Broberlin Bleeding

September 27th, 2010
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By Nick Perry

This afternoon, I woke from a wonderfully black sleep in blood-stained sheets with a throbbing pain in my briefs. Due to my still impaired consciousness, I could not think rationally about this situation. I lay, horrified, without an idea of how to react. “Eeegghhhgrrrrr,” I thought, incapable of formulating words, much less saying them. I surveyed my room, hoping that the mess was isolated. Blood was absent at least, but a trashcan overflowing with Busch cans and a random assortment of clothes begged to be dealt with. The idea of doing anything but sleeping was misery-inducing, and I was sighing back tears when my phone vibrated. From under my bed.

This was a predicament. How was I going to get that text? Ignoring it simply was not an option, given the great amount of inappropriately suggestive texts I routinely send on Friday nights. Saturdays are for apologies, and I was off to a late start. Luckily, there was a silver lining. As I reluctantly pulled my hand out of my crotch, expecting to find a hand bloodied to Macbeth proportions, I noticed that the pain came with it in the form of a giant black glob of a bruise on my palm. Turns out I fell down a couple of times last night. The blood was from a few re-opened scabs on my elbow that have managed to resist healing for a month because of instances like this. You probably think me a fool for getting so worked up about these things, but feeling was not the most operational sense this morning. I woke up with blood on my sheets and a bruise in my boxers.  I was panicked and couldn’t distinguish pain in hand from pain in dick–give me a break.

Anyway, after sucking it up, sending my apologies, and moving on with my day, I considered my injuries a little more. Through roommate confirmation, I learned that I was bleeding for the majority of the night, yet I have no recollection of anyone being remotely concerned about it. So here’s a question: How much blood is too much blood? At what point do you just have to say no? Obviously, I’m not talking about somebody grinding up on you with a gaping wound bleeding through his/her v-neck. But blood does happen in the course of a weekend night; excessive showmanship, faux invincibility and falling are all unfortunate symptoms of PBR. It’s entirely possible that some fool might approach you with a curious little speck of red on his/her lapel and you’ll start thinking, “Uhhhmmm, that’s ketchup, riiiighttt?” But there’s nothing tasty about that condiment, and when you start to get your grind on with a bunch of platelets chilling next to your face, I promise they’re not going unnoticed.

But is it necessarily a deal breaker? What if s/he’s really funny and not that gross sans blood? My standards are certainly lower than average, but I firmly believe that a little blood on an appendage or a collar is whatever. I can live with it.

I’ll tell you what I can’t live with. First and foremost, period blood a la Superbad is unacceptable. I’m still too immature to talk about periods, let alone have them on my leg. I really don’t think I can explain just how strongly I feel about this point. If what happened to Jonah Hill ever happens to me, I will cry, and I will vomit. Immediately. I can’t talk about it anymore.

Facial blood is another sure dealbreaker. Let me specify what I mean here, because I’m not talking about the standard nosebleed; that shit happens and is totally rectifiable and forgettable. But coming face to face with an oozing, strawberry jam and cream cheese grease bagel is very not forgettable. That’s some shit. Acne is a plague on us all, I understand that, but if you don’t have the courtesy–nay, the hygiene–to take a break from picking and popping zits like  the freak in the back of my 6th grade class who wore the same hoodie and ate a tin of sardines for lunch everyday, then I’m forced to consider not just your general cleanliness, but really your entire moral fiber as a human being. Popping zits at a party is just not kosher. It’s an absolute flagrant foul that may demand immediate expulsion.

Those two instances are my biggest beefs with party blood and probably the only cases in which I would allow a little bit of blood to throw me off a pursuit. Given that I was a little bloody last night and experienced no setbacks, I imagine people generally feel the same way. But I’m genuinely curious what people think, so I’m going to set myself up for serious embarrassment and ask reader(s) to comment and let me know! How much blood is too much blood!? I have to know!

Athletics Update: Sept. 12-19, 2010

September 21st, 2010
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By Nick Perry

Field Hockey (4-1) currently has the best record of the fall teams. Photo from goyeo.com

Football

The football team is off to an astonishing 1-1 start despite being on the road for the first two weeks of the season. OC won their season opener for the first time since 1997 with a 29-26 overtime win over Kenyon before suffering a 31-14 defeat to College of Wooster this past Saturday. Obviously, I have yet to see the team play, but from what I gather from scouring  GoYeo and through basic logic is that the defense and running game is struggling significantly; an unfortunate drawback for a passing offense that has racked up 500 yards in the past two games. Sophomore quarterback Josh Mandel has led a reasonably productive offense throwing for 6 touchdowns–including a 4 TD game against Kenyon–compared to 5 interceptions. The kid also threw for 335 yards against Kenyon. Pretty damn impressive–maybe we will win a few this year. OC football heads to Hiram next weekend before coming back for Homecoming weekend on October 2 against Wittenberg.

Men’s and Women’s Cross Country

All I know about cross country is that these OC teams throw damn good parties. I understand that competitors run distances considered dangerous for people of my physical fitness level and try to be the fastest to run these distances. But as far as scoring, qualifying for higher levels and uniforms, I’m totally clueless. So here’s what I gather about the men’s and women’s cross country teams up to this point using the least specific language I can so as to not insult XC jargon.

First, and I believe foremost, the men’s team have recently been ranked 31st in the nation by the United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA, which defeats the purpose of an acronym). An impressive feat for a homely little liberal arts college in Ohio with more hipsters than trees. Both the men’s and the women’s teams placed well at the GLCA Championships at Ohio Wesleyan last weekend, with the men placing first and the women second.

Both teams head to Carnegie Mellon next weekend to run train at the Carnegie Mellon Invite.

Women’s Volleyball

The Women’s (Oberlin doesn’t have Men’s Volleyball) Volleyball team has sneakily been playing matches almost daily over the past two and a half weeks and has managed to accumulate a 1-11 record, the lone win coming against Earlham last Saturday. The team plays Otterbein at home on Tuesday night at 7 before playing four matches at Hiram next weekend.

Men’s and Women’s Tennis

You may have heard about the Oberlin Women’s Invitational happening this weekend. Here’s what went down: Farah Leclercq ’13, Carolyn Ball ’12, and Ariel Lewis ’12 were women’s singles winners on Day 1. Both women’s doubles teams; Julie Christensen ’13 and Preeya Shah ’13, and Leclercq and Finley Gates ’12, were victorious as well. On Day 2, Shah and Gates each won her match, and Leclerq and Lewis were again both victorious on Day 3.

According to GoYeo, the Men’s Tennis team has no news except for John ’61 and Carl Erikson ’94 winning their seventh major title on the USTA Father-Son Circuit. And proud we are of them. But you may look forward to the Men’s Oberlin Invitational on October 2nd and 3rd.

Field Hockey

The field hockey team is fucking shit up! You probably didn’t know that, did you? They’re 4 and fucking 1 (1-1 in conference.)! With a goal differential of 22 to 6! I want to see everybody on Thursday the 23rd tailgating the hell out of the Kenyon game. GO OC GO OC GO!

Men’s and Women’s Soccer

Soccer is my favorite sport and, besides football and maybe field hockey now, really the only OC varsity sport that I’ll ever enjoy watching. As such, I’ve been to every men’s home game and all but one women’s home game. And no, it’s not always easy to go. The women have struggled to a 1-6 (0-0 conference) start after winning the season opener against Mount Union. They have only scored four goals for the season and have had immense difficulty keeping the ball out of their own half. Nobody seems to have a set position, as head coach Kristen Hayden continuously experiments with different players in different spots. Sadly, the winning formula is still mysterious to Hayden and the Yeowomen.

The men have staggered out of the gate as well. Fighting a number of injuries, the Yeomen have crawled to a 3-5 start (0-0 conference). They have been outscored by opponents 14-7 and have had difficulty finding a bona fide goal scorer. Justin Griffiths ’13 leads the team with 3 goals, but has been severely limited by a bad knee and–he probably didn’t know I knew this, but I’m a friend of his GF–a nasty abdominal hernia.

In the home games I’ve seen, the midfield has been the Achilles’ heel, getting consistently out-hustled and outplayed. They have lacked the chemistry to possess upfield, choosing to rush through balls and send long, ambitious passes to the almost always outnumbered forwards. The defense, anchored by captain Wyatt Hayman ’11, has been bailed out a number of times by keeper Zach Lipshultz ’11 but seemed to have made considerable progress over the last week in working out the kinks during the team’s 2-1 victory over Case Western on Saturday. People have actually showed up to the night home games, making some noise and heckling opponents like a mid-sized high school crowd.

This week, the men play Muskingum on Wednesday before coming back to Fred Shults Field on Saturday to take on Earlham at 7 PM.

The women play Heidelberg at 7 PM on Fred Shults Field on Tuesday and Earlham at noon on Saturday.

Nick Goes to Earth Day

May 19th, 2010
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By Nick Perry

It’s 4:30 PM on a Saturday and I’m sitting in my lonely little room listening to house music and enjoying a soft beverage when I happen to notice in the corner of my eye the newest piece of flair on my wall. It’s a poster with a crayon-like drawing of a windmill and a bold, yellow “WIND NOW!” riding along the chalky blue sky. Continue reading →

Nick and the Sauna Veteran Part 2

April 28th, 2010
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We sat in silence for a few minutes when he became to look even more uncomfortable. He stared at me for a moment and then asked in a surprisingly defined drawl, “What year are ya?”

“First,” I gave back, smiling.

“Oh yeah, and what do you think of the College?”

I told him what I thought of the College–he didn’t presume I was a Connie, which upset me a little because I figure, to people I don’t know, I’m way more interesting if I’m a Connie. He listened, gnawing on his spit and nodding now and then. When I finished he told me his daughter was a frosh (his words), too, and was having adjustment difficulties. I gave him my sympathies and felt satisfied with the amount of communication we had, but barely after I finished speaking he asked if I have siblings. So I told him I had an older brother, and the man couldn’t stop prying. He opened up his age, his place of residence, occupation, and then he started nabbing at his future. And this is where he found a jumbo can of worms.

I mentioned that my brother was thinking about joining the Navy to pay for medical school. He grunted and frowned at me, “No. Air Force,” he said with such assertiveness I didn’t even think to question it. I sat, lost for words for a moment until he noticed I had nothing to contribute and went on to describe, in detail, the aid plans of the Air Force and how they were superior to those of the Navy. His interest in the subject drew me out a bit and I decided I was going to have to bro it out with this guy. I asked him where he served, and he told me all about Army basic training in Louisiana. And then, without being asked, he embarked on an epic tale of human fortitude and camaraderie in the face of Japanese typhoons. Literally, typhoons, that’s not a euphemism. Here were the bullet points of his story:

He and his comrades was pinned down in a barracks by the Japanese monsoon season for three months.
During these three months he ate nothing but various canned goods.
He was not particularly fond of living in a barracks where the only surplus was grumpy dudes and beans.
But he pulled through by making friends and sharing the suffering.

It’s sort of cheesy, but I left the sauna shortly after this tirade and found that I wanted to join the Army. Eating canned food and playing cards through a rainy day with your buddies sounds like a whole lot of fun. I would never have considered such an option, but that guy recruited the bageezus out of me. I felt like a deer three seconds after getting caught in the headlights, unceremoniously launching toward an unpredicted outcome. So remember people, life changes things pretty quickly if you decide you want it to. Go crazy.

Nick and the Sauna Veteran Part 1

April 24th, 2010
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So this one time I was leaving the gym after a crushing defeat on the intramural basketball court. I fucking hate losing. I don’t care what anybody says, it’s not about fun. It’s about fucking winning. Because when you lose a game of chess or croquet or whatever it is you play there is just no way you can ever be close to that person that beat you again. He’s got it in his head that he’s better than you, and he can whip that out at anytime. You might be playing a game of FIFA later and he’ll snidely remind you of that little failure at the squash court and it brings your game down so hard.

He might play the pseudo-nobility card and pretend to be all gracious that you were such good competition. That jerk will be all, “that was really a great match, friend, but you just couldn’t quite beat me.” And he’ll say it with a British accent because it just sounds a bit more snobby. Really, listen some time to somebody who’s trying to be nice about beating you, he’s always going to have a distinct “mmmyyyyesss” quality to his voice at that particular time. I don’t like winners, and I hate being a loser. It’s a difficult paradox.

You may safely infer that I don’t lose well. You could say I slip into my grumpy pants after a loss. So I left the court alone and scowling, and went to the locker room for my post-game pee. Usually there isn’t anybody in the locker room late on a Tuesday, or really at any other time, either, but on this evening I walked past a grizzly looking middle aged man pulling up his swim trunks. Yes, I saw this man’s penis, and yes, that would make things a little weird later. When I left the stall, the man was gone but I had an overwhelming urge to swim, so I put my shoes and my shirt and my phone and my wallet and my pod in a locker and rolled on out to the pool.

I pumped out a few laps and was resting my arms on the side of the pool so I could subtlety assess arm flaccidity when the guy from the locker room walked into the pool area covered in sweat and rubbing his clearly flexing pecs. I had no idea where he had been but this guy was on top of the fucking world. His shoulders were thrown back and he was strutting along teeth flashing and just rubbing the fuck out of his chest. Dude was feeling like the shit, not caring that he was looking a little like a masturbating Wookie. (I refuse to consider that Wookies have penises or vaginas, but they might have nipples so that has to be where they masturbate.)

He popped in the pool and swam a few laps and then left again. I was just about done so I followed shortly after and that’s when I realized what had put that guy in such a good mood. Why he was feeling so great despite being covered in sweat, a state of being generally considered kind of not so great. I stepped to the glass door and tugged it open to see the sweaty man perched on the high bench of the sauna, leaning back and smiling without a care in the world. He was in swim trunks, but I sort of was reminded of seeing him naked when I walked by and may or may not have taken an impulsive glance towards the danger zone. He noticed, and gave me a look of shame so profound that I no longer care about disappointing anyone, they just could never be as upset as that dude.

Welcome to Broberlin

April 21st, 2010
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There are certain things that I like that are not so hot among many Oberlin students. Jack Johnson, for one. I can’t explain why, but the man’s voice melts away my worries and just makes me want to rip off my shirt, grab a Corona and kick it in a lawnchair in the front yard. Taylor Swift has a similar effect, except that she makes me want to be a lovelorn 15 year old girl. Can’t have everything, I guess.

Growing up I played three sports a year because a) I had to, and b) I kicked ass. At age 5 my soccer team gave me a standing ovation when I showed up a little late to a game because these kids–myself included–poured their hearts and souls into the game of soccer. It didn’t matter that the team was coed, or that the league didn’t keep score, or that we weren’t actually playing on nets yet. It was the same case for every other sport, too. Sports were law and children abided. Parents didn’t dare keep their children out of a sport for any season for fear that Ken Murphy, the town sports fascist, might start asking questions at the next PTO meeting. Next thing you know half the town’s wondering if you’re in dire financial straits or, heaven forbid, you spawned a homosexual! These things are unacceptable in Hingham, Massachusetts–aka MILF City, aka Brotopia.

It did become acceptable to drop your kid out of ONE sports season if, once puberty hit, he or she developed a reputable talent. This is because parents in Hingham begin discussing college about the time the first zit pops up on their child’s face. And these people know how to get into college. So most parents will begin pushing their children to learn different skills, like drawing or music or exploitation of the weak. A couple might send their son on a trip to Spain to make room for a foreign exchange student (because everybody wants a foreigner that they can show off to their friends) and, when they switch back, the little tyke might bring back a very welcome passion for Spanish guitar. Well, the trip paid off and the kid goes Ivy and then, before you know it, he’s paying for his folks’ retirement in Fort Lauderdale.

Parents recognized when they’d lost the battle with a sport, so all the little ones with chronic asthma were taken off the ice and given a piano to pass the time with. But they did not get to take another season off. I was one of the majority stock that never learned a skill of repute. I can’t play an instrument, I can’t sing, I can’t act, I can’t draw. So I played sports. And through sports I grew to appreciate the adrenaline rush from chasing frantically after a guy kicking a ball, and learned that the greatest compliment one can ever receive is a firm slap on the ass after a solid RBI single.

So it came to pass that I bought into the sports culture and started rocking loose-tongued Timbalands with sweatpants and a pseudo-flannel for the rest of my adolescent life. With the style came the tastes and I found myself chasing the sweet, narcissistic girls who would flirt your face off all night when they were drunk but then never mention it again. I am very easily negatively impressed, so when girls started breaking my heart I started ridiculing them, and my bros and I passed four years of lunches complaining about women’s suffrage and ordering our various female acquaintances to make us sandwiches. (Note: I don’t really have a problem with women voting.)

There’s a very brief summation of my life up to this point. Today, my appreciation of Jack Johnson’s music is complemented by an ardent desire to take the sleeves off all my t-shirts, and wear my flat-brimmed Red Sox hat tilted up just like my boy Sam Adams. These things had been staples in my life until I arrived at Oberlin. It seems, however, that the things I like are decidedly “not cool” here. Which makes no sense because to everyone living outside the zip code of 44074 (approximately 6,692,022,277 people) that’s all hot shit! I love you people, but you make me look crazy sometimes.

So now that you know a little about me, I’d like to invite you into the world of Broberlin, where everything that I once considered “normal” is suddenly offbeat, weird, even. Episode 1 of the Brofiles: Nick and the Sauna Veteran will be here shortly.

Dr. Robert Sapolsky at Finney as Final Convocation Speaker

April 11th, 2010
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Photo by Carolyn Weinstein

By: Nick Perry

When Dr. Robert Sapolsky of Stanford University asked a packed Finney Chapel how many people had a family history of heart disease and cancer on Thursday night, nearly everybody raised a hand. However, when asked about a family history of leprosy and dysentery, all hands went down.

“We are not like normal mammals,” Sapolsky told the crowd. “We don’t get sick like normal mammals, we don’t die like normal mammals.” Sapolsky’s convocation, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: A Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping, discussed the evolution of stress study and how humans have a penchant for causing their own stress.

Stress study is a relatively recent field, explained Sapolsky, and was not fully advanced until scientists began to ask “totally bizarre questions like ‘what’s your psychological makeup,’ or ‘what’s your social status,’ or ‘how are people of your social status treated in society.’” When examining these questions, Sapolsky argued, the exacerbation of diseases can be directly correlated to stress.

When homeostatic balance is lost, animals become stressed and, in the short-term, they turn on the stress response. Humans, however, are a rare animal that turn the stress response on if they “think [their] body is going to be knocked out of homeostatic balance.” Unlike 99% of animals, humans turn the short-term stress response on all the time because they have the capacity to look to the future and complain about it. For this reason, said Sapolsky we are the most vulnerable mammals to stress-related disease.

Sapolsky outlined seven effects of the typical stress response. When an animal is under immediate duress it rapidly mobilizes energy from fat cells, increases its cardiovascular tone, enhances its immune system, sharpens its cognition and alertness, and suppresses digestion, growth, and reproduction. In a stressful situation, all of these steps must occur or, Sapolsky explained, “you’ve got like a 30 second life expectancy.” But humans abuse the stress response and often get sick as they run into what Sapolsky referred to as the “exhaustion phase” when the body is working out of homeostatic balance for too long. While a human will never run out of adrenaline, Sapolsky–in a tribute to Oberlin leftism–argued that the problem is that “after while you’re spending so damn much on your military that you don’t give as much to healthcare and social services.

Sapolsky offered a number of stress-related disorders to each adaptive stress response. By suppressing stress and hostility, disorders such as adult onset diabetes, hypertension, and atherosclerosis can take root in humans. Stress also impairs ability to repair ulcers and suppresses growth. Sapolsky discussed a child who suffered from psychogenic dwarfism while growing up in a stressful, unloving environment, but began to grow when he developed a feeling relationship with a nurse who was studying him. Incredibly, when she left for a two week vacation, the boy stopped growing, only to resume as soon as she returned. This case spoke volumes to the influence of companionship on reducing stress.

Reproductive functions are also thrown off by the stress response, Sapolsky argued. Studies have shown that females under constant stress can begin to run low on estrogen and lose the ability to ovulate. Stressed out males tend to develop erectile dysfunction because, as Sapolsky stated, “In order to get an erection you have to be calm and vegetated.”

Stress can contribute to memory loss, depression, and the endangerment of neuronal development, as well. Since the body releases dopamine when under stress to enhance alertness, if a person is continuously under stress his or her ability to produce a happy feeling becomes inhibited, and neurons can become damaged.

Although stress is related to many diseases, Sapolsky emphatically insisted that it has absolutely no link to cancer as was once thought.

In his concluding statements, Sapolsky presented a study performed on lab rats that examined the development of ulcers on rats in a stressful environment. The experiment put rats in a cage and shocked them at random. The study found that rats who were shocked alone, without warning, were at significantly greater risk of developing ulcers. Meanwhile, rats that were permitted to have an outlet had very reduced chances of getting ulcers. From the study it was concluded that there are specific psychological modifiers to the stress-response. Outlets for frustration, a sense of control, a perception of life improving, and social support can significantly lower stress levels.

Sapolsky reminded the crowd that “none of us are ever going to be stressed running away from saber-toothed tigers, none of us are going to be wrestling for canned food items at the supermarket, instead you’re going to have the luxury to sit around and invent these psycho-social stressors.” He urged people to never be socially isolated because you will become stressed. Humans, Sapolsky claimed, are “smart enough to invent this stuff, and foolish enough to fall for it,” making us very prone to stress-related disorders, and constantly in need of modifiers to the stress-response.

Dr. Seuss Day Island

March 9th, 2010
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By Nick Perry

You may think childhood is a wonderfully innocent thing, but you’re wrong. This is unequivocal: it is fucking rough to be a kid. Before this afternoon I, too, believed childhood was just an extenuated period of not giving two shits about anything except your pet gerbils and losing teeth and stuff.

Continue reading →

Breed, and Die: Analysis of a Visit from the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement

February 18th, 2010
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By Nick Perry

solarnavigator.net

For all those who wish to one day be married and raise a family of little hippies and hipsters, well, you may need to adjust your core values as a human being.

Such was the message Tuesday night of lecturer Les Knight, “finder” (Knight does not like term, ‘founder,’ because he does not believe his ideas to be wholly unique) of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT). Knight’s presentation, “Thank You For Not Breeding,” was presented by Oberlin Animal Rights to a near capacity West Lecture Hall.

Knight, a public school teacher from Portland, OR, educated Oberlin community members on the movement he claims will solve the Earth’s environmental problems. And population problems.  And, you know, general living problems.

VHEMT promotes a voluntary cessation of human breeding due to the amount of species extinction and damage to the biosphere rendered by human evolution and expansion. According to Knight, “Biodiversity is lost wherever we move in,” a development that seems entirely unnatural to VHEMT.

Without giving any exact numbers, Knight proposed that if the human race was to load on to one side of a scale, and all the species that became extinct because of us were to climb into the other side, the extinct species would overwhelmingly outweigh humanity. However, he failed to offer a way to a) determine which species have become extinct due to direct human influence, and b) raise those species from Extinct Species Heaven to get on the scale.

Knight insisted that since before Homo Sapiens was Homo Sapiens, his slovenly, ecology-hating ancestor Homo Erectus had been altering the Earth’s biosphere. This semi-evolved mongoloid performed this grotesquely malevolent act by slamming a couple of rocks one day and setting ablaze half of his jungle paradise. Since that fateful day, the Homo genus has procreated indiscriminately and utilized its cunning–and fire!– to develop new, more efficient ways to pillage the biosphere. As such, subsequent procreation becomes more dangerous for the Earth.

Beyond humanity’s environmental impact, Knight examined the detrimental effect of humans on themselves. Citing the 100,000 40,000 daily infant deaths around the world, he asserted that, at the very least, contraceptive practices are in need of fixing. Many of these deaths, Knight argued, were a result of poor education and the second-hand status of women in many countries around the world. Despite policy amendments by the United Nations in 1979 and 2000 to benefit women’s liberty, the world’s population continues to grow as husbands internationally forget to follow the UN’s new rules and keep swinging for sons.

Knight suggested that the world community needs to re-evaluate its core values to include non-humans in its realm of concern, so we must stop the breeding and allow a gradual, controlled extinction of humanity.

However, before we do, I insist we pass the torch of biological hegemony. To bears.

To learn more about Les Knight and his organization, visit www.vhemt.org. And don’t be discouraged by the Cold War-propaganda-esque insignia.

Nick Perry

February 4th, 2010

Nick Perry is a very handsome, very single sophomorein the college. He graduated from a small public school in the heart of Boston’s South Shore suburbia where his scathing wit was nourished by collar-popping lax kids and incredibly hot moms with woefully unattractive children. Due to immense fear of these people he has never actually said anything witty in his life, but he’s written some stuff down. He really likes zoos, watching myths get busted, playing Risk and puck with his homies, and pretending to know the lyrics to rap songs. Nick has not declared a major but believes it will be English or History.