SCHOOL!

holy balls, no joke. it begins in two days and life will once again have meaning and direction.
being someone who can't just let things be, i always take this time to wonder and worry about what it will be like after all of this meaning and significance is over. what will drive us each to wake up every morning, to read books that would otherwise be balancing crooked cafe tables and/or holding doors open, to write words that seem to come from some unknown place between our wrists and our spinal column but certainly not often our brain, to argue and debate and push for things we are not yet sure we believe in? will all the questions we have now (what is the meaning of life? do i believe in the political structure we have or...can i imagine something better? is it wrong to eat pizza for breakfast? am i cute? should i really be trying to succeed and thereby buying into the capitalist regime/university accreditation process that jane jacobs says will create a new dark age? does god really hate me because i like women's naked bodies? is it okay to call them back five minutes after i leave? where did that fucking hamster go? can i get another extension if i cry at office hours? is s/he really as dumb as s/he's acting? am i only pretending to be intelligent? is anyone really fooled? i wonder if this would make sense on drugs? what on earth does "the sampling distribution of means" mean? minute rice or basmati? will i have enough OSAP left over to get a new tattoo?) suddenly evaporate upon graduation? sadly, i feel nearly completely certain that things will remain largely the same. but here's the thing, the one solitary difference, between university and the rest of your life.
university is for you. you may claim that you are educating yourself to better save the world, but that's bollocks. it is the one thing you will do with vast quantities of your/the government's/your parents' money. you may never again spend that much money completely on yourself. firstly. secondly, everything you do in school adds to you as a person. whatever you learn, however high your marks are - these are benefits and bragging rights that go directly to you. do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.
after university, no matter what you studied, what field you are going into, who you end up working for... for the most part, after university, you will be doing things for other people. either because you are in an entry-level position, because you studied teaching or development or social work and that's your job, or because your boss is an asshole. all of a sudden, all the same worries are there (am i good enough, interesting enough, smart enough, hot enough? do i have enough money for rent, groceries, bills, tattoos? will i die alone?), but you're out in the world working under someone or another to earn money. and that money disappears. partly to pay your osap, partly to pay living expenses, partly on fun things that are indeed for your own enjoyment. but it disappears. your life is not your own anymore. reading becomes some recreational privilege because you don't have time for it, and frankly, you start to feel like you don't have the right. going out to get drunk isn't some social brewhaha that makes you feel good - it becomes something you do at the end of a work week because you have to stop thinking about the odious cycle you've gotten yourself into. if you're lucky, you will have ended up in a situation that you chose - you're teacher and you really feel connected to helping those students, or you're a social worker and you feel like you're helping to build good community, or you're a science major and you feel on the brink of solving problems for the whole world, or you're a writer and you feel like maybe soon you'll be able to move people to tears, or convince them to recycle. if your work was what you wanted all along, it still feels like it's for you. but trust me, the number of people fresh out of undergraduate degrees who get work that they wanted all along, let alone knowing what the fuck that might entail, is slim to nil. and i think it's just healthy to face that fact now and move on.
once i finish thinking and worrying these things, the fact that school is my driving force doesn't worry me so much. i stop aching for meaning and start reveling in the simplistic beauty of education for education's sake.
so my message today is, despite their ridiculous prices, stop and smell the textbooks. they may very well be the last thing you do just for you.