How to Keep Your GPA Up While Getting Your Rice Purity Score Low

If you’re like most people, you’ve entered this semester with a resolution to live life to the fullest while simultaneously not sacrificing any other element of your goals and ambitions. Okay, easy enough — sike! It’s actually really hard. But luckily, Flyby Blog has your back. Here are some ways to make sure your grades don’t suffer while you methodically tick off boxes on a test some random Rice students made in 1924.

Study Parties

“But I have my pset group already,” you say. What a hilarious joke. No, we mean throw a study rager. Try an essay power hour darty or a final exam pregame. Invite the whole class and also everyone else you know. Have actual fun, not depressing “I’m so going to fail” chats between practice problems. Dance as a study break! Make out as a study break! Any ~activity~ can be a study break if you’re not studying!

Don’t Procrastinate

There is no concentration at Harvard that is so difficult that you must be working on it between the hours of 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. on a Friday or Saturday. If you are working then, it is simply a skill issue. Doing your work a few days before it’s strictly due won’t kill you, but it will make it a lot easier to accept invitations.

Never Take More Than Four Graded Classes at Once

Do not take more classes than there are letters in BORG. This feels like it should be common sense but apparently it is not. Your GPA will suffer if you are taking more classes than recommended! (Side note: for this reason, secondaries seem like a trap, but that’s another article.)

Break Laws and Get Caught by the Police on Purpose

This is a great way to tick off a couple of purity test items, and since you’re a Harvard student, you basically get purge-lite rules until you graduate anyway. I suggest grand larceny but do whatever. For legal reasons, this is a joke.

The Utilitarian Approach

Any effective altruist will tell you, it’s not about how hard you try but what you do with your effort. Thus, instead of attempting to experience life organically and at the pace at which it comes, optimize your every free moment to do specifically the activities on the test. If you’re not picky and can gather a few friends who have the same goal, you can knock out a good half of them in 24 hours. More, if you know a guy.

Just Use the Harvard Purity Test Instead

That’s right: if you want to forgo a list of more activities than many people would actually like to accomplish, you can use the list we made which is composed of things Harvard students actually do.

Remember: it’s possible to have it all, as long as you define “it all” by two arbitrary numerical metrics. Just please, please, never attempt numbers 99 and 100.