How to Trick Your Parents that You Have Your Life Together During Parent’s Weekend

By Kelly Kinas

Parent’s weekend is upon us, which is slightly frightening because the first 6 weeks of the semester can be really hectic. Midterms are starting, you’re trying to get involved or back involved on campus, possibly finding a on-campus job, etc. There is so much to do that sometimes your health (and the cleanliness of your room) might fall apart. SO here are some tips you can take within the next week to trick your parents into thinking you have your life together when they come to USC next weekend. 

You’re welcome in advance. (Side note: all of these tips should be taken with a grain of sarcasm.)

TIP #1: Wear your running shoes and workout clothes to class next week!

This way, your parents will see slightly worn-in running shoes and workout clothes in your hamper and they’ll think you’re actually working out! Talk about how you were talking to your roommate after your run (a good run to say is just around the exterior of campus. It’s about 2.5 miles) and that will completely the ruse! You also could just workout or go for a run but that’s a lot of effort just to impress your parents. Keep those for potential significant others (It happened to me freshman year. That’s not important.)

TIP #2: Open those new textbooks your parents paid hundred of dollars for and make it look like you actually read them!

Eat some potato chips and before your wipe your hands on your pants, wipe them on your textbook page. This make it more believable when you leave this textbook open on your desk that you actually were reading it when you were supposed to. I mean you could actually do your readings throughout the semester and participate in class because of that but who cares. It’s not like that’s what you came to college for, to learn. LOL

TIP #3: Make it look like you have friends by planning a “happenstance” running into your friend from class at the campus center.

It’ll be easy to convince your “friend” in class to do this because they’ll want to convince their parents too. Pick a time on Friday to “casually bump into each other” and talk about the class you have together. It’ll be great! This will give you a great segway into the story the two of you agreed upon telling both pairs of parents. That night was an appropriate amount of crazy, right?? I mean I guess you could actually talk to your friends and set up a time, maybe tailgating, for all of your friends’ parents to meet you and vice versa but ugh. That like has to be semi-planned. This is much easier and much more deceptive. 

TIP #4: Clean your room but don’t make it too clean

I mean, leave a little bit of a mess because you don’t want to make it too obvious that you cleaned for them. Keep some half empty water bottles around, that textbook we talked about earlier, and maybe an open book to make you look like you’re being intellectual in college. Technically, you should be cleaning you room every week so you can actually see your floor every once and a while but who has time for that? It doesn’t smell as bad since you febreeze-d it so just clean it enough so it doesn’t worry your parents and then move on.

Tip #5: Look on Blackboard to find out your professors’ names

Look at what days you’re supposed to be going to class and what subject they teach. If you really want to fool your parents into believing you go to class, maybe even go on rate my professor and get some tips on how they teach so you can repeat it word-for-word to your parents. Well, I mean you could actually go to class and build relationships with your professors because they obviously know a lot and can be mentors for you in the future. It’s kinda like professors know a lot about the subjects they teach about and can introduce you to people in the industry they teach on if they know who you are and everything. LOL that’s probably a lie.

Tip #6: Yell FIGHT ON EVERYWHERE

LITERALLY BECAUSE YOU CAN AND IT’S USC. Wear the colors with pride! 

Fight on!

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