For Dennis Bruce, the college class load represents only a small part of the true college experience. The social interaction (the parties), the intellectual exercises (creative bartending), the interpersonal relationships (hitting on your roommate's girlfriend) and the experiments in endurance (sleeping through class) are all just as important as studying.

The trick is remembering most of it.

Dennis Bruce's book Party Thru College, Venture House Press (www.partythrucollege.com), is a humorous parody of college life. Anyone who attended, wants to attend or wishes they had attended college will find this book wildly entertaining.

Bruce's tongue-in-cheek guide to college life begins with an explanation of the "art" of screwing up.

"At first glance, the act of screwing up might seem ridiculously simple. Something any half-witted person could do," said Bruce. "However, in actuality, screwing up is a most difficult craft, one that requires years of meticulous study and strict discipline to master."

The first step, according to Bruce, is deciding if you want to be a screw-up. There is a difference between screwing up and flunking out.

"Flunking out is a short-lived phenomenon, whereas the screw-up must time-release his incompetence over the course of four or more years," said Bruce.

The idea is to stay in college as long as you can, even stretching it past the usual 4 years if you can.

The next step after choosing your school is choosing your major. Bruce provides a list of choice careers for the college screw-up.

If you screw up in:

• Food science: you can flip burgers
• Marketing: you can work at the supermarket
• Botany: you can deliver flowers
• Wildlife Management: you can be a bouncer in a college bar

Another important consideration is your curriculum. A science major affords many advantages, including the ability to screw up accidentally because of the natural difficulty of the subject matter. A non-science curriculum affords the luxury of many "mindless" classes to choose from, but also has the danger of unintentionally doing well due to the natural intelligence of the student.

There are two main philosophies to screwing up:

• Maintaining minimum passing grades
• Doing the least amount of work possible

"Screw-ups must do well enough to stay in school," said Bruce. "College should mean living a life of leisure on government-approved student loans."

Bruce gives satirical advice on such subjects as dealing with professors and how to schedule your day for maximum goofing off.

He divides faculty into several stereotypical categories:

• The ex-hippie teacher
• The foreign teaching assistant
• The ROTC recruiter
• The foreign faculty adviser
• The tenured professor

The important things to remember when choosing your schedule:

• Schedule morning classes that you can "accidentally" sleep through
• Make sure attendance is not mandatory
• Use the distance between classes as an excuse to be late or not show up at all
• Make sure the instructor grades on a curve, chances are you will come out with a passing grade no matter what

A college graduate himself, Bruce recommends several strategies for screwing up in classes such as English, Philosophy and Physical Education. These must be carefully planned out and executed.

Another important component of screwing up is lack of motivation. It is very difficult, according to Bruce, to resist the temptation to study when surrounded with the trappings of academic life.

"Inside every human being there exists enough willpower to resist the temptation to study," said Bruce. "Sometimes we all go astray. We're seized by the urge to hit the books, a temptation to browse in the library, or even a lust to go for free instructional help."

Bruce provides a list of excuses not to study, advice on what to do if you are flunking and what to do if you accidentally get a good grade. Also included is a guide to finding the "right" roommate, joining a fraternity, dressing the part, picking up college girls and even the art of vomiting.