You coolly survey the room, clutching your plastic red cup in a sexual power stance. Humming along to Rebecca Black, you lock eyes with a perfect 6.5 from across the party.

Like an alpha lion stalking its prey on the Savannah grasslands you lunge forward, immediately spilling your drink on a large muscular guy. You hide in a linen closet for a few minutes.

When the heat dies down you emerge lion-like again, and make a beeline for the woman. “”Did you know that Thomas Hobbes wrote ‘Leviathan?'”” you inquire, smoothness dripping from your mouth. “”No,”” she confirms, and then walks over to a large muscular guy with beer dripping from his shirt.

A few face-to-fist negotiations later, and you’ve just earned 2.5 academic credits from the UA.

At least you would, if we were given the academic recognition we deserve for our valiant adventures in Tucson’s nightlife. It’s about time we got some credit for what we learn while pursing after-hours hedonism, which is usually more useful than half of the stuff we learn in class. It’s quite clear to anyone who’s made the collegiate rounds that most learning in college comes after the classroom doors are closed. Real-world jobs are based quite superficially on social graces picked up at parties, and, despite your cries to the contrary, you know it to be true.

No matter what uber-nerdy profession you are pursuing in college, if you stay in on weekends and bone up on homework, odds are you’ll be lacking some severely important life lessons. Humility, business negotiations and how to remove a live goldfish from someone’s ear are all skills you can learn in mere minutes at a good college party.

In our vivid scenario, you have experienced American pop culture, Internet globalization, ecosystem predatorial infrastructure, psychology, diplomacy, physical education and you even gave a 30-second presentation based on the information you learned in that Justice and Virtue class.

Overall, you’ve managed to glean or export knowledge tied closely to the subjects given in class, and for extra credit you got punched in the face by Chadley Higgens III from that fraternity you hate.

Think about the last general education class you attended. Do you remember frolicking in a field of purple snapdragons while Nicolas Cage fired bananas out of a Mexican weed catapult at you? Yes? That’s because you were dreaming, a causality based on the fact that you were asleep.

The only scenario where you would ever attempt to conjure up facts learned in class is when you are at a party, and need to desperately prove to a girl that you are smart enough to sleep with her. At this crucial moment, you remember the minute you were awake pertaining to Thomas Hobbes’s stance on human morality, and suddenly you are a confident ethics scholar (provided she’s not in the same class). It’s the only time besides mandatory homework where you will speak those words aloud, and should be rewarded by the university with academic credit.

The anatomy class/getting lucky at a party analogy is too easy, and you will not be subjected to it. You’re welcome.

It’s about time we rose up and claimed our rightful educational awards. Based on that night freshman year where I blacked out, stole a park bench and negotiated myself out of an intermarriage fiasco, I should have graduated a year and a half ago, which would have saved me thousands of dollars in tuition and fees. So join me and demand the compensation we deserve. Tomorrow, though, I’m about to earn half a credit by jumping off of this roof into that hot tub filled with goldfish. God bless academia.

­— Johnny McKay is the multimedia editor for the Daily Wildcat. He can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.