![]() I can use it, say, to listen to lectures in the backseat of a car on a road trip with my family from South Australia to Victoria. You know the beauty of a phone? I can use it over here. Which totally looks like i’m running away mid-semester, right? But listen, modern technology has done this wonderful thing where my lectures can be downloaded to my phone, and assignments can be submitted in a dropbox over the computer. So what usually happens is I end up packing my bags, buying a ticket and going somewhere. the access to thousands of different brains that think a thousand different ways to me, connecting with tutors who know so much than me, the feeling of my brain cracking wide open to a plethora of thoughts and theories and concepts and opportunities I never even thought possible. And it completely contradicts the whole reason I went to university in the first place. And the payoff, for me, just isn’t worth it. Everything goes grey and each day passing is just another step towards a day that looks exactly the same as the one before it. It’s the old part of myself that has always wondered is there a different, better way to do the work I want to do? Can I at least try?īecause when I’m stressed-out and anxious I see the world as a to-do list and my work as a chore. Unsaid university/ college law says “you must bleed to achieve greatness!” and i’ve always been like “but why, lol?”. But with each passing day it becomes more apparent i’m not all that fond of pain for the sake of pain. So each semester I try my hardest to stress myself out as much as possible, to prove my legitimacy as a worthy contributor to society and the progressive world and the greater good etc. Like, “Tom’s so sleep deprived he’s started talking to the dragons in the bathroom drain”, “Yeah? Well Kayla hasn’t left her room for days- the pile of bowls by her desk is giving the Burj Khalifa a run for it’s money.” “Wow, those kids will go far.” ![]() Ever been around a group of uni students around exam time? It’s like a competition of “who’s the most stressed out nutcase here”. The sad thing is that’s not even too left-of-field a notion. I’ll stay there and read until my eyes go red, until my fingertips are bruised from typing and emerge from this heroic battle between my self and discipline like Thor, my blood, sweat and tears my badge of honour. ![]() I’ll buy a candle that smells nice, if i’m feeling fancy, and from there i’ll set my intentions that i’ll practically live in that damn chair this semester and not leave until each assignment is nothing less than 100% per cent greatness. I’ll wipe down my desk and pile my new essential course books in the corner. Each time, I’ll buy my fresh new stationery, the clean-lined notebooks and ergonomic pens. And every semester i’ve started off wanting to fall cleanly inside the lines of acceptable uni behaviour. I’ve been going to university for about three years now. Gravity’s hard to dispute, and breathing, but a lot of things we instinctively obey are a lot of old tosh.” As Russel Brand said: “I think many of the boundaries that convention has placed upon us are arbitrary, so we can fiddle with them if we fancy. I just mean lightly bending the unsaid laws of societal norms, having a play with accepted structures, making it work for you. And I wonder: is this simply because we’re still waiting to be grounded, or sent out of class, or brought back into line? That if we deviate from the perceived norm of normal functioning working-class society, there’ll be a bounty on our head? To be clear here, I don’t mean breaking federal law. I don’t think we see enough people pushing boundaries, playing around with their life situations, seeing how to make their reality bigger and better. It’s seen as lazy, or rebellious, or indulgent, or a existential crisis. Pushing was fine.īut as we get older, it’s no longer seen as cute or even justified to push boundaries. When studying, we might push back our studying time, seeing how long we can humanly procrastinate until the world fell down around us. We might push our alcohol tolerance once or twice, in a fit of youthful abandon. We’d push our siblings- to borrow this, use their that. We’d push our parents for later curfews, push our teachers patience while giggling in class with our friends (remember how when you weren’t allowed to laugh, it just made the whole thing funnier?). When we were younger, we were comfortable pushing boundaries.
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