It finally happened.Today was the inevitable day that I arrived at some sort of epiphany – an apocalyptic brain-fart of self-realization, if you will. Today college, for me at least, became exactly what everyone said it would when I was a young and chipper freshman.
New Jersey.
(You can call it “hell” if you’d like, though)
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve taken my collegiate career very seriously these last few years. I don’t like missing classes, I hate turning in assignments late, and I think Professor Thomas is a saint for busting my balls so thoroughly in English class for the last eight semesters. College has been challenging, it has never been Pop-Tart easy; but it had never become a burden until recently.
Lately it seems as if Keith Richards somehow managed to snort up all of the world’s free time (he is going to live forever, you know). Any free time I have, and between work and school there isn’t much, is spent wishing I had more if it. Free time has become to me what Madonna’s nude scenes have become to films – rare and entirely unexciting.
Is there one quick fix for this growing trend of over-worked and under-paid college students? How can we be expected to do well academically when we’re also expected to spend the vast majority of our week working in the rat race? It’s a stressful thought, to say the least. Perhaps the only alternative is to be fortunate enough to be born with a silver spoon in one hand and daddy’s wallet in the other. But to quote Creedence, “I’m no fortunate son.”
I suppose it’s just the price we have to pay these days. I don’t really want to go through the college experience having avoided all the actual realities of the world we live in. You learn more dancing in fire than you do sleeping with supermodels (so I heard, anyway). Despite how bad everything might seem in terms of stress, it could be much worse – we could be Vanilla Ice.
But we’re not. We’re the new breed of collegiate scholars. Sure, our GPA’s might be a little lower than some, but we’re also gaining valuable life experience. We’re already leaps and bounds ahead of our spoon-fed peers and their pimped-out Civics. We’re ready for a life of paying for electricity, financing cars, and hunting for the one can of unspoiled Chef Boyardee at the local discount food store.
We just gotta keep on keepin’ on, and cling to the possibility that one day – one day- our college degree will bag us a career we might actually enjoy.
Christ, I sure hope it does.