Why do they say, "Give it the old college try?" Based on our experience, "the old college try" would consist of sleeping in for four years and not giving a damn.

The quip plays on the idiom “give it the old college try,” which conventionally praises earnest effort, by contrasting it with a cynical, lived (or stereotyped) picture of college as a period of procrastination, indifference, and minimal responsibility. The humor comes from deflating a motivational cliché: instead of invoking collegiate grit, the speaker reframes “college” as a training ground for sleeping late and disengagement. Implicitly, the line critiques how slogans can become detached from reality and how nostalgia can sanitize experiences that were, for many, messy or unserious. It also functions as generational satire, poking at both student culture and the adult tendency to romanticize it.