The Besz Dispenser - This Week's Rant

For the week of November 20th, 1998

Choose life

Finding a topic every week for this column really becomes all-consuming, and usually I don't have one until the Forum Editor comes calling. She hates me, I'm sure. But I do get it in, and fill the space.

I find I'm full of hot air that needs release. My column allows me that freedom. How else can you express your opinions to over 10,000 people without climbing to the top of Dana Porter with a hostage and a loaded rifle?

But I digress. I need an opinion column, but I really don't have one. So, I'll give you some advice that only now am I learning.

See, the last Imprint of this term will probably be my last column (unless I find a way to scam my column in for winter, you can never tell) because I'm leaving UW. I may be part-time student boy, or I may be part-time McDonalds boy to pay off the uber-debt that has accumulated over the year and a half here. Plus, if you read my column three/four weeks ago, you can tell I need the break.

Oh, I'm sure many of my readers (if I have any, see four/five weeks back) have much harder workloads than I, but my workload has broken me for the plain and simple reason that I have no real motivation to be here. This is the equation:

No motivation = no drive = bad grades + pressure to be here and get good grades = more stress = no sleep = worse grades. Compound and mix until done = nervous breakdown = rooftop with rifle and ammunition.

But the point I'm making here is not "feel sorry for my weakness," but more, "make damn sure you want to be here."

If you don't want to be here and learn, then you are going to have some hard times ahead. If you don't like your major, change it. If you don't like your faculty, move to another faculty. If you don't like learning, get a job.

Life is too short to force yourself to do something. And sure, your parents may want you to be a doctor or an engineer or, at the very least, have a degree, but in the end it is your life. And they will more than likely be dead before you.

A friend once told me, "You have to have fun and learn at the same time. If you can't have one with the other, than neither are worth it." He was right.

So more than anything, enjoy yourself, enjoy what you're doing and go for what you want. If it isn't here, go to where it is. Otherwise, you'll be a miserable wretch of a person. You know, like me. You don't want to be like me, do you?

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