Welcome to the end of a grueling fall semester. The first section of this article is directed to the freshman class. Everyone else, skip the rest of this paragraph. Freshmen, you are not alone in your pain this week. The upperclassmen are struggling too. This week is, by far, the toughest week of the semester for most students. Everyone has a pile of projects due at the same time, along with a stack of tests. You will get through it. Your grades will not be as bad as you expect. You will be back next semester, and thanks to how the calendar plays out in the spring, the end of the semester always seems a little less intense.
I want to tell you all a story. It is a cautionary tale. Heed my warning: watch out for deer. Deer are belligerent, hostile creatures. Their sole motive in life is to attack you. They are fixated on causing property damage in risky attacks on any type of moving vehicle, be it automobile, bus, train, ferry boat, bicycle, or pogo stick. Do not challenge a deer. You will lose. Deer are so consumed by their need to attack you that they will give up anything, including their own lives, in the attack.
You may have already guessed that over the Thanksgiving break, the most eventful episode for me was when the GM-Mobile was brutally attacked by a ravingly mad deer. Consider the facts of the case: Your GM is a competent driver. He spotted a section of road that could only be prime real estate for a deer ambush. He began to slow down. He spotted the attack deer. He slowed down very quickly. The attack deer began its run, attempting to pace the GM-Mobile on this lonely stretch of highway.
Deer run fast. Not quite as fast as a vehicle, in particular the vehicle in this story. This alone is not a problem. The GM would have gladly let the deer win the race. In fact, the GM would have gladly stepped out of his vehicle (after stopping safely on the side of the highway) and let the deer win in a fair foot race. Unfortunately, this negotiated settlement would not have caused any property damage, and was thus immediately rejected by the attack deer, which attempted to pace the GM-Mobile by jumping in front of it.
You may be thinking that this story is about to turn gruesome. Remember, however, that deer are also deceptively smart. When this particular attack deer realized it could not outrun a fully loaded Subaru cruiser, it changed its tactics. It jumped in the air and kicked the front of the car!
Then was revealed the true value of an RPI education. As the GM-Mobile careened off State Highway 5S into a very deep ditch, the GM performed a hasty set of dynamics calculations to pick just the right angle of impact for the least damage. This did not make extricating the vehicle (or the GM) a particularly easy task, but did, in fact, minimize damages to about $100.
Take three important lessons from this story: You will not win when you fight a deer. Your RPI education will prove useful someday. Ed from Vern’s Auto Body, State Highway 161 in Amsterdam, is by far the most skilled winch operator ever to respond to AAA calls. And…take a train. Everywhere.
