Things You'll Need:
- Aerobic/fitness Shoes
- Books On Communication Skills
- Joke Books
- High-energy Snacks
- Caffeine Pills
- Foot Powders
- Ibuprofen
- Acting Classes
- Health Club Memberships
- Megaphones
- Exercise Motivation Tapes
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Step 1
Laugh off an invitation to attend Stanford; enroll at Cal.
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Step 2
Check your height. You must be shorter than 5-foot-8 to fit in the costume. Slouching won't help.
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Step 3
Understand that the top-secret, Star Chamber-like Oski Committee chooses each year's Oski through an ancient, hallowed process which can best be summed up as, "Now there's a chipper young student endowed with many noble attributes - hmmm...."
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Step 4
Get noticed. Attend every athletic event from football games to the intramural foosball tournament, displaying enough Cal spirit to power all of Berkeley.
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Step 5
Adopt "Go Bears!" as a form of greeting and farewell. Oski is bursting with Cal pride.
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Step 6
Demonstrate foot speed. Run, don't walk, around campus. Know your time in the 40-yard-dash (you'll be asked). Oski has to be fast on his feet - wearing floppy shoes, no less.
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Step 7
Perform random acts of selfless generosity. Oski receives no money, no reward and no sports cars from athletic boosters for his efforts, and desires none.
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Step 8
Love little kids, because little kids love Oski.
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Step 9
Display trustworthiness to all you meet. Be the campus confidante. Oski must keep his identity a secret, even to his family. Even to his closest, bestest buddies. Even to his soul mate. Well, to just about everybody, anyway.
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Step 10
Find ways to show your high level of forbearance, your Job-like threshold for suffering. Oski spends long hours as a sweat-drenched, uncomfortable, itchy ursa major who still is as amiable as your favorite uncle after a couple of bourbons.
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Step 11
Think cuddly. "Oski is a big, friendly teddy bear, basically," notes our secret Oski Committee member. Except, of course, when the need arises to bring down a certain arboreal miscreant....
