I would like to dedicate this issue to the students affected by all the major university changes, especially the liberal arts majors who are about to enter their first semester in a STEM college. While things may be changing around here, The Mugdown will continue to consistently deliver the same hard hitting satire that makes you think, laugh, and maybe get a little more frustrated with Kathy Banks.
Disclaimer: The Mugdown is a web-based satirical news publication. Any and all content associated should be assumed to be mostly or entirely fictionalized. With the exception of public figures and entities, any names found within are made up and unassociated with any individuals whose names may bear a resemblance to any names used. Additionally, any quotations and events described should be viewed strictly as parody unless explicitly stated H. Lechner
Howdy! It brings me much joy to welcome you to this semester’s print edition, not just because I haven’t been allowed to say howdy at my internship all summer, but also because we have lots of great content to share. Thank you for your decisions to pick up this copy and I hope it brings you some much desired aggie content to kick off what I hope will be a great semester.
2022-2023
Hannibal Lechner
The Mugdown
September 20222 The Mugdown www.mugdown.com OUR STAFF EDITOR‑IN‑CHIEF Hannibal Lechner EDITOR SUPREME MSC ALITTLE FINANCE EDITOR Batt for Both Teams INTERNAL EDITOR BIMS and Snap EXTERNAL EDITOR Walton, Texas Ranger CONTENT EDITOR Hullabaloo Neglect Neglect YOU NEED US A THANK YOU A MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
For our continuing readers, welcome to the print edition you all know and love, we are so grateful for your support. For any and all new readers, welcome! We hope you stick around and follow us on social media and on our website. Satire is our passion, and we hope to brighten your day with every headline and hot-take. We are so thankful to be even a small part of your time here in Aggieland, and aim to challenge the thinking of the Texas A&M community with our writing. With so much chaos in the last few years, I can only hope that this semester stays simple and makes it hard to write headlines. However, with university changes in the air, one can never be too certain. Let’s stay safe this semester and make the most of whatever time we have left at The Texas A&M University.T’s and G’s, A&M
administration on its toes. Follow us on Twitter! www.twitter.com/Mugdown Follow us on Instagram! www.instagram.com/themugdown
Like us on Facebook! www.facebook.com/mugdown to a great advisor who helps us keep the Texas
Editor-in-Chief |
Letters to the Editor
What do you mean I can’t park here? I paid $585 for a parking pass and you’re telling me I still have to walk a mile and a half to class and can’t park on campus for the football games I pay $400 to attend? I mean come on, if the parking is going to suck, it might as well not cost so much. I know higher education is kind of a scam, but this feels personal. Fine, I’ll just lug all my groceries from West Campus Garage back to my dorm now. No, I don’t need help, they’ll probably charge me for that too.
— Empathy is my Crypto-nite
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Where did you intern last summer? Nice, is that like a startup? Oh, it’s the same place you worked in high school. Gotcha. Well, I’m sure you can spin the experience to make it look good on a resume. That’s the only reason to work in college anyway. Wait, so you pay tuition with that job? What about your college fund? Oh… Nevermind, I guess. Anyways, I should be getting my return offer with stock options soon. This recession is like a best case scenario, hon estly. My company’s share price is gonna go up so much by the time my stocks are completely vested. And I think my signing bonus should be enough to go to Europe for a couple months. What are you gonna do when you get one? Well… yeah… you could do that I guess. But loans aren’t really that big of a deal, right. Like don’t you have forever to pay them off, and I’ll bet eventually they’ll all get forgiven. If you ask me, the government should pay for more EV charging sta tions before they go handing out free school. Like it’s kinda ridiculous how difficult it is to charge my Tesla sometimes. But hopefully since gas is so high more people will buy them, and that’ll be really good for the environment and stuff. Alright, well, I gotta go get on a call with my recruit er. I’ll see you in Parallel Computing again next week!
— Koldus-Ice
Opening up Google Calendar to see her plans for the week, sophomore genetics major Lisa Zhou reflected on how the small rectangles with a consistent color scheme made yesterday look much cuter than it actually was. “If you look at my gCal for yesterday, you’ll see one tea green box and one lilac box followed by 4 hours of blank space before back-to-back lemon yellow boxes,” said Zhou. “It must’ve felt great to end class in the early afternoon and have a long break before officer and general member meetings for my service org, right? Wrong. I actually forgot to do the lab report for my chem lab [lilac] so I skipped my physics lecture [tea green] only to learn I missed a pop quiz. And don’t even get me started on the rest of the day.”
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YESTERDAY NOT AS CUTE AS GOOGLE CALENDAR
Sources within Zhou’s service org confirmed that, although the events that transpired in the blank space remain unknown, the lemon yellow rectangles dealt her another blow. Zhou arrived late to her officer meeting covered in bike oil, only to learn that she was placed on probation for tardiness. Moments later, she was asked to leave before the general meeting’s ice cream social due to her new probationary Zhou’sstatus.
MSC ALITTLE 10th Pledge Class: Better Latte Then Never
By MSC ALITTLE
Zhou’s calendar inaccuracy was not an isolated incident. According to a recent survey, almost a third of students at Texas A&M University spend more time planning ideal days than they do following through on the scheduled events.
roommate, Kira Lopez, painted a picture of how yesterday concluded differently from how the calendar outlined. “Lisa marks everything out on her Google Calendar, including cooking [peach] and sleep [light gray],” Lopez said. “ I knew something was wrong when she got home an hour before she was supposed to use the kitchen. Theoretically, it should have then been even easier for Lisa to get to sleep on time, but she set off the fire alarm making popcorn at like 1:30 am, so clearly nothing panned out.”
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Although Johnson’s job satisfaction has yet to improve, he has been able to pick up new skills at work. “My refinery doesn’t allow me to wear a watch or use my phone for safety reasons, so I can’t even check how many hours until I leave,” Johnson said. “On late night shifts, I get pretty good at telling time from constellations.” By Mugdown
“I never made the connection that hating all of my college classes probably meant that I would hate my career as well,” Johnson said. “In college, I couldn’t wait for that six-figure salary to solve all my problems. Now, I can’t wait until next Thursday when I get to leave work early because of a dentist appointment.” Despite initially planning to stay at the company for years, Johnson began searching for a new job after his second day of work. The recent recession, paired with Johnson having no actual work accomplishments, has led to recruiters ignoring his resume. However, co-workers report Johnson is outpacing the entire team in the number of times he raises and lowers his standing desk daily.
Quality-of-life scores at Johnson’s facility are consistently low, with a positive skew from outlier employees who majored in chemical engineering for a reason other than money. However, scores are expected to worsen following an announcement that employees must use vacation days when missing work for dentist and physician appointments.
MugdownStaff
Taking time to accurately complete the College of Engineering post-graduation survey, chemical plant engineer Dannie Johnson ‘21 reportedly “strongly agreed” that his coursework prepared him for his career because of how accustomed he became to feeling miserable.
RECENT GRADUATE SHOCKED TO FIND LIFE JUST AS MISERABLE POST COLLEGE
Staff 10th Pledge Class: Better Latte Than Never
When asked about the collaboration, representatives from Blue Baker appeared equally excited to improve campus well-being. “I know personally that when I’m feeling a little bummed out, nothing cheers me up as quickly as an Indigo sandwich. Imagine getting that for half off! I mean, come on. That’s a great deal,” said Blue Baker marketing director Frank Yingling. “And I can do you one better: if you head on down to participating Blue Baker locations on a Monday or Wednesday, all Level 2 Rewards members are eligible to receive a free sandwich with their qualifying order of $9.99 or more.” Despite the high demand for psychological services, these coupons are largely being reserved for students who rate their struggles with depression above a seven out of 10 Those with more substantial mental health struggles may eventually be entitled to a voucher for a butterscotch cookie.
This Thursday, Counseling and Psychological Services will begin their “Bakin’ Up Something Good™” campaign, replacing all future therapy appointments with coupons for half-off a singletopping pizza from Blue Baker (Dominik Drive location only). This initiative, unprecedented at Texas A&M University, aims to help students struggling with anxiety and depression while addressing concerns that mental health has not been a priority for university “Weadministration.attempted, time and again, to tell these guys they should just try getting over it and that they probably don’t have it that bad. For some reason, we were getting the feeling that it just wasn’t doing the trick,” said a Division of Student Affairs spokesperson. “We knew it was time to roll out something new.”
September 20226 The Mugdown www.mugdown.com TAMU COUNSELING SERVICES BEGIN OFFERING BLUE BAKER COUPONS IN PLCAE OF THERAPY
By Downtown Cryin’
Downtown Cryin’ 10th Pledge Class: Better Latte Than Never
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September 2022 7The Mugdownwww.mugdown.com CROSSWORD
it’s really our year” 3.Across:Established
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Elizabeth Timmey Junior Communication Major
CAMPUS VOICES
After arguably the most evenful years of young students lives, campus seems to have settled down considerablly. However with no pandemic, and a mediocre football season on the rise, we asked students what they could possibly be looking forward to this coming semester. “Despite the fact that I decided to be pre-med last semester, I’m ready to be done. Done with shool, done with work, done with comitments. Truthfully? This semester I’m looking forward ot retirement.”
“Did you say something about a mediocre footballseason? I actually heard that Jimbo is still waiting to anounce his starting quarterback, and if Haynes comes back I just know it will be our year.”
Jessica Massi Senior Finance major “My study abraod this summer was the most amazing time of my life. I met so many coole people and it truly was a life changing expereince. Oh, what am I looking forward to this semester?”
Kathy Banks Texas A&M University President “I just worked 80 hour weeks at my consulting intership and I’m just exited to have some free time again. It’ll take a while to get my sleep schedule back to that of a college student, but after that you won’t catch me at home any night of the week.”
TJ Holmes Sophomore Management Major “Another semester, another program to eliminate. Fish Camp was on my list, but now I think I have bigger and better plans. I don’t want to say too much, but let’s just say the engineers will betaking over a new building on West Campus.”
Theodore Grayfield Junior Biology Major
1. Head over to Aggie Express to pick up your preferred brand of microwavable mac and cheese. We recom mend the Hullabaloo location as it is open later for all your quirky midnight cry sessions.
And there you have it! Making mac and cheese in your dorm is a college rite of passage, and we wish you the best of luck starting freshman year!
Recipie
Welcome to Texas A&M! It’s your first time living on your own, and that means you’ll be doing your own laundry, waking yourself up, and, yes, making your own meals. Microwave mac and cheese is a college staple, so, as many of you look to improve your culinary prowess, here is our favorite recipe to help you out.
3. Place the container in the microwave and wait for the blaring sound of your dorm’s fire alarm because you forgot to add water. As you walk out of the building and wait for the fire department to come, be sure to get to know the other students in your dorm,. Tthis is a great time to make friends!.
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2. Peel back the plastic top, and admire your nutritious meal-to-be.
4. When you can finally get back in, be sure to go back and add water to the mac and cheese cup, and try again.
5. Mix in cheese powder. This adds a certain flavor that makes the pasta you’re making alone in your room studying for CHEM 101 almost edible.
A Freshman’s Guide to Making Mac and Cheese in the Dorm
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