When you roll out of bed Monday morning and get ready for a day working so you can pay for your house / kids / car / affectation, consider the story of Johnny Lechner, twelfth year senior at the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater, and perhaps feel some envy.

Yes, twelfth … year … senior. He’s 29. He started his freshman year in 1994.

Why is he still in college? According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “His adviser recently asked him why he doesn’t just graduate. Why he would want to is the more difficult question for him to answer. His earliest class is 12:30 p.m. He goes to bed when he wants (about 4 a.m.), wakes up when he wants (about 10 a.m.), hangs out with his friends, dates women who are much younger. He hasn’t dated a woman his own age in years.”

This all began as a search for self, he told the New York Times (copy here). Consider Lechner’s self to be found:

“I wanted to go to a school where I knew no one. I wanted to discover who I was.” Turns out he’s someone who likes to sleep in, play basketball, write songs and party two or three nights a week.

Some of the time flew by. He told the NYT that he hardly noticed his fifth, sixth, and seventh years because he was in his “comfort zone.” And he’s quoted on his website saying “The college years go by so fast…The next thing you know, it’s a new decade.”

Lechner’s heroes? Bluto: “Seven years of college down the drain.”

He’s ransacked most of the UWW course catalog — at least, those courses that meet his criteria: “I basically open the timetable of classes and try to find a few that I haven’t taken yet. hopefully none of them are before noon.” This doesn’t always work, he told the Times of London (copy here): “More than once, Lechner says, he has been sitting in class with a creeping feeling of déjà vu only to realise that he has taken the course before.”

Among the benefits are the fans. Female fans. Dare we say groupies? His current girlfriend, who was in the fourth grade when he started college, told the NYT: “Some girls say it’s weird that he’s still here, but the bottom line is they all want him … Everyone knows him and there’s a certain excitability about being friends with and dating Johnny Lechner.”

Is he just a slacker? After all, he told the MJS, he dumped a girlfriend who dared to give him a watch, his blog has only seven entries since July 5, and when the National Lampoon offered him a job, he replied “If I wanted a job, I would have graduated.”

But he also works at Olive Garden and sings to pay his way, despite the State of Wisconsin passing a law aimed at him that doubled his tuition. He seems to have a 2.9 GPA. He carries $30k in loans — but doesn’t have to start repaying them until he graduates.

However, it may be coming to an end. He’s penciled in graduating next May — with three majors and three minors. Over his career, those have included education, communications, theater, women’s studies, and health; he’s accumulated 243 credits, over 100 more than needed to graduate.

He did finally do a deal with National Lampoon, because his story ties in with their movie Van Wilder, and he’s represented by William Morris.

But he certainly doesn’t sound like he’s reached the “it’s time to move on” stage. And after graduation, who is he? What’s there for his agent to pitch? The former twelfth year senior? No, If we were him — and maybe we wish we were — we’d wonder, “what’s the rush?”

And as for the future — how many years can you stay in law school anyway?

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 18th, 2005 at 12:16 am by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under Funny ... to us. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.