I wanna be made.

And no, I do not want to be a ballerina or an unicyclist or a taxidermist. I want to be something much more prestigious. I want to be a slacker.

Whenever you want something, just go on MTV. The program “Made” to be specific. A normal episode of this program consists of some pimply-faced high-schooler from New Jersey who has no arms but wants to start at quarterback on the varsity football squad. MTV sets this kid up with a coach with experience in the area who helps the kid reach his dream. If you’re like me, you root for the kid to fail miserably. What can I say? I’m a journalist. I feed on human misery.

Anyway, over the years I have noticed a disturbing trend. I will do all the work, do some of the reading and attend every class. My slacker friends will go to class occasionally, read Maxim or Sports Illustrated when they do, miss an entire paper, and get only a half grade lower than me. I want to kill these people, but I also want to bow at the feet of their greatness. I began to think that maybe these kids have it all figured out and I am just a sucker. So I enlisted the help of “Made.”

DAY ONE: I’m doing what I usually do on any normal day. I am feeding the homeless, volunteering at local hospitals and so on. All of a sudden one of the homeless guys introduces himself as my “Made” coach. For purposes of this column, I will call him Twinkies McPothead. He tells me to stop this volunteering crap and go home, take a nap, watch “Law and Order” all night and eat junk food. I reluctantly agree.

DAY TWO: On our way to the bookstore, Twinkies explains the concept of slacker to me. The slacker can never be ambitious and must treat everything in life as if it’s no more important than a bogus holding call that negates a 50-yard touchdown on Madden 2006. Slackers must contribute nothing to society, he tells me, so no more community service. When I am about to buy a $100 textbook for a class, he issues me a painful electric shock. I don’t need these over-priced books, he tells me. Get an older edition. I say this new edition has a brand new pie chart on page 75 I might need to reference. He shocks me again.

DAY 15: I am more than a week into classes and progressing well. I have bought no books, have done none of the assigned reading, and already slept through a 1:30 class. I bring my Discman (iPods are too cool for me) to class, kick my feet up on the desk and listen to Kelly Clarkson…err, I mean Pink Floyd.

DAY 25: I have a little relapse when I read some Newsweek articles online for a journalism class. Twinkies slaps me around a bit and tells me the Internet exists for one reason and it certainly ain’t for education.

DAY 35: I sneak off from a party to do some studying for my “Social Mobility and ‘Saved by the Bell'” course. The midterm is tomorrow and I just have to get an A! At 2 a.m., Twinkies catches me. “If you do not want to not do the non-work that is required then this will just not work out.” I stomp out of the room and take a lonely stroll down Hemenway Street, avoiding puddles of vomit and falling beer bottles, to re-evaluate the situation.

DAY 35-40: I come back to my coach, determined to not do any more work than is absolutely necessary. The MTV producers show a montage to Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” of me sleeping during classes or obviously day-dreaming, but still getting Bs and As on my papers. For my midterms, I only have to skim the sections of the used books I have, use some big words in my papers like “gentrification” or “Kofi Annan” that make me look like I know what I’m talking about and I’m on my way.

DAY 40-50: The producers interview several of my friends and family who are all proud of my accomplishments. They even talk to some of my new slacker buddies, who were skeptical of me at first, but have come to accept me as a truly worthless person. These guys even try to get me to try some of their grassy substance. But I’ve seen the commercials, the ones that show a kid smoking pot, then getting into a car, running over eight small children, three elderly people and then crashing into a nuclear waste facility. Anyway, if I want to get high I can just walk by Berklee.

LAST DAY: I procrastinated as much as possible during finals week, reworded some books for my papers, and I still got two B+s and two A-s. I thank my coach for all the hard work he did not do for me. After all the cameras have gone, I find out all my new friends I met on the show are actors who work for MTV, but I don’t care. I’m a slacker. It’s just too bad I waited until my senior year to become one.

Note: If you happen to be a professor I will have in the spring, you never read this. Thanks.

— Stephen Sears can be reached at [email protected].