It was with great sadness that I realized little Armando – gifted with such a legendary name – was perhaps the dumbest student in the history of our great nation. His grades were not those of a child who would soon become the next Benicio Del Toro, as I imagined, but more those of a child who would become the next Jimmy Smits. Just look at these NYPD Blue-esque classroom scores:

Classroom participation: 0.
Journal #1 – Describe yourself: 0.
Vocabulary quiz: 9.

I thought little Armando did quite well on the vocabulary quiz until I realized these were scores out of 100. My young prodigy – whom I had never met and might be stabbed by if I did meet – was a total dunce.

Every week I begged and pleaded with the teacher to stop sending me the reports, not because I care about the privacy of others or the lack of beatings his parents could give without concrete numbers, but because I couldn’t bear to see Little Armando ruining an otherwise striking first name. At the rate he was going, I would never feel comfortable buying Viagra through e-mail from anyone.

There was nothing I could do. The e-mails didn’t list the name of the parents or the school, so I couldn’t contact a higher level of authority about the mixup. Since children don’t have their own listing in the White Pages, it would be impossible to find little Armando’s house and stealthily replace the meth lab inside with a large collection of books. My noble cause of helping children I personally believe will be cool someday was stalled.

“Don’t worry,” said my friend Melanie. “That kid’s smarter than you think. He gave the teacher a fake e-mail address so his parents couldn’t see his grades. He’ll probably keep giving her fakes until he finds someone who doesn’t rat him out. That kid’s a genius.”

I found it hard to believe that a “genius” could earn a single digit percentage on a basic vocabulary test, but Drew Barrymore is now a movie director, so I suppose it’s not the stupidest thing that could happen this year. Despite my desire to see little Armando do well, I was still convinced his teacher spent most of her weekly paycheck on Wild Turkey and whichever brand of chewing tobacco goes best with that class of bourbon.

After the fourth straight e-mail, it became clear that little Armando enjoyed treating his academic life, and my dreams, like his own personal toilet. I was fed up. I e-mailed the teacher back and demanded that she either accidentally send me the e-mails of a smarter student with a cool name, or stop sending me e-mails all together.

She seemed surprisingly sober when responding this time, managing to properly spell and punctuate all words. This gave me hope that she had perhaps downgraded her alcoholism from 101 proof rye whiskey to a less damaging addiction to mojito-flavored wine coolers. I’ve always highly recommended this plan, as it worked well for all the teachers in my high school. They never cared, but they were very friendly and usually smelled of mint leaves.

So I no longer receive weekly updates on little Armando’s grades. I have to admit I’m a bit sad about it. He’s moved on to being parented poorly by his actual parents, which I find to be an inferior solution to being parented poorly by me. Either that or he’s now being parented by someone else with a Paul Ryan e-mail address, perhaps even Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan.

On the bright side, I can think of no one with more experience at polishing a turd.

Seriously, I’m 30 years old. I should be giving tips to college students like Lindsay Lohan should be giving sermons on celibacy. I haven’t been on a campus in eight years. For all I know, student centers are now run entirely by robots that tutor students while blowing them.

Is that the case? Do you need a student ID to use the robots? Are the robots bolted down really well, or could someone with a wrench quietly remove one and transport it to their home? Also, is the pizza at the commissary still bad? I don’t want to waste money on tuition if the pizza’s still bad and the futuristic blowjob machines are easy to steal.

I’m sorry, where were we? Ah yes, tips for students. Here’s one: Don’t flunk out, or your parents will beat you to death. That’s not a joke. They will actually beat you. You thought they were mad last year when you got drunk and threw up in their laundry hamper, but that’s slightly different than you throwing away $12,000 that they haven’t even paid off yet. If you do flunk out, move to Portland. There are a lot of drugs and jobs for stupid people in Portland.

Tip number two: Don’t molest people when they’re unconscious. I know this seems like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised by the things people don’t know. When i was a freshman in college, some creepy guy down the hall did that, and things didn’t turn out well for him. People tended to think of him as “rapey” after that. He eventually had to leave and go to school somewhere else. However, this rule doesn’t apply to females. There’s no such thing as an unattractive 18-year-old girl, so they’re generally allowed to touch anyone they want at any time.

Tip number three: Remember that smoking pot won’t actually help you get laid unless you’re smoking it with another person. If you’re toking in your dorm room by yourself and no one’s joining you, you’re doing it wrong. Perhaps you’re the stinky kid on the floor and no one likes you. Maybe you call people “bro” too much. Perhaps that humorous observation you made about Jews has been taken the wrong way. I don’t know. I’m not an expert.

Tip number four: If you have a class that’s particularly difficult, use your laptop or iPhone or tape recorder or dictaphone or personal secretary and record each lecture as you sit in class. You’d be surprised how much it can help. There, I gave a real tip instead of a joke. Happy?

If you don’t have a personal secretary, wait until your friends get drunk and take pictures of them doing embarrassing things. Then you will have a personal secretary.

Tip number five: If anyone in the dorms has an HDTV, you should marry them. Their parents are obviously very generous, and if you date them, they might give you awesome things too.

Special tip for St. Scholastica students: Don’t punch the nuns. It pisses off Jesus.

Tip number six: Anytime someone runs into your room at 1am and excitedly yells, “Hey wanna go (insert event here)?” you should say yes. Especially if said event involves alcohol, shaving cream, cartons of eggs, fireworks, or all four items at once.

Tip number seven: Don’t sleep with your Resident Advisor. The whole reason they became an RA is because they think it will help them sleep with freshman. They probably have AIDS.

Final tip: Enjoy yourself as much as possible in the first two years of college. Once you become a junior, professors will expect you to actually work hard, and by the time you’re a senior you’ll be so ready to leave that you won’t enjoy it. But for now, enjoy writing on your sleeping roommate’s face with a marker, pressing your exposed buttocks against glass windows in the cafeteria, and other heinous acts. For the next two years, you are officially allowed to be obnoxious with no repercussions.