My friends and I are in the midst of apartment hunting, and I have had a very grave realization: I have absolutely no money. None, nada, zilch. As far as I see it, there is only one option now - a get-rich-quick scheme.
I began my venture with the classic lemonade stand. It was a guaranteed moneymaker when I was 10, why not when I'm 20? So I set my little lemonade stand up, whipped up two pitchers of ice-cold refreshment and waited for the cash to roll in.
Surprisingly, there isn't much demand for ice-cold beverages in December no matter how many teaspoons of love I added. Since the love wasn't bringing in the big bucks, I decided to add vodka instead. Despite my 112 percent increase in sales, I had to close the shop down, as the city denied my liquor license.
But cookies are a big seller every season. I spent the afternoon toiling away in one of the residence halls' frighteningly tiny kitchens, baking up a storm. I may have gotten a little carried away, as I ended up with 72 dozen cookies, but once I get in the zone, I am a cookie monster.
However, I failed to realize that cookies are a cornered market. A group of Girl Scouts found out about my budding enterprise, and felt the need to rough me up. They broke my table, my arm,and my dreams. They even stole all my cookies and sold them at twice the going rate. They are like the Godfathers of cookies; it's terrifying. To add insult to injury, they sent me a get-well card with the remains of one of my cookies inside. There were crumbs everywhere. It still haunts me to think what they must have done to the poor thing.
Since it seemed that I was not destined to make money in food service, I decided to give science a shot. I had heard somewhere that you could make extra cash selling blood, plasma and semen. The semen part wasn't going to work out for me, but I thought I could handle blood and plasma.
I went in and it was awful. I was grating my teeth, pulling at my hair and near tears. The nurse said they had never seen a reaction like this before. After all, she was just pricking my finger for a blood sample, but hey, it hurt. For some reason the nurse said I wasn't able to give blood. She gave me a lollipop and sent me on my way. That's a win in my book.
My studies with Covance, a drug development company, didn't go much better. Everyone has seen the commercials saying it's a great way to make some extra cash. That is only if you don't have to spend the extra cash fixing what the medical study messed up. If anyone offers you a new prescription to help constipation, do NOT use it.
I was getting desperate now. I was going to have to resort to selling drugs. I knew it was wrong, but we all need to get by somehow. I set up my first exchange down on Lakeshore Path. I wore a trench coat and a fedora to look extra shady. A young man came up to me.
Juvenile Delinquent: You got the goods?
Me: Yeah, you got the dough?
Juvenile Delinquent: Yeah.
It went off without a hitch. We made the exchange and he disappeared into the night. Hopefully it took him until the next day to realize I had just sold him 20 dollars worth of laundry detergent - oI wouldn't really go back to selling drugs, not with my illustrious record.
So my get-rich-quick schemes failed. Except for twenty dollars and a lollipop, my efforts were a complete bust. But maybe I don't need an apartment for next year. If there are any readers out there who have ordered a nice big refrigerator for their apartment and don't know what to do with the box, I will be more than happy to help you out.
If you have a get-rich-quick scheme to share with Megan so she doesn't have to resort to living in a cardboard hut, e-mail her at mcorbett2@wisc.edu.
