Students on break turn sloth into an art

By Christine Rook
Lansing (Mich.) State Journal

There is an art to mooching and getting away with it, to showing up at home the day after college finals, flopping on the couch and remaining there every afternoon in a cryogenic state until someone yells, "Dinner!"

College students have come home for winter break. They pack their laundry, old textbooks and unwanted posters and drag it home to Mom and Dad's house, where it usually sits for a day or two or seven on the kitchen floor until the wrong person trips over it.

That's when the challenge for parents begins: retaining control over the extra car, the TV remote and the couch for a few weeks without being forced to do a single, useful thing, like moving that pile of junk.

Sponging is an art. It requires the ability to create diversions and look either busy or utterly pathetic. It can be done, according to college students experienced at mooching off their parents. Of course, the good news for parents is that sloth is pretty easy to spot. Just follow the trail of potato chip crumbs.

Matthew Minock, a 23-year-old Michigan State University senior, is proud of his ability to appear like he's doing something important.

Minock, of Holly, Mich., advises setting up diversions. Tell parents you'll do something, such as moving the bench press, and then just sort of change the subject. Minock's mother likes to play chess, he said, so he'll suggest they play a game and that he wants to spend time with her, hoping that the bench press will be forgotten.

Does it work?

"Oh, every time," he says.

Laziness is somewhat underappreciated in American culture, although there are several Web sites devoted to the art of doing little.

Matt Oronowitz, for example, makes his living off of other people's loafing. He's vice president of business development for Lazystudents.com, an online company devoted to gathering research for college students who are, well, too lazy to do it themselves.

Asked what he thought lazy college students should do during their winter break, he suggested they house-sit for their parents.

That might work.

While Mom and Dad are at the office, the lazy but entrepreneurial college student could scan the pantry for suspect snacks or periodically watch the television to make sure the cable is working.

Oronowitz went one better, though. "You don't even house-sit," he says. "You can go away."

After all, the house behaved just fine for the three months while no one watched it, and because Mom and Dad are at work, would they know if the house-sitting actually took place?

Many parents, though, aren't likely to fall for that.

Take Rick Angevine, 45, of DeWitt, Mich. He's finding his two college-age kids jobs.

"So they can make money and help me out," he says. "I'm not going to let them sit around and do nothing."

That's pretty much the advice of experts such as Gary Stollak, professor of psychology at Michigan State University.

"There's not a 6-year-old in America who can't do laundry," Stollak says.

He advises an agreement, even a written contract, whereby parents and adult children agree what the rules will be before kids show up with their laundry and appetites.

Will they have car privileges? Will there be a curfew? It's OK to compromise. In fact, it is best to compromise, experts say. Just don't completely cave in and become what Stollak calls surrendered parents.

The point? Don't let college-age children run the house.

Of course, if you're a college student, a parental hard line may mean you're in for a fight.