Pirjo loses her goddamn mind

Pirjo’s chosen topic is ‘Manifestations of adolescent behavioural models in four o’clock traffic’.

Pirjo uses her preparation time to prepare props, rather than write notes on the acetate sheets for the overhead projector. She goes to the kitchen and fills a glass bottle with water, muttering as she does so that when kids reach adolescence, they tend to experiment with drinking whatever they can get their hands on as much as possible, “especially when pre-gaming at four o’clock”.

Pirjo’s presentation can largely be summed up by the phrase ‘stream of consciousness’, with some examples that seem incredibly specific enough to be personal gripes.

She begins her presentation by talking about the loud “young people music” that adolescents play on their headphones, and loosely correlates it with being particularly loud during the four o’clock rush hour. As she speaks, generic metal music is played over the footage, purposefully drowning out her voice, as an example of her complaint.

The adolescents, Pirjo explains, also stuff their mouths with chewing tobacco, but they’re unable to taste or feel it, because they’ve already started their “boozing” by four o’clock, which keeps them acting like stereotypical adolescents, unable to be any other way.

Pirjo takes a drink from her bottle of water at what is presumably the conclusion of her frantic presentation, at which point Kaarina asks Pirjo to summarise what her presentation was about.

Pirjo panics, and shows Kaarina her sole overhead projector sheet – onto which she has simply drawn several overlapping circles – while insisting that everything is “so clear”, that the four o’clock rush hour traffic causes the behavioural changes in adolescents that she had previously discussed, and which also cause physical changes that coincidentally look exactly like her drawing: “squint-eyed, and their heads all topsy-turvy”.

Pirjo finally closes out her presentation by saying that there is always the opportunity to apply for more grants to further the research.

In the studio, Pirjo admits that she had panicked, becoming “completely absorbed” by the topic and that, in retrospect, she should have taken a more scientific approach to her presentation.

Jaakko awards Pirjo joint third place.

(Written by Jenny R and proofread by Karl Craven)

(Illustrations collected by Jenny R and adjusted by Karl Craven)