I Got 99 Problems: With This

“Everybody look to the left.”

“Everybody look to the right.”

“Can you feel that we’re paying with love tonight?”

……..nonsense, Jessie J. Nice use of metaphors, lovely song, but this just happened to remind me tonight of what I actually have on the left and the right (Destroyed laundry basket and half-hanging closet door respectively) and also straight ahead. And if you tell me to look dead center, you’ll find me playing peek-a-boo with all the tabs I have open, generously accommodating colleges, courses, admissions and application statuses, which are only too happy to stretch out and have a few beers in the holiday destination known as my laptop – leaving just yours truly waking up with their hangover. There ain’t no paying with no love tonight, Jessie. Get your shit together.

So college! Romanticizing college and all that it brings is an unmistakeably obvious fad which is now being increasingly carried out by viciously positive people who somehow seem to have the enviable ability to unclench their cheeks and like, look forward to it, owing to their vast knowledge of and expertise on a lifestyle they’ve never dunk a toe in. However, this seems to be a highly negative and resentful perception of these er, role models, and it probably isn’t my place to sit and think fiercely of arguments against their rainbows…….. like I do further down this article, the sole purpose of which is to threw a giant hissy fit at colleges, their websites, these actual, existing individuals and to showcase my horror at entering a new life in Ultron mode.

1. The Message:

The message is the information presented in order to bring about a change in attitude, awareness and knowledge base. Some colleges, with regards to the message provided, leave you in no doubt of what they’re driving at: they look for an IQ that is supposed to resemble the combined effects of marijuana and cocaine on human behaviour, accompanied by a buffet of extra-curriculars– if you can ride a horse side-saddle, bewitch audiences with stunning speech, play kabaddi like a fiend, possibly perform magic tricks and pull off a top hat, why, you’re in. You give a buffet, so they can go a la carte.

Some colleges on the other hand, resemble extremely complicated maps which were unfortunately drawn up in the Stone Age. That’s right, keep bumping your head as you forage for application forms.

2. That Course That Was Never Found:

Are you one of those people who doesn’t have a fixed idea about what they want to pursue, but also know what they don’t want to pursue? Come, join this club, members equal the population of Sweden. We’ll together explore the colleges that offer splendid and fluent courses, and then reject them like last night’s dinner – be treat colleges the same way we treat bad-fitting jeans.

3. The Account/Username/Password:

So once you decide that this college doesn’t make you bite your fingernails, you set out to apply. Now I don’t know if this happens to just mentally-squeezed brains, but this journey is like trying to enter the NSA from its most well-guarded entry manned by mustachioed-men who can use that mustache in a display of  stunning skills to defend against foreign aggression. They let you in on the sole condition that you have a ludicrous username, a password – this password, oh man. It’s a password only if it can decrypt national codes okay? Fair warning.

And once you do this for a number of colleges you hope you’re good enough for, comes the wait. You check your mail obediently, only to find Special Offers from Amazon. You check their websites, hoping to recover some goldmine of scholarships you aren’t eligible for. And then…and then, you have our adventurous role-models, who’ll be all “Hey new life, new people, new friends, complete make-over” and psych you out with their preparedness and excitement to leave familiarity behind to embrace the future.

All slightly resentful jokes aside, it probably has to be admitted that these guys may have certain qualities to be admired; even if it’s a façade, it takes commitment and strength to be all-positive, let go of certain fears and become pretentious pretenders who pretend.

Although I admire them deep, deep down inside, I also have a firm belief that their pants? Yeah, they are just as soiled as mine. The only difference is I’m wearing flimsy white pants and they chose nice, diaper-filled denims. Don’t blame me. I told you my laundry basket was destroyed.