A 7-Step Guide to Ruining Your Life

If you want to emerge from college "with massive debt loads, major attitude problems, and no marketable skills," Walter Russell Mead has a 7-step plan that's sure to work. Disgusted with a recent Boston Globe column about "awesome" college courses (among them: "The Culture of Burlesque," "Puppetry," and "Surfing and American Culture"), Meade explains on the American Interest that these are the vapid, "glittering fripperies" American students are going tens of thousands of dollars into debt for, though all it will lead to is a life of misery. Highlights of his plan to ruin your life:

• No. 1: "Enroll in a college that you cannot afford, and rely on large student loans to make up the difference."
• No. 2: Take a lot of those aforementioned "awesome" classes, and of course, have a great time.
• No. 3: "Develop an attitude of enlightened contempt for ordinary American middle class life, the world of business, and such bourgeois virtues as self-reliance, thrift, accountability, and self-discipline."
• No. 6: "When you graduate and discover that you have to repay the loans and cannot get a job that pays enough to live comfortably while servicing your debts, be surprised. Blame society."

If you are determined to "make yourself miserably unhappy in your twenties," by all means, read the rest of Mead's list. (More Occupy Wall Street stories.)