With the end of the semester approaching, I have been swamped with enough papers and projects to choke a hippo. This is probably why I spent three hours watching NASCAR racing on Sunday.

It’s not that I’m an auto racing fan. I’m just a procrastinator. My basic philosophy is if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing five minutes before the deadline. Watching NASCAR was just a way to kill time.

But I must admit, there is something intriguing about watching a bunch of cars disguised as boxes of Tide and Corn Flakes smash into each other at 200 mph.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen nearly often enough. Most of the race, they just follow each other politely around a big oval.

This can bore almost anyone to the point of tears. So to spice things up, they spend this time having experts show off the high tech parts of the cars. For some guys this is the most fascinating thing in the world.

These are the same guys who can take apart an engine and put it back together without having 47 pieces left over. The same guys who could drive a stick-shift (or “clutch” as they like to say in their fancy-shmancy car guy talk) right out of the womb. The same guys who know what the heck a carburetor is.

This is all a product of genetics. About half of us come from a weaker gene pool and have no knowledge of what makes a car run.

We assume it’s some combination of gasoline and magic.

Because I am one of these guys, watching the experts during the NASCAR race left me completely befuddled.

For example, Sunday’s major topic was the use of “restrictor plates” in the cars’ engines. With restrictor plates, the engine does not get as much of the oxygen it needs to run, causing the car to slow down. Apparently gasoline and magic have nothing to do with it.

But that’s good to know, especially if you own a car. Knowing something, anything, about cars can save you millions of dollars over the course of your lifetime.

I bought a car about two years ago — a baby blue 1987 Mercury Sable station wagon. While it is nice to have transportation, it requires constant maintenance.

But unless you are one of those gifted car guys, you won’t be able to do this yourself. You’ll have to pay one of them to do it for you.

As you probably know, mechanics are not necessarily an honest bunch either. Like bees, they can sense fear in their prey. So when you go to an auto mechanic, you need to act like you know what you’re doing — or carry bug spray.

One of the first things a mechanic will ask you is what you think is wrong with your car. It is important that you respond with something specific and intelligent such as “my restrictor plate is chafed.” This way he’ll know you’re not the kind of guy he can push around.

Never describe the car’s problem in terms of sound. If you tell the mechanic “it keeps going WHIR WHIR WHIR Ka Ka Ka Ka BONK,” it’s a dead giveaway to your ignorance, as is “it’s making the same sound the cat made when it ran under the weed-wacker.”

No matter what the cause of this problem, the mechanic will easily spot your stupidity and charge you two months’ salary to fix it.

You’ll also want to learn how to change your car’s oil. All car guys know how to change their own oil. They probably even know what it’s for. This is why they know that anyone who shows up for a lube job is a sucker.

I tried to change my own oil once, but I found it impossible to fit the can under my hood. For some reason, my car was poorly designed, and the hood only opens three inches at the front.

So I have one of the quick-change oil places change it for me. They always advertise their reasonable prices, but by the time those guys are through with my car, I usually owe them well over $200.

While they change your oil, they provide an added bonus by giving your car a 14-point (or 21, or some other multiple of 7) inspection. During this inspection, they always find something “wrong” and coincidentally expensive to fix.

Your car may, in fact, be perfectly healthy, but how are you, being the car schmuck you are, to know the difference?

Sure, some things are obvious frauds. For example, they always tell me my tires need rotating. If my tires weren’t rotating properly, then how did I make it 10,000 miles between oil changes?

They usually want to align my wheels, too. I just tell them that if I wanted my tires in a line I would have bought a motorcycle.

But if they tell me my gullible valve needs replacing or that my I’m-a-dumbass belt has worn out, I have no choice but to trust them. “I legally can’t let you drive out of here without fixing that,” they’ll tell me.

Whatever you say, master. I don’t even try to pretend like I know what they’re talking about anymore. Before I even go to get my car worked on, I take a black magic marker and write “SUCKER” on my forehead.

Then I march right into the mechanic’s, hand him a $500 bill and tell him “fix everything, fix nothing, I can’t tell the difference either way. Just don’t screw with the radio stations and try to resist inviting all your buddies over for a big smoke-fest in my car. I’ll be at home watching the Corn Flakes car smash into walls.”

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Peter Borchers is a senior in advertising from Bloomington, Minn.