I'm going to start updating soon, although god knows, with Twitter and Facebook and MySpace and MSN Space there is not really a shortage of me somewhere in cyberspace. I reckon on a blog you can be a lot more self-indulgent; no 140 character limit, hidden Notes on Facebook and the plate of spaghetti that is MySpace...pfff.
Well I'm studying for another year yet so updating will not be a-plenty just yet. No news to tell right now, life is just rather boringly ticking along and with it bringing age and the encumbrances that come with that - aches and pains becoming permanent, brain fuzziness and increasing dogmaticism setting in... all that stuff that you only thought happened to miserable old cunts. Bitterness and hatred for mankind await just down the road.
Anyway, on that cheery note - I have been diagnosed as being depressed, big surprise there.
University was meant to be the door to realising a direction; a future and finding myself. All I found was disappointment, disillusionment and apathy. I naively thought that spending time with people half my age would spark up my life and inject me with enthusiasm. I thought that our shared passion for learning and their youthful outlook would spring-clean and renew my spirit!
It didn't.
No-one liked me because I was too different. Too fat, too old, too outspoken, too honest, too individual. And I didn't like them because they were too full of themselves and only strove to be cookie-cutter versions of the rest of the alcoholic sheep - totally void of any personality. There were a few exceptions and fewer that clearly did not care that I was different.
These were the few people who
didn't ignore me when they saw me coming and these were the people who made it barely bareable (thank you).
Oh! But I didn't include the lecturers in that!
They were just as bad (some worse). I can count on a chicken's foot the lecturers that I have any respect for. How can I respect a lecturer, at university level, teaching
English literature, who does not research the work that he expects
us to learn inside out?! This "someone", who does not know the meaning of the word "tallow" or exactly what colour "lilac" is (he thought it was pink, and ironically, he was wearing a lilac-coloured shirt at the time). I tell no lie, it got to a stage where the man would look straight to me if he was unsure about something. Maybe he just thought I was a know-it-all, I don't know. I do know he wasn't.
There were two linguist/language lecturers (a married couple) who constantly preached about not allowing language or dialect or accent to negatively define people. They stress upon embracing and rejoicing in our linguistic differences.
Except when you step outside of theory. I know they didn't like me. I was inquisitive and, occasionally, contrary if something did not make sense to me.
After my very first lecture I told one of them that I was not pleased at her lumping the word "fat" together with lazy and ugly. She'd broken her own rule and she certainly did not appreciate my telling her that "fat" does not mean the same thing as "lazy" or "ugly". Someone may be all three, or possess one or two of those qualities, but, with her a linguist, a PhD no less, did I have to point out that her choice of words only perpetuates negative stereotypes about fat people?
I guess that's why they accused me of plagarism a few months later. Not that they had any proof of that (er, because I fucking didn't). They didn't even have my essay. They'd lost it.
That is just the tip of the iceburg my friends. And now I have to go back and repeat six modules because of this depression, so I have another year with these people.
No wonder I'm fucking depressed.
They might read this, yes. I probably
should be worried but my disdain and lack of respect for them forces me to say all this, regardless.
The biggest lesson I learned at university was this:
The way to succeed is not by using your brain and applying it to your studies, but by using your pretty little lips and applying them to some big academic arsehole.
