[Just your average movie goer]

When I started out, I attended all the lectures. But slowly I began to realise that for the most part, they were a complete waste of time... just the same education rhetoric recycled, reworded slightly, over and over again. God, I wish I could get those four years of my life back.

[jariten]

i think that a lot of people have periods in their life like that. it doesnt always come with hindsight either. sometimes they know theyre wasting their time, right as its happening.

[Just your average movie goer]

Oh mate, I didn't need hindsight for that one. The whole four years, I knew what a waste of time it was. It's just that our society places so much value on those pieces of paper you get when you finish these things. The piece of paper has served me well... but I sure as hell didn't need four years to learn the prerequisites for my occupation. More like four weeks.

[Amber-Nicole]

Mmmmmmmm this beer stuff is better than i remember!! Did I mention I hate finals week? beer makes everything better. yay beer.

[Jane Sherwood]

I can honestly say I don't understand the appeal of something that smells like piss (one of my methods, if it smells bad, don't try tasting it. Ninety-seven percent of the time, this has served me well) and makes you look and act like an ass-hole if you have too much of it.

Really, beer, I don't get it. Is getting drunk really that much fun? And aren't hangovers supposed to be total hell? Does it balance out?

Just curious.

[sinister grinner]

i wonder that too jane. if you get drunk, end up having sex with ugly people, throw up until your a hollow cavity, possibly die, and then wake up with hangover, and a tattoo of your best friends name. why do it then?

[looktothesky]

I've never drank in my life, and I'm 20. That's all I gotta say about that. It smells bad, yes, but not those fancy frinks you can get, they smell nice. Maybe I'll jump over a heap and drink a LITTLE bit socially. But then again, there go my morals.

I like spikey, fluffy hair.

EDIT - Fancy frinks... LOL! I'm that good, people.

This post has been edited by looktothesky: 05 October 2004 - 12:53 AM

[Creaux]

Drinking...heh...I've never had any interest in getting intoxicated beyond a while about ayear ago when I sort ofwondered what it was like to be drunk...It wasn't that much fun! I realized that, whileI did have a good time at the party, the people Iwas there with were the reason. The alcohol was just sort of nasty.

Also never smoked a ciggarette nor Marajuana. My hippy-like long locks and sideburns are, in fact, prosceneium for a different sort of stage.

JYAMG, what was your major? I am deeply enjoying my courses...but then my courses are pretty impractical (I'm taking a course called "Magic, Medicine and Science", "Stonehenge to Hubble," an economic history of Japan (I dig the Meiji era), a history of Stewart England, and a course on Germanic Myths, Legends and Folklore. Yeah history major!) Sorry to hear it was a waste of time for ya, man!

[SimeSublime]

Still, your point is a good one... films really can affect your life. I remember being bitterly disappointed by both high school and university because I had such high expectations and was sorely let down. My high expectations were that high school and university would be, for all intents and purposes, a big long party frequented by babes. Instead I got isolation, boredom and a lot of uninspiring, mind-numbing assessment (and uninspiring, mind-numbing lessons and lectures).

Now where did I get those unrealistic expectations from? The movies, of course.

I know what you mean. I got to uni, and was shocked when I was actually expected to do work. I know there are people there who are always at parties, but I don't know how they do it. I mean, to spend the amount of money they do on these events I would have to spend all the time alocated for parties working to get the money to go.

[Just your average movie goer]

My major was Education... most of the lectures were just recylcing education rhetoric. The scary thing was that the mindless masses I went to uni with started recycling it too. Sure, it put 'em in good stead with the lecturers... but at the cost of any possible respect one could have for them.

As for the lack of fun at uni, it may be just the university I went to. After lectures, people went home. There was no-one to hang around with. Also, there were very few core subjects and as my cohort were education majors, we also had to branch off into our different specialities (ie. English, History, Science... etc ... oh, yeah, and I guess Physical Education Teachers are technically teachers too ).

So we didn't go through uni as a cohort and this basically resulted in me being with a different group of people in almost every class... and never spending enough time in any of them to form solid relationships. I must have met, in total, two or three people in uni who I'm still in contact with now.

[Madam Corvax]

JYAMG - do not worry, That is what college education is for - to give you useful pieces of paper. Never, never, in the course of my professional career did I utilise even a single piece of information that I acquired in the university while doing my first degree (Physics). All counted is the fact that I had a degree - which one, it did not matterat all.

That is also why I am doing my second degree now, to get a paper that I am qualified as an English teacher. Although I must admit, I did pick up some practical knowledge of classroom management in my course of study.

[Chyld]

I'm doing Philosophy with Creative Writing. I've no idea if that's any use at all in the real world, but I thought it'd be fun (thus far, it is), and its a useful piece of paper to wave at employers, I think.

As to alcahol, beer does indeed taste like piss. As does Strongbow (French cider is actually quite nice, if you buy the right stuff). The things which can be lumped into the unsightly category of "alcopops" don't.

And yes, bad hangovers do kill. This is the principle known as "karma"

[Just your average movie goer]

You're lucky. I got no useful knowledge for my teaching from university. The way I learned how to be a good teacher was by going into the classroom and teaching...

... making a dick of myself for the first few lessons, getting burned out a bit before getting the hang of it and working out how to do it right. It didn't take long.

One day of experience is a million times the worth of years of theory. But yet our society is set up in such a way that we are required to do these years of theory to get our piece of paper... and without this piece of paper, we would surely be doomed to a life in (shudder) the retail industry.

There is only one reason I can think of why we have to waste years of our youth at university...

to slow the entry of young people into the workforce so it's in line with the rate of new job openings. And it's a fairly good reason from the perspective of the guys on the top, trying to manage our countries. But personally speaking, when you're going through the grinder, it's a bit hard to see the larger picture.

Give me twenty weeks of intensive teacher training instead. And then I do time in the retail industry for the remaining three and half years until it's my time to enter the real workforce. Just an alternative suggestion.

- a jaded Movie Goer, mourning for the lost years of his youth.

[Creaux]

Glad ya stuck with it, though. Traching is, well, pretty important, escpeially at lower levels. Istill can't believewhat some of my highschool classmates didn't know O_o (You mean Brazil isn't in Africa?)

[Jane Sherwood]

You know what's ironic?

I'm an English major, and yet as it currently stands, English is my worst subject! You know why? I haven't been able to turn a single thing in because everything is either online tests, or writing essays.

I hate essays. And I have the ever increasing temptation to write “I am a fish” four hundred times and turn in in.

Something about that class just seems to suck the creative energy out of me. One foot in the door and all my happy feelings of confidence and Muses go running for cover. I can't even think write anything comparing and contrasting "The Passionate Shepard to his Love" and "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepard", and not only was that one of the things we went over thoroughly in the second semester of my senior year, that's the easiest assignment we've been given so far!

...I'm sorry. I didn't mean to start whining like that.