in the middle row of the middle column of seats. Once again, sitting in the middle row facilitates my intention of “blending” in with the rest of the class, to not stand out too much like a nerd (front row) and to not be branded a 3.2 gpa and below rebel (back row). Then I snap open my IBM monster machine ( must be IBM, otherwise your excel sheets don’t look half as cool) and open up my slides for the class (yes, downloaded the night before in good preparation), followed by four tabs on my web browser – one for facebook cause I’m so popular that I get constant flows of friend invites and wall messages, another for Bloomberg news, another for school email, and lastly a browser tab for wikipedia, in case I need quick knowledge to answer any questions posed by the professor or the class because class participation separates the cream of the crop from the losers of SMU. Oh, and my stock market tracker as well – I know people to my left and right are peering at my screen, and I need to maintain my big time big shot I know I’ll be a fucking awesome trader image. Then I sit back, and pay attention via my ears, whilst reading all the latest Bloomberg news with my eyes, another example of my world class multi-tasking capabilities. One of the next two scenarios will then follow: 1. If it’s a Finance class, I tend to engage the professor in deep financial hoo hah talk, floating words that 3.4 and below can’t even spell. Or 2. If it’s a marketing slash elective course, I sit back, wait till someone makes a stupid comment, and then retaliate with a wonderful piece of class participation that would just put the other person to shame, causing him/her to think he/she is a complete loser, and plunging them into fear that their grades will disappear into the abyss. The call for the mid class break, or the signal for the end of the class are two of THE MOST important times of a class period. Because all awesome students make sure they rush to talk to the Prof so as to curry favor act big and talk cock in hopes that the grade would be secured or a TA’s position might be on its way – its always good to be a teacher’s pet in SMU – or should I say, Professor’s dawg.

There are always a number of students who rush to talk to the Prof, so in order to ensure that I always have a spot, Mr 4.0 GPA me has been going to the school gym over the past two years, doing exercises and short sprints to give myself practice for the dash to see Prof at break or when class ends. To pack up and dash to talk to the Prof takes skill – a skill that I glady have honed.

Anyway, that last bit, was the major cause of the downfall of the George Kuah calf muscle. No one knows the prior causes of strain, it might be too much salty Koufu food, or it might be too much essence of chicken in the morning, but last Friday during one of my classes, when the Professor bellowed the words “That’s it for this week”, I peered to the corner of my eye to see Brady Tan Sheng Shiong peering back at me, both of us with the same thought in our minds – get to Prof first. I packed up in a flash, he did too, and I jumped out of my chair and was on the steps, when a lunge of my left leg caused severe pain. I felt to the ground with a thud, one of the very few times suave SMU me has been humiliated in public. But the pain was doubled by the fact that Brady got to Prof first. Curses. Curse all these big timer wannabes. They don’t know who they’re dealing with.