Third Year Blues
Bright eyed and bushy tailed with a smile that could only be the wonderful anticipation of a new adventure. Wellington seems like a city alive with art and difference rather than pretension and crazy bums. Oh first years, you are all so damn cute. Enjoy your naïve idealism while it lasts. Soon you will be a jaded third year who drinks too much coffee and smokes way too much. Salient feature writer Jenna Powell documents her experience as a third year and reminisces on her time in Wellington.
No final year student can deny the undefinable feeling of horror as your degree winds down. It is not only the end of an era; it is the end of your life as an irresponsible student. Your pretend grown up life is about to be replaced by the terrifyingly real adult world of nine to five. I remember my anticipation of university life as a plethora of fantastic experiences. In first year every day I would wake up with a fire in my belly for drinking, fun and learning. I would wake up early but stay up late. I could walk down Cuba St without rolling my eyes. I would actually worry if I missed a lecture. I admired my lecturers. I adored all things “absolutely positively Wellington.” These days I stay up to the wee hours of the morning watching mind numbing late night movies, starting assignments the night before they are due and overdosing on coffee. In the morning I reluctantly roll out of bed and ready myself for the day ahead with more coffee and TV 3’s Good Morning – which is like chocolate ice cream for the mind.
I was not always a cynical crybaby…Victoria University and Wellington scenesters have slowly but surely destroyed my soul. I may be acting a little melodramatic as I do have fond memories of my years as a university ‘student.’ I have meet truly remarkable people and unforgettable friends. University has helped me find out who I am and what I am capable of. It has expanded my once narrow small town mind into the liberal, feminist postmodern disaster it is today. I was exposed to the joys of serious drunken deep and meaningfuls with strangers. I was introduced to the wonders of stumbling to Burger King or some equally disgusting eatery on the way home after a night of getting ‘OTP’ (that’s ‘on the piss’ for those of you who have had the pleasure of never hearing that). But the whole process of university has taken the wind out my sails so to speak. After all this learning I cannot help but wonder, “Now what the fuck I am going to do?”
The more educated I have become the more I realised we (my generation of graduates if you will) have inherited a pretty shitty world. Hence the enormous amount of hopelessness a number of third year students feel. That is of course unless you study marketing or commerce in which case you are Satan’s little helpers and you probably think the Business Round Table is rad and the free trade agreement with China is like so totally awesome. What on earth has happened to the liberal student agenda? When I read about the heyday of student protests I think “What a sad bunch we all are now.” It’s like we have given up.
OVERQUALIFIED AND UNDER PREPARED
Being completely unprepared for the real world is particularly Salient if you are a student of the arts and humanities. My BA ( bugger all) in sociology and media alone will get me nowhere but a glorified secretary position at Ministry of Fisheries or Inland Revenue (I’m just living the dream folks). This is highly self defeating, as most BA subjects fuel your hatred of such mundanely meaningless consumer driven lives, yet simultaneously restrict you to a government department or lending consultant position which reinforces that kind of life. Hideous.
Truth be told one thing my degree has given me is the ability to have pretentious arguments at dinner parties and other social occasions. I can win most arguments because my knowledge of sociology and philosophy has given me the striking talent of being able to argue in circles… Never coming to any real conclusion but somehow always winning. This tactic usually always works unless I am paired up against a law student who inevitably beats me down with logic.
University has also taught me how to write a satisfactory essay on how fucked up the world is. I can argue quite convincingly on how the world is fucked and why your opinion on why the world is fucked is highly problematic. If you do not believe me I’ll reference some peeps who have PhDs ‘n’ shit. Thus my opinion is validated because if you cannot find some accredited smart person (see: obsessed hermit) who agrees with you then your opinion does not matter. Sometimes I find myself wondering, “If the main thing I have learned from university is how fucked the world is, surely three years out in the real world could have taught me that…” Without the student loan.
To quote a very stupid (but amusing) movie Clerks II: I constantly ask myself why I decided to study sociology – “What the hell did I want to be? A superhero.” In all honestly: yes I did want to be a superhero. Years of watching human interest stories on the news involving either the deteriorating environment or poor African babies with flies all over them had given me an overwhelming sense of responsibility. I went to university to change the world. It almost seems rather childish now.
Now I know all the architecture, law, and engineering students and anyone else with a real degree will disagree but university is hardly academically strenuous for the rest of us. It only becomes so because we get to the point where we really do not care for the subject we are studying. This is not completely our fault. Every year, no matter what paper – be it sociology, media, English, anthropology, film, theatre, or worst of all psychology – there will be some mention of Foucault. Because I have heard and read so much about this French sociologist all I actually hear now when he comes up in a lecture is “Foucault wank wank wank Foucault wank wank.” It is getting to the stage that if I have to hear about Foucault’s panopticon system of surveillance again I will stand up in my lecture and scream “We heard you the first time!” It seems we are getting taught the same things every year… And the academics wonder why students don’t give a shit anymore. The bullshit things people write academic articles about never ceases to amaze me. Guess what I learnt last semester? The effect of gaming on culture on society…Are you fucking kidding me? Villages get raped and pillaged in Somalia. New Zealand men beat their wives more when the All Blacks lose. The planet is fucked and you want to talk to me about the video game Tomb Raider and Lara Croft’s ambiguity as a feminist icon…Go fuck yourself.
WHAT IS SO GREAT ABOUT WELLINGTON ANYWAY?
Like come on! Shit weather!
TIME TO GROW UP
“Cheer up emo kid” I hear you yell. You’re right I should lighten up but growing up is such a daunting experience, especially for someone as caught up in their own imagination as I am. The thought of working in a soulless media corporation or becoming a bureaucratic paper pushing dweeb makes me want to crawl into the foetal position and rock myself to sleep. I better make the most of this year…Or enroll in postgrad to delay my arrival into the real world…But that means I have to stay here.
