When I was younger, I liked to hang my degrees up in my office. I suppose that until I had a well established sense of identity and self worth, those framed bit of paper helped me feel like I belonged in the world of professionals.
While they still have some importance to me—primarily as legal documents that I can produce to substantiate my credentials, should I ever be asked to—for the most part these days they’re household artwork. So what to hang at work?
I suppose I could have bought some motivational poster with a striking photograph and an inspirational caption, but… nah. Why not create some amusing fake degrees? After all, I have valuable skills and life experience which I can use to obtain a degree without studying—at least that’s what those stupid spam e-mails are always telling me. But then I tell myself, why should I mail you a check to0 send me something impressive looking but worthless, when I can create something just as impressively worthless at home for free?
So I made a bunch of fake degrees and hung them around my office. Here’s one: isn’t she a beauty? And I have others:
- A Master of Locksmithing from Yale University
- A Bachelor of Science in Physics of Beer Pong from Harverd University (yes, Harverd)
- A Bachelor of Arts in Counterfeiting from Leland Standford Junior University.
I’d have misspelled Yale, but it was too critical to the joke.
My co-workers love them too. I’ve made many more that matched the personality quirks of the recipient. My personal favourite, a Master in Bathroom Renovation from Bath Spa University. I couldn’t believe it was a real institution, and again, I couldn’t misspell it. Honestly, I doubt either University will come knocking with cease and desist orders.
All you need is a word processor, some borrowed graphics from legitimate institutions, and some fancy fonts from a site like this. I strongly recommend collecting a variety of Old English fonts, in addition to as many handwriting script fonts as you can find.
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