Ranting Against College
Many thanks to the crew at WhatTheFuck.com
Oh boy oh boy oh boy!! I'm in COLLEGE!!!
To be more specific, I'm in my third year of college, and can honestly say that this is
turning into the worst goddamned year of my academic career.
Career indeed - that's one of the cruelest of the many manipulations of the English
language I've ever heard. If its MY career, why and I paying them??
So I'm sitting here in my admittedly spacious dorm room at 4:59 in the
freakin' morning ignoring
the bibliography layered directly beneath my Internet window. Why am I ignoring it,
you ask? Because I can.
Actually, I shouldn't be up this late, should I? No, normal humans are never up this
late except when they are working graveyard shift at some dead end job where they
are still making more money than I am. Not that that's hard, considering I work only
10 hours a week for slightly more than minimum wage.
That's $5.15 + $0.25 (responsibility money) in U.S. dollars for you foreigners.
Anyway, back to sleep. I should be asleep right? I mean, after all, I live in a
dormitory, a word derived from the Latin word meaning "to sleep," so I should be
studying intently the insides of my eyelids, right?
WRONG!! NOBODY sleeps at my college!! Its like a freakin' rule handed down from on
high. "Thou shalt not sleepeth, so long as thou doth be attempting to sleep." No, I
don't sleep when I'm supposed to - I sleep in class.
I've heard, however, that there was a guy who attempted sleep earlier this year
down at the end of the hall. I can't be sure, nor can I ask him because we haven't
seen him awake since. But if I could ask him how he did it, I'd probably discover that
there is a better insulator of sound than my pillow, which I wrap around my head
nightly to either kill myself or shut out the noise - I no longer care which.
Why do we need noise insulation, you don't ask? Well, I'll tell you why anyway.
Because the designer of "my" dorm - may he be found and forced to listen to Yoko
Ono for 30 days, 24/7, and watch an animated version of UglyPeople.com for two
weeks - chose to use 15^-9 rate materials when selecting them. The rooms are
spacious at the sacrifice of thick walls, floors, ceilings, etc. And they conduct sound
so well that I've heard my RA scratch his ass from five doors down and across the
hall.
My dorm room consists of mixed brick-and-canvas walls, with a window and door to
the balcony, which gets soaked by the sprinkler system every night. The canvas
"wallpaper" has so many stains that I'm afraid to touch it, and the balcony door has
some serious claw marks on it suggesting a previous occupant lost it and tried to
escape. My roommate - who has passed out in the extreme humidity of our floor -
has given up entirely on trying to communicate his dissatisfaction about our situation
to me in whatever passes for his language - he somewhat resembles Chewbacca,
although with less body hair, a third nipple, and considerably less command of the
English language - and has resorted to altering his side of the room to his
satisfaction.
This isn't even called a dorm room - it's a "suite." (Another one of those cruel
manipulations of the English language I mentioned earlier) my suitemate - I cant say
suitemates because HIS roommate is currently living upstairs with his girlfriend and
HER roommate; I cant fathom the conditions up there, although the sex makes up for
it I suppose (but ill get to that in a moment) - lives a distinctly sheltered existence.
Not that he doesn't know what a clitoris is, but he is a computer freak specializing in
games, warez, DVDs and bootlegs. He could probably give his computer an orgasm if
he really tried.
And that brings me to sex in the dorm. We know it exists, and as enlightened college
students it tends to not really register except during finals week when the noise
tends to be a distraction - but some of my classmates are apparently exhibitionists -
they were caught in a meeting room of the Student Union Building engaging in
activities of nocturnal comfort and joy. With a plushy gorilla playing voyeur.
The emotional scars the incident left on my fellow co-manager who stumbled into the
scene are deep on her - the views of the gorilla have thankfully been left
unrecorded.
This brings me to people who actually leave their rooms, unlike my suitemate. My
dorm is so conveniently located at, what did my Wookie call it? "Ree mase tenn f
kamph." A rough translation would be "the ass end of campus." Its a good ten
minutes of walking up the side of the highest mountain in the county- the
administration is trying to keep us humble; lord knows it "hard" - to that
aforementioned SUB. Beyond that is still more walking to get to the department
buildings.
Visitors to my particular campus tend to comment on the beauty of the landscaping.
As a student manager in the SUB, I have to suppress my urges to throw them over
the side of the cliff right outside my office.
Time check: 5:32 AM
To continue, when leaving the dorms, there are several key things to remember to
take with you:
-Keys
-General office supplies
-Books
-Spirals
-Paper
-Keys
-Cash or Validine (Trinity Students know what that's about)
-Student I.D.
-Keys
-Provisions in the form of snack food and bottled water
-Hiking boots
-Knapsack
-Did I mention goddamned keys?
-Your Wook, er, roommate
-And here I would mention real clothing. What do I consider real clothing, you don't
ask? Anything not pajamas, which in our humid rooms tend to soak in B.O. like that
towel that soaked up your Wookie's splooge off your keyboard while he was looking
on the LAN at the computer named "Porn master."
-Keys
Now as you prepare to leave, don't forget to prop your dorm's main doors open, as
you don't want to be stuck there like an idiot holding it for everyone else in your
building who is late to class (read: everyone else in your building). Your Wookie
comes in handy here, but may be arrested for allowing the humidity to escape. Best
to keep him with you. He will be useful in 10 minutes.
Now begins the trek up to class. As you pass those idiots who are actually walking
on the sidewalk - you know, that group of 1,000 or so who've been told its a mortal
sin to walk on the grass - its a good idea to speed up to get to the SUB before they
do. When you get there, you barter for provisions using your Wookie as the "free
laborer" bargaining chip (hell, he drank all your water). Its at this point I run past my
boss, intent on leaving the impression that I'm running to class - I'm not really; I just
know that she needs me to work every damned weekend from now until I retire from
the Corps.
Inside the classroom, time enters a no-passing zone, and the vehicle it can't pass is
your prof's lecture notes. Naptime!!
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . .
Now we begin the trek back to the dorm. Stop by the SUB to pick up the Wookie, get
cornered by your boss who knows your schedule better than you do, and walk out
leading Wookie's leash in one hand, and holding your Special Assignments from your
boss in the other. Take the long way to follow the girl whom you are certain owns
those panties you watched hypnotically in the dryer last night as they took up the
only one in the whole damn building (hint: see that morbidly obese girl with her? They
are really hers!)
Upon reentering your room, release the Wookie and prepare to face the ultimate test
of manhood. No, not changing his diaper - he's not that bad off. I mean the shower.
About the only thing my shower has going for it is that it's not a community shower.
Other than that, its worse than any pain you ever caused to
YourselfOnPurposeOrByMistake!!!
It has, depending on time of day, location in building, connection to water heater,
current locations of heavenly bodies (and I don't mean Panty Girl), any one of six
temperatures:
-freakin' hot
-Really freakin' hot
-And nuclear
Or
-Cold
-Freezing ass cold
-And the one where you scream as your balls freeze and break off.
Once, when my sister living in North Carolina flushed her toilet, I had to call her and
tell her to be a bit more considerate.
Time check: 5:55 am
I'll say this for my suitemate - he's stopped bothering with the shower and is
disinfecting himself and the Wookie (hair clumps - nasty business). A quick spray with
Lysol and both of them are repellent to several bacteria - leaving me to deal with
Wookie's fleas.
You'll notice I haven't mentioned drugs yet - and with good reason. My dorm
happens to be infested with members of the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship - a
group as conservative and intrusive as it sounds. I remember quite distinctly that
bag of weed Wookie brought, and I seem to remember actually being able to hold a
conversation with him the first day we moved in.
{Shudder}
So suck it up, get high off the lemon fresh aerosol scent my suitemate exudes, and
invest heavily in sleeping aids - these are the best years of your life.