Not that that’s a bad thing or anything, I just happen to
take pride in knowing that I can always find a fault in pretty much anything,
which I’m sure is always a plus.
On a side note, it turns out pessimists apparently live an
average of 12 years shorter than optimists.
Brings a whole new meaning to that “I don’t want to live on this planet
anymore” meme, huh?
Lookit me, learning my college stuff like a good little boy.
Of course, none of this explains crotchety old people. Maybe their happiness leaves them, just like
their youthfulness and ability to drive cars at the speed limit.
I’ll have to look into that.
Anyway, as I’ve been up here in Collegeville for a good month and a half
now, I think that gives me the qualifications of a true social expert, more or
less due to me getting a 93 on a college exam in interpersonal communications
that everyone else got maybe a 78 on.
Granted, what I’ve got to talk about has nothing to do with
this accomplishment, but as it is election season, you all should be used to
people who say irrelevant things in the hopes of making themselves seem like
relevant and awesome people.
I’m talking to you, Romney.
And you, Obama.
But that’s another rant that I frankly have no time or attention
span for. Unlike most politicians these
days, I choose to avoid going into a field I know next to nothing about.
On a side-note, I publicly endorse my father as candidate
for president. He’s a dentist, so his
mouth is much cleaner than most politicians.
Okay, I promise that’s the last political joke I’ll
make. I am a proud American(!) and gosh
darn it, I will be proud to be an American(!) until I die.
America(!).
Mini-political rant aside, I have recently found a few
things about college that I’ve learned are mere myths. And as I am a smart college student now, I’ve
decided to personally debunk them.
Think of all the help this will do you!
OKAY HERE WE GO.
The classes are so
much harder than they were in high school.
HA. If you don’t
mind, I think I’ll prove you wrong here.
Every class I’ve taken so far is a class I would have taken in high
school and passed without problem, even with my beautiful knack for
procrastination. That might be because
I’m an arts major, or because I took super-advanced courses in high school, but
either way, I haven’t had an English class this easy since freshman year.
On a side note, I read A
Tale of Two Cities in ninth grade, so I might be a wee bit jaded in what
counts as a hard English class.
And on the terms of being an arts major, I am well aware
that there are science classes that are scary hard, but to that, I simply say
one of my two college catchphrases:
That sounds like a personal problem.
And let’s be honest, it really is. You knew for a fact that you’d be taking
classes that would force you to think outside of the box, yet you chose them
anyway. You really should have known
what you were getting into. No pity. And that brings me to my second college
catchphrase:
Sucks to suck.
You’ll become so busy,
you’ll go insane.
Oh come now, I just stopped laughing from the first myth.
Just kidding, I’m in a hallway waiting for class to start,
and I don’t want to look like a freak laughing at my computer like that kid
next to me.
That’s a mirror…shit.
But aside from that, why am I sitting outside and waiting
for class to start? Because I simply
have so much free time, I really don’t know what to do with myself. I’m taking 18 credits my first semester, and
I still have a three-day weekend and am busy on the rest of the days from only
9:30 to 4:30 at the very latest.
You could say that I need to get out and do more, but guess
what? I’m in the AIGA, which is this
big-ish, important-ish, and wonderful-ish graphic design association-ish thing. I’m also a news anchor/weatherman on live
television. I’m social and get out of my
dorm.
Oh, and I’m in tech week of 1776. That’s right, I AM FINDING TIME TO UPDATE MY
BLOG DURING THE TECH WEEK OF A MUSICAL.
If that doesn’t say “free time,” I’d sure like to know what
does.
It’s so hard to avoid
drinking or smoking on campus if it’s not a dry-campus.
Half of the people I’ve met here liberally avoid the
stuff. Stop making excuses to party and
just learn to hang out with people who don’t do that kind of stuff if you don’t
like it. I can guarantee you there’s
someone who doesn’t drink, smoke, snort, inject, ingest, or insert anally (ew)
any illegal substance in each floor of each dorm.
And if not, you’ll be pleased to know that almost every dorm
is right next to each other.
All you want to do is
sleep.
I had the idea to write this post at 3:30 AM. I think that covers it pretty well.
Your professors don’t
care about your success.
More accurately, you don’t make the effort of giving them
the reason to care about you. College
professors are a lot like the teachers you had in high school. They are paid to help you out and let you
succeed, if you ask them. They give you
their office hours for a reason. I
swear, if I hear another kid complain about how apathetic their teacher is
towards their grade, I’m probably going to have to work on finding a way to
calm myself down.
In other words, I’m going to hit them in the face.
Hard.
Because I’m classy.
There are/is much
fewer idiots/much less drama in college than there are/is in high school.
This one, unfortunately, is also a complete myth. Turns out, you don’t magically learn how to
deal with your shit when you walk up and grab that high school diploma. While it is true that some people manage to
do it, they’re a relatively small amount.
You don’t learn how to deal with problems by turning eighteen, you learn
to deal with them by dealing with them or learning the miracle of selective
apathy.
And even then, it’s still not going to go, so don’t expect
it to. You will go through drama in
every place you go. You will gain and
lose friends whether you want to or not.
You will inadvertently piss a lot of people off by posting angry blog
posts/Facebook statuses/Tweets.
Okay, that last one may only apply to me, but you get the
point. The biggest problem with this
myth is that people, really smart people too, are under the impression that
college is the start of a beautiful life where everything is wonderful and
everyone is just sprinkles and sunshine.
They believe that the minute they step foot on campus, suddenly
everything is right with the world and they have life firmly gripped by the
balls (again, ew). But it really turns
out that college isn’t about proving how awesome you are. The people who are doing awesomely in college
are the people who have worked their asses off to get the respect and attention
they deserve. They didn’t stop having
the drama, they stopped dealing with it the wrong way. And it took them a long time, for some
months, for some years, to figure it
out themselves. I consider myself lucky
to have found this out after a month so I can spend these next few years
finding a way to fix my drama effectively.
College is the greatest
experience of your life.
This one, in itself, is not a myth. The real myth about this how we interpret
it. College isn’t about the
parties. It’s not about the perfect
situations where everything works out for everyone. It’s not even about that cute girl in my comp
class that I’m too much of a wuss to talk to.
College is about finding who you are and finding out what you stand
for. But not in the fun “Bill Nye
Science Rules Everything is Fun and Okay” way everyone seems to think it is or
should be. The truth is, it’s not
pretty. It’s not even fun at times. But I’ve got four years of this to figure it
all out, and I know for a fact that there are going to be experiences I’ll
never forget, experiences that will make me a different, maybe even better
person.
And quite frankly, I’m really excited for it.
I dig this.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it has become ridiculously difficult to prove that I'm not a robot and post a comment on here.