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Tuesday, June 8th, 2010
Well, it’s all over. Congratulations on surviving your university years and coming away triumphant, with your degree. Unless of course you were too busy smoking weed and going to fancy dress parties to actually get your degree, in which case, congratulations on pissing away a whole heap of money. Good luck paying that back on your McDonald’s salary.
So here begins the fun folks. Life. The real world. What you’ve experienced over the last 3-4 years is actually just one long hallucinogenic trip where you drifted from party to party, squeezing in a class here and there where you could. If you’re honest with yourself, your first two years were a complete doss and you only actually started paying attention and doing something in your final year.
So now reality is gonna bitch slap you harder than Snoop Dogg’s pimp hand. First step, getting a job. So, what’s your degree in? English? Geography? History? If you were planning on doing anything other than teaching, you’re gonna be sorely disappointed. If you did something science or maths related – well done, you thought ahead. You have a shot at actually making some money in life.
Now, if you did something creative – you poor misguided bastard – be prepared for a lifetime of unmitigated BS. Oh you did a few work experience placements while at uni? Guess what? No one gives a shit. You better get used to the fact that you’ll be working for free or for your bus fare for at least a couple of years, most likely more. Be prepared for people wanting to leech of your talents and give you nothing but fake promises in return. You’ll hear the words ‘we have sponsorship lined up and as soon as we get some money from that, we’ll pay our writers,’ more than you thought was humanly possible. And you’ll believe them, because you’ll always think people will appreciate your worth as much as you do.
Meanwhile, you’ll be living in squalor. You’ll be semi-used to that from your student days anyway, when you lived with that chick who didn’t so much as wash a dish for three years. The best you can hope for at this point is getting yourself into a Sugar Momma/Daddy situation – hopefully you like the person enough for it to not look like a Pretty Woman scenario.If you can at least whore yourself out on the home front, you might not mind whoring yourself out on the work front, but trust me, if you’re creative, you will be whoring yourself on some level in your life.
And that’s just your 20s. You don’t even want to know what happens in your 30s (neither do I for that matter), but I hear it’s all mortgages, dirty nappies, dinners with boring married couples, an affair if you’re lucky. You better live it up this summer amigos. Life is about to bite you in the ass.
Congratulations!
Tags: graduation, killing dreams, students
Posted in life | 8 Comments »
Friday, October 16th, 2009
I live near a university and this time of year, you can’t move for the influx of new students in the area. Try going to the bank, there’s a line out the door of 18 year olds opening new accounts. Go to Boots, they’re all in there stocking up on condoms and forget trying to go for a quiet coffee or a quick drink in a bar. Students, students, students. There’s no escape.
I don’t know about you, but my student experience didn’t even remotely resemble what I see these fools getting up to. Every night, they’re roaming the streets dressed like smurfs, or 80s aerobics instructors, or ABBA lookalikes. Partying in your regular clothes is just out of bounds I guess. It always has to be over the top, excessive debauchery. And these are no half assed fancy dress costumes they’ve got on. It’s not like they’re tying garbage bags together with string. It’s all very professional. There’s a fancy dress shop in the area (which is sure to never go out of business the way these kids party) and the average costume is £30. Multiply that by the 50 fancy dress parties per term and that’s a sizable chunk of one’s student loan right there.
I was on the bus the other day and on the 20 minute bus ride, I spotted at least 4 students who will develop a serious drug habit and be kicked out of university by the end of this term. You know who they are. We all had them when we were at school too. That’s the one thing that doesn’t change about university life. That one kid who just takes shit too far. And out of those four who get kicked out, one of them won’t move home – he just stays in the university area because he’s scared to tell his parents. Yup, we’ve all seen it. When you listen in on university students conversations, they’ll talk about how stressful it is. Bitch please! You have 8 hours of classes a week!
Anyway, I say to these kids, live it up while you can amigos. Enjoy it right up to graduation day when your parents take you out for a celebratory dinner and inform you, in detail, of how you are well and truly fending for yourself now. They’ve got a detailed plan of how you’ll be taking care of them in old age and that plan starts the second you hit 23. That Smurf costume won’t help you then. Out here in the real world, we work 40 hour weeks, sometimes more and you’ll get punched in the throat for even mentioning the word ‘stress’. So yeah, live it up in those ABBA costumes bitches. Take it easy on the weed and we’ll be here to laugh at you when you crash back down to earth. You’re welcome.
Tags: random costume parties, students, university
Posted in life | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008
The other day, in the last ten minutes of my lunch break, I had to hit up the ATM before dashing back to work. I got there and there was a line, but I calculated that if all moved along swiftly, I’d have cash in my pocket and be back at work in time to shoot the shit around the water cooler.
There were two ATMs and one line. Five college girls, a few people ahead of me, congregated together to form one giant person in the line. Things seemed to be moving pretty quickly as rushed wage slaves punched their digits into the machine and swiped their cash. It was all going good till it got to the college chicks.
When they were at the front of the line, waiting for their turn, I saw each of them take about eight cheques out of their pockets. I could vaguely overhear them using words like ‘deposit’ and ‘envelope’ and ‘how do I?’ and I knew things were about to go sour.
When their turn came, the college chicks decided to divide and conquer; three at one ATM, two at another. And not one of them had a clue how to make a deposit.
Here’s where my beef comes in: isn’t it just common sense that if you don’t know how to use a function on an ATM, you don’t decide to test it out during one of the busiest hours of the day, in one of the busiest areas of Toronto? Apparently not.
And these were college students. I deduced this from the multiple cheques. No doubt they were for $12 each and they made them doing online surveys or some such nonsense.
So, as they fumbled and stuffed cheques into envelopes, while forgetting their pin numbers and desperately trying to figure out exactly how to deposit their newly acquired fortunes, I watched minute after painful minute tick by. Haven’t they ever heard of a frikkin’ teller?!
Why do that when most people, who actually work for a living and have other shit to do, are on their lunch hour? Surely, these students could have found some other point in their action packed day to figure out how to use an ATM. They probably have one half hour class a day and spend the other 23.5 hours playing Dance Dance Revolution or some shit.
Eventually, with less than a minute left to get back to work, I had to abandon the whole mission and make a mad dash back to the office. I hope those chicks do something good with the money once it clears.
But I sense they’ll just piss it all away on leggings in American Apparel.
Ugh. Students.
Tags: american apparel, leggings, money matters, rants, students
Posted in life | 5 Comments »
Friday, November 30th, 2007
Insomnia is a motherbitch.
Most of this year, I’ve been surviving on roughly two hours of sleep a night.
In July, my parents and brother arrived for a vacation. We were staying at my grandmother’s house. I already couldn’t sleep in the comfy queen size I’d been lounging in, but soon as the fam arrived, I got relegated to the shitty bed (a perk of being the baby of the family).
It was called a ‘fold away cot’ and I felt as soon as I sat on it that I might fold away in it. It was, hands down, the most uncomfortable thing to ever be passed off as a bed. It was also, approximately 12 inches wide. If I tried to turn over, to the right, I crashed into the wall, to the left, I fell off the damn thing.
And I’m a sprawler when I sleep. I need space. After a few nights of repeated elbow dislocation from trying to turn over, I could take no more.
I took my blankets and set up camp in the living room. But the sofa couldn’t accommodate a good sprawling either. I took the sofa cushions and set them up on the floor. That was my bed for the next three weeks.
Then I subletted a place for a month while waiting to move into my apartment. I could never get comfortable in the sublet, living out of suitcases etc.
Towards the end of the month, people moved into the apartment downstairs. They were students (strike one). They were crazy noisy (strike two). They had terrible taste in music (strike three).
I don’t mind a bit of noise. It’s to be expected when you’re living in close quarters. But if you’re going to be ridiculously loud, you should at least have been blessed with the ability to distinguish between music which brings joy to the soul and music which frikkin’ sucks.
One night (I’d had my wisdom tooth taken out that day and was moving house the next morning, so could have used some rest), the students decided to have a party.
I don’t object to a good shindig. I do, however, object to ‘Wannabe’ by the Spice Girls being played on repeat till 5AM.
I pretty much never feel the need to ‘zig-a-zig-ahhhh’ (especially not in the dead of night), but I did want to zig-a-zig-kick someone’s ass.
I didn’t even want to tell them to turn it down. I just wanted them to get some taste. I would’ve happily DJ’d the party for them. My iPod kicks some serious behind.
I lay awake all night listening to the muffled sounds of Mel B and Co tell me if I wanna be their lover, I gotta get with their friends. Oh piss off.
Needless to say, moving day was a sweet relief.
So, I finally get into my new place and thought this would be the end of my sleeping woes. But alas, no.
One Friday, as I got home from work around 7pm, I noticed the guys across the street (students, grrr) were having a party. They were all hammered and acting retarded, but at 7pm, I didn’t really care.
By 10pm, they were outside butchering my favorite karaoke tune (Don’t Stop Believing by Journey – I mean, if you’re gonna do it, do it right, damnit) and I was starting to get a little pissed.
The later it got, the more people came to the party and the more determined they became to have it outside. (I wouldn’t have cared if I didn’t have to work at 9.30am the next day).
Then finally, at 1.30am, came the straw that broke the camels back.
Some fool at the party broke out the bagpipes. Fucking bagpipes. And treated partygoers to a rousing version of an indistinguishable tune in the middle of the street.
I let the slaughtering of Journey slide, but this? Bagpipes? Hell to the no. Bagpipes are like the musical equivalent of nails on a blackboard. There’s a reason they’re usually played on the Scottish highlands with no one around for a couple of hundred miles.
I look out the window and see the Pied Frikkin’ Piper and his band of Merry Men (and women) all doing some ridiculous drunken jig. Damn, I was so ashamed of my people. White people can’t dance at the best of times, but throw alcohol and some bagpipes in there and it’s a complete clusterfuck.
About 20 seconds pass and I’m convinced I can feel my eardrums starting to bleed. Then, I transformed into a middle-aged woman and called the police. I couldn’t believe I was actually calling the Po Po to make a noise complaint, but everyone’s got their limit, Bagpipes are mine.
“Would you like to speak to the officer when he arrives?” the operator asked.
“No. I would, however, like you to create legislation whereby the ownership and usage of bagpipes is illegal and arrest his ass.”
Apparently, they couldn’t do that, but they would shut down the party. Good enough.
As I sat at the window, watching them, waiting for the 5-0 to arrive, I got more and more pissed off that, with all the people at this party, not one of them had taken the initiative and beaten this guy up. What the hell kind of people were at this party anyway?
I’m telling you right now, any party I go to, if someone pulled out bagpipes, that dude would get the most brutal beat down of his life (not necessarily by me, ‘cause I’m a lover, not a fighter – but I hang with people with great taste and big muscles).
Who even owns bagpipes? Then pulls them out at a party and actually plays them?
Anyway, the Po Po came and shut it down a half hour later – by which time I was wide awake. So I turn on the TV, watch it till I doze off at 5am and start yet another day on 2 hours sleep.
Tags: bagpipes, insomnia, students
Posted in life | 4 Comments »