“They say you shouldn’t dream of schoolwork, now I don’t live it either,” said Scott.
Photo by Dylan Schmidt
In light of current events, UC San Diego has mandated that all students receive the Severance Procedure after a spike in reported mental health struggles. The procedure, loosely based off of the one depicted in popular Apple TV+ show Severance, involves inserting a microchipinto the brains of students which, when turned on, effectively splits the students’ personalities and memories into “school mode” and “home mode”, known as “innies” and “outies” respectively. The technique was developed by the bioengineering department’s Lemon research lab headed by Dr. Kiera Lemon, who was inspired by the television show.
As of this quarter, only 15 students in the research study have been severed, but many more have expressed interest. Third-year Aerospace Engineering major and Severance hopeful Bella Harmony said, “I have been having the worst year ever: my cat just died, I’m fighting with my parents, my mental health is at an all-time low, and it’s all been making it really hard to do well in my classes. When I get to my fluids lecture, all I can think about are my deeply unimportant personal problems. My grades have been suffering, so I’m hoping getting severed will help me forget about some of that stuff and bring back those sexy, sexy A’s.”
Statistics published by Lemon’s lab found that 13.8 of the students involved in the study were “happier, healthier, and overall less likely to sue the school over their various frequent failures,” although the study did not specify the ratio of outies to innies. UCSD and the Lemon lab have also refused to let the innies be interviewed, claiming, “Innies are here to learn. Doing anything else is simply not in their nature, so please stop asking about it.”
Many outies have only expressed gratitude over the procedure, such as second-year macro data refinement major Marcus Scott’s outie, who claims the Severance Procedure is the only reason
they get up in the morning. “It has changed my life! I don’t have to think about school at all when I’m not in class or Geisel or wherever I am when the chip is activated,” Scott’s
outie said. “My grades have been better than ever, even though I’m still dealing with hell on earth in my personal life! It fills me with a sense of lofty superiority, which is almost like getting therapy!”
Undeclared first-year Hannah Reagan’s outie expressed a similarly positive sentiment: “I love not hav-
ing to actually remember class! I was so stressed all the time balancing my school and personal lives, but now all I have to worry about is the active flooding in my res hall that HDH claims will be fixed ‘within three business quarters’!”
Professors and other UCSD staff members have expressed discomfort with the procedure, with one professor who wished to remain anonymous stating,“It makes me uncomfortable that my students don’t remember me outside of class. How else is word of my deeply relevant and entertaining anecdotes going to get around?” Another anonymous professor said, “It’s not fair that we have to teach a bunch of severed students when we can’t be severed ourselves! I have to suffer through the job I get paid in the low 600ks for and they get to just forget it all!”
When asked to comment, Severance creator Dan Erickson expressed confusion, questioning, “The show is literally about why this is a bad idea! Why in the world would someone actually try to make it a reality?! And at a college campus no less.” UCSD released a press statement in response: “Sounds like someone’s jealous.”
