Hello, as you can probably imagine from the specific title, this service story style piece is going to be a meditation and reflection on the feeling of helplessness, alienation and perhaps nihilist levels of existential dread that comes about due to Collegiate (university level) education.

It should be said that this is not a completely universal feeling (or set of feelings), but is definitely a landmark that everyone will pass by at least once in their college experience. If this feeling was a shop, some will eat there, some will just pass by, and some will be unfortunate enough to live in the room right above it.

But here is a list of 3 ways that you can feel as though your time at college (before you fully enter the workforce) is not a complete and utter waste of hours, funds, and the oh so sweet youthful disillusionment you had before you were thrown into this bitter place of drug-fueled escapism with the inevitable new found information that you are sadder then your high school guidance counselor ever had the time or budget to understand.

GIVE THE INFORMATION AWAY

The college will make it seem as though this information is a valuable and complicated system of information that can not be understood by others, and that other people have no interest in it. That is both right and wrong, but also horrendously patronizing. Academic writing is paid for by the page and can be boiled down into a 20-minute lecture from a potentially hungover doctorate student (which I do not blame them for being if they are, doctorate studies are hard, and do what you need to do).

You pay hundreds of dollars per hour of class time to have that doctorate student give you that information. Save the rest of us the budget. Take notes well. Release those notes. Educate the masses through one moderately well-paraphrased cliff notes style version of an academic reading at a time. Make songs about it, makes pictures of it, release the whole pdf of files read on WordPress. College is cooler when you’re the badass robin hood like giver of information.

APPLY IT AT ALL COST

The first way that school really fucks up this whole “an education is key to having a good life” bit (that they keep going on and on about), is that they talk about individualism while forcing teachers to grade 22 papers, while going to school, possibly working another job, and dealing with the inevitable mass collection of soul-crushing realizations that they’re student debt is the size of Goliath, and their David (the metaphorical representation of their paycheck) is less the size of your typical hero, and more the size of the Thomas O’Malley the alley cat. While he might be a very charming ginger cat lad, I doubt he is much of a biblical brawler.  That teacher does not think of you as an individual by default, but as one of the potentially 60 other students that they need to grade the assignments of.

This being said, you should write down what your goals for life are (or what they might be), and immediately try to apply the notes you take towards it. These writers you will read during class are not good writers because they’re really good at making themselves feel smart, but because they understand that there are a number applications for their ideas, even if they are hidden in the subtext. Academic writers get, in part, paid per the page, not to speak in laymen’s terms.

Reading about feminism is not just an opportunity to complain with fellow students about how Michel Foucault is too dense, or that one time that Marx didn’t quite get it right, but it is an opportunity to analyze how things get done and made. It speaks of socialization, material analysis, and provides critical reading skills to see problems, and then provide yourself an opportunity to fix them and then possibly get paid to do that. I would like to repeat, CRITICAL READING IS THE FIRST STEP TO MAKING MONEY. Find the problem, fix the problem, collect.

All of these things apply to you, and you must force them too. That is how you have power over these readings. You make the abstract concepts discussed turn into the fuel that is to get you to your destination.

PAIN IS KEY

Regrettably, school is not designed with your best interest in mind. It’s a business that profits on having the most people it possibly can have in the school, having teachers be paid as little as possible, systemically failing students so that they can force students to retake courses, and extend their time at the university as much as possible. Once you understand that the school does not have your best interest in mind, you should operate under a healthy dose of skepticism for things that are too nice. If you are conveniently going to be able to graduate early,  you should assume that the filing system is broken. You should quadruple check most things. Have people sign things to say that it is definitely correct. Go to deans and make sure you are good to go. Have a collection of names that all said you were ok, and then if something goes wrong, go head hunting.

This also means that things that are fun and great, are distractions from getting shit done. Finish work early, then go to live your best hedonistic life you can. Finish things a month early, then when you’re drunk as a skunk in the middle of a seven eleven, you can find peace in knowing that your nice shirt that might have gotten a little bit of anonymous vomit on it, was worn when you were being responsible. Disgusting. But responsible.

INSPIRATION IS STUPID, KEEP IT SIMPLE

I understand that you most likely have dreams and aspirations, and these dreams and inspirations want to make their way into the work that you do, and might in someways help you to do that. It might also produce such a great feeling of anxiety in you, that you keep procrastinating and doing nothing at all because you’re fear of failure (it is hard to fail at things that you really love).

Instead, I think it is far nicer to dedicate your life to the thing you love, and to in fact treat some writing assignments as a practice in application, rather than a way to put yourself into the assignment. You are in that assignment no matter what, but it is easier to get the work done when you are just answering a simple series of questions you have with a list of paraphrased conclusion you drew from readings.

Try to apply things to a different way. How does a fisherman care about Freud? How can business writing save the journalism industry? How can being a shitty student help someone who is trying to learn about Mozart, or Bartok, or 400 level jazz theory? These are pretty strange questions, but in the end, can produce pretty great essays and assignments.

This Writing response is a free write done by myself purely to keep myself inspired, and due to that rationale, has not been researched and debated with others. I’m sure there are writers far more qualified then myself speaking about this subject, and I would recommend searching them out. Also, thank you for reaching the end!

If you have any comments, critiques or questions, feel free to comment below. If you would like to speak to me individually, feel free to email me at Kiernan.kai@gmail.com