Scammed!

Day one of university.

First impression: the lecturer is like the fat, boisterous ring-leader of a circus; the students, his animals barking opinions, keen for attention.

Second impression: I’m allowing myself to be scammed.

Third impression: Again.

…again, although in a whole new way…

The fervour in the room would have been closer to a religious or cult-like zeal than a circus, if the lecturer hadn’t urged us so strongly to disagree with everything, even to ‘disagree with me!’ as he’d spectacularly begged, working the crowd. It was a self-gratifying, rethink your thinking, outside-is-inside, anti-establishmentarianism, learn-to-un-learn-your-learning, die prejudice!,  be a real arts student! jerk off. The room absolutely reeked of the self-congratulation and smarm that these idiots all sweated so as to baste themselves with it.

Sure, think outside the box, that’s a good thing. But it’s just embarrassing when the lecturer actually begins  by bellowing in his walrus-like way, ‘Leeet’s get ready to RUUUUMMMMBLLLLE!’

Maybe I’ve just become accustomed to the outside world, to living beyond the university bubble. But I don’t think I ever bought into that kind of gratuitous zest and self-sucking hoopla. I don’t think it was ever on sale to be bought.  So maybe I’ve aged, become a cynic, a dead-beat, a total square. Or maybe things have just slipped.

But give me the clever old guy who wore ugly sweaters and smiled benignly, who spoke in a manner that made you really think, This guy knows what’s going on. Not made you think, This guy’s been without a lay for so long, exhibiting himself like a blubbery animal and raping my ears while insulting my intellect is as good as he can hope for.

And give me tutors who (look, I get that this is a contemporary cinema class, alright?) don’t ask to be referred to as ‘Tango’ and ‘Cash’. Get a fucking grip.

Doomsday has earned its name.

Doomsday device

Apple and I got a new toy today. It’s a sleek, black, multi-functional printer/scanner that is a drastic improvement on the archaic printer it replaces.

New technology is always fascinating and scary to me. But what scares me most is the amount of plastic and other non-biodegradable packaging involved, as well as the old hunk of hard-plastic junk we’ll be biffing. A lecture from my primary school days still haunts me, where an environmentalist fellow demonstrated just how wasteful most modern packaging is, with the many unnecessary layers and wrappings and (though this is now improving) the unfriendly inks that are used.

However, what prompts me to refer to this toy as a doomsday device is the motivation for buying it, and what it therefore represents foremost at this time.

As of Monday, doomsday, I will be spending many nights as black as the new toy’s exterior, alone with it as my only company, as I produce draft after draft of tertiary education essays.

From Monday, I shall be attending university part-time as a full-time worker to continue chipping away at the final stages of my BA degree in film and English literature. This semester I will study Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (Jaws and Fight Club anyone?). Plus I will be studying te reo Maori through Victoria university’s  professional and executive development programme, which parallels the timeframes of the standard semester.

To improve my education in these areas I’m interested in, I’ll be working my ass into the ground and doing overtime to make up for the hours I’m out of the office attending lectures.

So, while it’s great to have a new, shiny toy to play with, it is nonetheless a representation of the end of my days of rest, reading, socialising and measured living. It is a symbol of hard-slog,  of a lot of head scratching, a worn-out brain, undoubtedly increasingly eccentric behaviour (I know myself well enough), a potential break down,  and most certainly nights of very little sleep that have nothing to do with gin.