Congratulations, Terps! Here’s a major accomplishment the general student body has directly contributed to: Our university has been consistently named in the top 25 schools on Sporcle.com — usually in first or second place — earning more than 69,000 points per week.

It seems our claim to fame as a research-based institution has led us to success on the popular quiz website. Our knowledge of random trivia exceeds that of students at competing universities, including the University of Pittsburgh, Rutgers University and Pennsylvania State University.

Sporcle is like a drug. I remember sitting in bed freshman year, avoiding my homework, trying to beat the clock in naming the 64 teams in the 2010 NCAA Tournament. Somehow, I always remembered 13 seed Wofford College, but never remembered Wake Forest had the nine seed that year. Pretty life-changing, I know, but at the time, it was my life.

Once I could finally recite the 64 teams without forgetting one, I moved on to the next level of competence and raced the timer, trying to achieve a personal record in how fast I could type the names. If I hesitated for just a second too long in my frantic frenzy of memory jogging, I would start over again immediately. It was not worth playing if I knew I wouldn’t be the best.

“I can name all the teams from this year’s March Madness,” I boasted to my basketball-crazed family when I went home one weekend.

“Oh, so that’s what your tuition money is going toward?” my dad joked.

“No one cares. Your team didn’t win,” my brother added, throwing salt into my raw wounds from the Terps’ heartbreaking loss to Michigan State.

But I carried on, despite their belittling of my new favorite hobby. Sporcle is addicting, and during my period of heavy use, it was hard to quit. I found quizzes on Disney movie characters, Harry Potter trivia galore, U.S. presidents, state capitals — you name it, and Sporcle has a quiz for it. There’s one for U.S. phone area codes. I imagine that quiz was more difficult before Texts From Last Night became popular.

While some Sporcle quizzes are, well, pointless (like my NCAA Tournament quiz, which is quite irrelevant now), others really do expand our knowledge about the world around us. It’s surprising to view the statistics about which U.S. presidents were “Most Missed,” and learn that of more than 3,810,000 quizzes taken, almost 5 percent of respondents forgot our current president. I understand missing Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester A. Arthur or another, even more obscure former leader (especially if your elementary school wasn’t named after one), but we should all be able to correctly name President Barack Obama.

As students, we are always going to find ways to avoid doing our work or fill our time when we aren’t working toward that perfect GPA. And in today’s sedentary world, we’re more likely to channel our boredom or procrastination into websites, social media, television and video games. So at least Sporcle gives us a way to exercise our minds and memories — rather than our Facebook-stalking skills — while we put off reading our books or writing papers about presidential policies or historical moments that occurred during their presidencies. Doesn’t a Sporcle quiz technically count as studying if you previously couldn’t even name the presidents you were learning about?

Keep up the good work, Terps. Let’s show the world our talents and keep ourselves in the top-25 rankings. Sporcle on!

Emily Kleiman is a junior communication major. She can be reached at kleiman@umdbk.com.