Yeah so I don't know how long it'll be until I can watch another movie, so I'll apologize in advance for the lack of updates. As some already know, I've decided to go back to school to get a graduate degree in Accounting. On paper it looks like a sound plan, but in reality it's mentally draining, and I'm not even talking about all of the reading, memorizing, tests, homework, papers, or researching yet.
Instead, what I'm referring to is age, windows of opportunity, and placement. When everyone was a freshman as an undergrad, everything seemed perfect. You got to live in a dorm, meet new people, take gen ed classes, take major classes, and work a student-worker position on campus. As senior year passed on by, you and your friends graduated and "attempted" to enter the work force. This was, of course, a very trying time because the competition was quite fierce and most of the time you found yourself holding the short end of the stick as yet another day of unemployment passed on by. At this point people usually decide on continuing with the job search or begin planning on getting into graduate school or some other professional program. In terms of age, everything is still kosher, but if you divert off the regular road like my dumb-ass has done, it turns into a very shitty, bumpy trip. Your window of opportunity to make wise decisions closes quickly because if you miss the boat, you'll be stuck in a room with people born in 1990.
I'll just lay it out there: school sucks. It has always been understood that it's only a means to an end, but in my advanced age, it just feels way too crappy being in class again. It's like being a misplaced fancy spoon, sitting on a table with a bunch of forks because everyone is preparing to eat their salad and nobody has any use for expensive China.
When you get older, you're bullshit meter becomes more sensitive and you tend to lack the energy to deal with any of it. School is all about doing bullshit. Why are there so many crappy "side" projects that need to be done? Why can't professors just concentrate on the book and the material within it and just give out tests? Looking at a syllabus and seeing layers and layers of bullshit is just so frustrating.
To add to this, I already got screwed by this school, and that fact has been pissing in my coffee all week. When I first read everything about all of my classes, all of the documentation boiled down to two things: First, I was to have at least 3 units (1 class) of graduate credits to still be considered a graduate student. Second, I needed 9 units (3 classes) of any combination of classes in order to be illegible for student health insurance. So yeah, I went ahead and registered for 1 class as a graduate course and 3 classes as an undergraduate courses. A few months into the waiting period, I found out that I had been
rewarded a grant, but one of those small ones that they randomly give out. The stipulation to receiving this grant was that you needed those 9 credits to all be graduate units. So I go and change the classes to 600-level instead of 400.
I wandered into my first class on Monday and was given a different syllabus because I was listed as a grad student taking a 600-level. To my surprise I saw that it had an additional research paper with a required presentation. After I went to my other classes, I was forced to multiply this "extra" requirement by 3. So in essence, I traded a slightly cheaper tuition for more bullshit school work.
WTF.
So how pissed am I? Very. Fuck having to do more work. I don't care that I'm "supposed" to be a graduate student. If all of the other silly undergrads in my classes don't have to write a damn research report, then I shouldn't either. Where is the fairness in that? All of these courses are undergrad prerequisite classes so it's not like I'm learning any more or less than everyone else. F-U-C-K spells Fuck.
So yeah the good
ol' days of watching movies all the time are over as I head into another semester of being crapped on as a student. From a guy who hates school as much as any average 3rd grader, I sure have cursed myself in being trapped in educational facilities for the better part of my life.
Also today, I interviewed for a student IT position and the dude sitting across the desk asked if "$8.50/hour would be a problem"? Is he fucking kidding me? I'm more qualified to do his job than he is and he's
lowballing me with $8.50 like I was some green-ass freshman with no experience but buckets of enthusiasm? Sad thing is that it seems as though my skill set is worth less now than what it was back in 1999. Suffice to say, I'd rather be an underutilized phone-answering ninny than being yelled at by some upstart professor for $8.50 because their
dumbasses are having problems syncing their
PDA, getting email, duplex printing, getting onto the web, connecting to a file server, remembering their password, or getting into their locked account because they continued inputting in the wrong password.
Like any
emo poser who dresses like they were born in the 80s would say, "I hate my life..."