Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Why I Don't Like School

So, there is a very long list of things I don't like about school. I'm pretty sure that this is the same sort of thing that everyone hates about school, but I can be unoriginal if I want to.

1)It never freaking stops.

There is no point at which you can say, "Oh look, I'm done. Fantabulous." You will always have chapters to read, notes to make, assignments to research, background info and philosophy to study. Asses to kiss, and so on and so forth.

The worst I think is the background in philosophy that I don't have. If you are taking an arts degree, TAKE PHILOSOPHY 101!!!! It is the one course that I actually wish I had taken, not because I care, but because it would have been effing useful. It is the beginning of every class. It comes up after the discussion of Freud and his ideas, and how they apply to whatever class you were sucker enough to take. If you did take that class, you could probably safely skip the first two or three classes. Especially in any 200 level course.

2) First years.

You can smell it on them. That glorious freedom, the first time away from dreaded Mom and Dad, and their totally downer rules. It ranges from the scent of impending alcoholism, to the totally unsurprising realisation that... "I think I might be bi." I understand, this is new, msn tells us so. But really. Think about this. First you have a liberal environment (most universities.) Then you add increasingly relaxed sexual mores (definitely for the girls.) Add a legal drinking age of 18 and you get bicuriosity. Plus the little freaks never study.

3)Annoying pre-grad school bitches.

This may be limited to the Psych department, but its mostly because it is ingrained into you that to make your degree useful, you have to go to grad school, whether you are into research or actually talking to people (just joking, I know that the researchers have to talk to people too sometimes, but you know what I mean.) It doesn't help that everywhere you go, you have classrooms of 200+ students for most of your classes. Meaning? There will be craploads of competition for any job you might be even remotely qualified for.

This environment leads to the assholes and bitches that you hate, you hate them for their wonderful GPA's, their extensive volunteering history, their research assistance history (and resulting excellent relationships with faculty and staff,) their personal history with whatever disorder/disabilities/environments and the glowing reference letters that you know that they are going to get.

The kicker is that there is such an obvious hierarchy, so if you don't have some sort of grad school plans, you are obviously deficient in some way. Because, come on, why else would you get a psych degree? Some are assholes about this, and some are surprisingly nice. I think that you going to understand how the split is divided.

4)How expensive everything is.

The cheapest coffee is about $1.70. This is not for anything fancy or super large. It is a smallish cup of regular blend coffee. I think i found $1.50 once, but it was a small cup, and the place only had one kind of coffee (versus the usual minimum of dark, medium, flavoured, decaf assortment.) I'm not actually a coffee snob, (well, I don't think) but I did once work in a coffee shop, and it does make you notice stuff like that.

If God is smiling at me when I need to buy textbooks, I may end up with spending $30-75 dollars per class. Unfortunately, this is not usually the case. This semester I spent about $500 dollars (I am in THREE classes this term!) It is so painful to spend that kind of money. Especially since resale is a chancy business.

You will notice I leave out tuition. Yes, we all wish we lived in France where in your french 101-102 class they taught you that the government pays for university like high school got paid for. However, I have resigned to the current government's irrational postsecondary policies (more non-self sustaining scholarships? why? is there nothing better you could have done? Just like fashion, you dont spend all your money on the flashy items, you buy them cheap at discount. Spend the money on basic staples of your wardrobe that will last for years.) I also understand according to the extremely basic economics that I understand, I value this thing I pay for enough to only gag at the pricetag, and not bring up my cookies all over the table in rejection. Plus I would feel kinda hypocritical, seeing as how I get so much support.

Although, I also understand that undergrad tuition also pays for you know, the important students. The graduate ones. The ones that might actually publish something, compared to the definitley statistically insignificant undergrad that might make the paper for some freakish reason.


5) Due to both of our programs, Prince Charming is two timezones away from me. We are not together because of school.

I understand that in 8 months we will be married and shackled together forever, but it is still not balm to my psyche.

So, there you are reasons why I don't like school.

Five months until I graduate. Yes, I am counting. And I understand how bitter and bitchy this post will make me sound. I wont even bother telling the world that I'm actually a nice person, who totally doesn't kick puppies.

No comments: