Editor’s Note: This is a satire piece from The Collegian’s opinion section. Real names and the events surrounding them may be used in fictitious/semi-fictitious ways. Those who do not read the editor’s notes are subject to being offended.
Professors recommend that students never leave an important assignment until the last minute. But who listens to those ridiculous suggestions? Marvin Dent, a physics Ph.D. student at Colorado State University, is now wishing that maybe he hadn’t called those suggestions ridiculous.
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Last night, he sent a distress call to the local IT authorities when his computer randomly shut down while he was working on his dissertation. After trying and failing to restore power to his computer himself, he called the IT authorities for help.
“I stared at that spinning circle of death for at least an hour,” Dent said. “And I’m not a computer person. I had no idea what to do.”
When the IT responders finally restored power to his computer and turned it back on, Dent found that he had lost his dissertation and all the information within it — which included a scientific conspiracy regarding the fact that Albert Einstein actually copied his theory of relativity from his ex-wife Mileva Maric.
Although the IT department tried to restore the documents on Dent’s computer, their attempts were unsuccessful. The files were lost, and there seemed to be no chance of recovery of the dissertation or the data for the experiments.
The files vanished without a trace, as if the computer ate them. The IT authorities have no clues as to where they might have vanished. All systems have been checked, but there is no evidence of the file ever existing in the first place.
Bill Gates was even contacted to see if he can attempt to restore the files. However, there has been no response from him or his representatives. While authorities are awaiting a response from Gates, they are looking into a claim from famous YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, who has claimed that he can find the reason why it crashed. Donaldson said his experience with high-production videos on his YouTube channel qualifies him as the resident IT expert of YouTube.
As the IT department awaits the results of MrBeast’s attempt to restore the documents, they are continuing to investigate what might have been the cause of the malfunction. While they are unsure of what exactly caused the deadly shutdown, evidence is leading the IT team to believe that it was simply because the computer did not like Dent.
“Sometimes computers can crash if you’re participating in some unrecommended activities — if you catch my drift,” IT technician Zach Ford said. “If you’re playing video games or online shopping while things are downloading, the computer can get overwhelmed and just shut down.”
Computers are extremely sensitive, and even the slightest mistreatment can cause them to malfunction. Dent denies that he did anything that would have upset the computer, but a full investigation is still being carried out. If Dent is found to be at fault for mistreating his computer, he could face serious repercussions for his actions.
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His roommate, professors and classmates are being gathered as witnesses for the investigation. Their insights into Dent’s actions will help the IT authorities decide if Dent is at fault for the malfunction or if the computer is.
“He’s been working on his dissertation almost nonstop for the past two days,” said Arthur Brocks, Dent’s roommate. “Maybe it felt like it was overworked.”
At this point, authorities have reason to suspect that Dent may have been playing video games during the time of the crash. While nothing has been confirmed, Dent is under heavy fire for his slacking off.
“Students are always going to find some excuse for not turning work in,” Ford said. “It used to be, ‘My dog ate my homework,’ and now it’s, ‘My computer crashed.’ This generation is something else.”
Reach Hana Pavelko at letters@collegian.com or on Twitter @hanasolo13.
