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By Corinne Love / Opinions Editor
By Corinne Love / Opinions Editor
I’m going to need someone to organize my CD collection in chronological order.
Also, I’m going to need someone to Tivo “Glee” and write a two-page synopsis on the storyline and include major themes.
The synopsis must be MLA format with added footnotes.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to do these important things because I’m ultra busy.
Georgetown student Charley Cooper is busier than I am, however.
Cooper, 19, as reported by the Washington Post, is overwhelmed with coursework, a part time job and an illness in the family.
Life is getting to him.
So, he has decided to hire a personal assistant.
On Georgetown’s employment Web site, Cooper has posted an ad looking for an assistant to do specific tasks.
Tasks that include driving him to and from work (whether or not the assistant would be paid for gas mileage is unclear), scheduling his haircuts and managing his electronic accounts.
Also on the list for the assistant hopefuls was doing the laundry.
Cooper would pay the assistant for sorting and loading the laundry but not the actual laundry cycle.
The assistant would be working three to seven hours a week at a pay rate of $10 to $12 per hour.
Cooper thinks it is great pay.
He also took the guesswork out of assisting and would send the assistant an e-mail with the tasks for each day, the time intervals in bold.
He really has thought of everything.
While Cooper is probably not the first college student to consider getting a personal assistant, he is one of the first to make a serious juncture out of it.
Some of his fellow classmates think that the idea is just absurd.
Some are even accusing him of being full of himself, as the ad has prompted many to look up Cooper’s Facebook profile.
It’s not that Cooper is full of himself, he’s just unusually “busy.”
Other students have even posted parodied versions of the ad, and some have gone so far to say that he only did it to get attention.
If he is pulling a publicity stunt, it is working.
Cooper has drawn to himself all types of attention, and in a way has become a “local celebrity” for something so trivial and ridiculous.
College is always a time crunch, and wouldn’t it be great if we could hire a personal assistant to take care of the little tasks that manage to go unnoticed?
Imagine, instead of sorting through notes to find the one needed for an exam, a personal assistant could pre-sort those same notes and have them ready.
Sounds great.
Cooper’s critics have called the sophomore student immature and unable to deal with the real world.
He is dealing with the “real world.”
He has money to burn, and no time to do common things that the rest of us find time to in our overbooked schedules.
Like Heidi Montag or another equally unimportant celebrity, Cooper does not have time to sort his own laundry.
On Cooper’s LinkedIn page (the Facebook for professionals) it says that he hopes to go into finance and management.
One could say that his advertising for an assistant is an exercise in learning about the two.
According to the Washing Post, Cooper spent his spring interning at a financial services job (which was not identified because they probably would be embarassed).
One would think that working as an intern would better prepare Cooper to be self-sufficient.
On the other hand, Cooper is not as important as he thinks he is to employ a personal assistant.
Personal assitants are usually only needed when someone is of a high caliber public profile and needs help to make sure the little things don’t slip through.
It’s not a wild guess to assume that people like Bono, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt all have personal assistants.
Cooper has nothing in common with the aforementioned people.
But before hundreds of people track down both Cooper’s Facebook and LinkedIn profile, note that this is not unique.
Georgetown students have “outsourced” workers before to clean up dorm rooms and apartments.
The logic is if one has the money and someone wants to do it, then what seems to be the problem?
This incident just makes it seem like Ivy league students are lazy, or attempting to relive “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder.”
That’s a movie, and those movies hardly represent anything remotely accurate of what its really like to be a college student.
The rest of us college students have to pick up our laundry, take care of ailing family members and yes, even make our own beds.
