How can something that sounds so sweet feel so sour?
Written by: Dawson Cormier | Forgot I worked here
In the final winter term of my Mt.A career, I have found myself in a pretty unique scenario for an English/drama student: I have no classes. I know it sounds kinda strange but it just so happens I have taken enough classes to have a credit surplus which means I’m still a student here, I have a couple independent study things going on, I just have no classes, no structure, nothing to guide me but my own free will.
The idea of having no classes sounded so nice. I thought I was an actual genius for coming up with this scheme, and it was a scheme. I felt like I was getting away with something that those in power wished to withhold from me, like I was breaking the system and claiming back my time that was taken from me by the society we have created. But man, and I know I sound like a government drone sent to tell you that the system we have works, but oh my God this shit sucks like SO bad. I did not realize how important structuring my day was to my mental health.
Here are some of the things I naively told myself I was going to do instead of bedrotting: build a desk (a whole desk like are we serious right now), fix the stupid fucking hole in my trunk (ugh), rearrange my room (I move out in like four months are you serious why would I even want to do that), and about 100 other things that I just have not even begun to do.
Do you want to know what I actually have done in the two weeks I’ve had without classes?
Here is the full list: Scrolled reels on my phone, scrolled more reels on my phone, sent reels to my friends, scrolled reels on my laptop (my phone was dead), and logged like 30 hours in 10000+ Offline Games: No Wifi Games for Mobile for IPhone. You wanna know something messed up? It doesn’t even have 10000 games, it has maybe 30, and there are only two good ones. It has a Yahtzee ripoff though and it’s so good like it feels better than any drug could to pull five ones and claim my 50 points.
I digress, I’m writing this article for two reasons: One is because of my job as the humour editor I am kind of obliged to be the newspaper’s jester., To examine my failures as a form of comedy may as well be part of the job description (legally I probably have to say that isn’t true). The other reason is that I want this to serve as a warning…
To those of you who ever think you might have beaten the system, to those who think that they are breaking out of the matrix, you need the system as much as it needs you, nobody can truly escape the cycle of productivity that capitalism has enslaved us within. If you are not spending your time honing a skill that can be used to generate profit for a corporation upon graduating then you are wasting your time.
Or maybe I just need to get better at self-discipline. Who knows. I’ll probably give that a try once I scroll a few more times.