Renton
Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday night. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else.
I have not written in my journal in ages it seems. This winter seems like a fitting time to start things up again, or at least tonight does. I will be graduating from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst this May. I've earned myself a 3.9 cumulative GPA, and a 3.975 GPA in my major: Psychology. I've got a minor in Philosophy. This is me, this is my life. Strange, huh?
Looking back on things, it seems as though I had a lot of resentment toward this place. After all, I never wanted to be here, it was just a matter of finances. To this date, I still do not like being at UMass, but life is about to change this May. I can feel it. Fortunately, I managed to put that anger and emotion into something useful. I got myself an education, and this Fall, I'll be going to graduate school...somewhere. I am just waiting to see who accepts me.
Sometimes I ask myself what the hell I got out of college. You know, beyond the education. For me, college was about as socially awkward as High School. My Freshman year, I thought I would rebel against the world, listen to a lot of punk rock, drink, smoke and attempt to redefine myself. That landed me in with a pretty horrible group of kids. That Freshman year, I had a huge falling out with them and left, never turning back. I withdrew from my first semester, completely erasing it from my academic record and my life. In doing so, I needed something to fall back on. When you go through something as extreme as the above, you become a little fragile.
I had a couple of friends from high school that went to the same University as me. Correction. About half of the burnouts and losers that I remembered from high school went to UMass, but yeah, I had a couple of friends there. It always seems like such a fantastic idea to reunite with old friends when you're down on your luck.
That could have been, perhaps, one of the worst moves in my social career. Its not that I don't get along with my friends. It has nothing to do with that. Mostly its that my friends at UMass have some kind of image of what and who I am supposed to be. You know, I am the really smart kid, the really hyper active kid. Zach knows a lot about computers. Zach is this, Zach is that. I do not want to be those things. I want to be my own person, not someone else's idea.
When people think they know you like that, you really have no room for changing who you are, and thats what college, at least I thought, was supposed to be about. Redefining yourself, becoming someone new. Becoming a man, or something like it. So when people already know who you are, and you associate yourself with them all of the time, you don't change. You do not develop and become the person you've imagined.
So that was my social life at college. I hung out with some of my friends from high school, and consequently their friends. Somewhere along the lines, I forgot to make my own friends. I just fell in with their respective groups. Its strange when you do that. You never really feel as though you fit in, because you did not grow with these new people. You just kind of, well, met them.
So I am graduating this year. I am doing something real with my life. I am putting college behind me, and I am going to find out exactly who I am. Somewhere along the lines, I lost touch with myself and now I need to find myself and rebuild. Crazy, huh? You might say, I am sick of being sick.
I have not written in my journal in ages it seems. This winter seems like a fitting time to start things up again, or at least tonight does. I will be graduating from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst this May. I've earned myself a 3.9 cumulative GPA, and a 3.975 GPA in my major: Psychology. I've got a minor in Philosophy. This is me, this is my life. Strange, huh?
Looking back on things, it seems as though I had a lot of resentment toward this place. After all, I never wanted to be here, it was just a matter of finances. To this date, I still do not like being at UMass, but life is about to change this May. I can feel it. Fortunately, I managed to put that anger and emotion into something useful. I got myself an education, and this Fall, I'll be going to graduate school...somewhere. I am just waiting to see who accepts me.
Sometimes I ask myself what the hell I got out of college. You know, beyond the education. For me, college was about as socially awkward as High School. My Freshman year, I thought I would rebel against the world, listen to a lot of punk rock, drink, smoke and attempt to redefine myself. That landed me in with a pretty horrible group of kids. That Freshman year, I had a huge falling out with them and left, never turning back. I withdrew from my first semester, completely erasing it from my academic record and my life. In doing so, I needed something to fall back on. When you go through something as extreme as the above, you become a little fragile.
I had a couple of friends from high school that went to the same University as me. Correction. About half of the burnouts and losers that I remembered from high school went to UMass, but yeah, I had a couple of friends there. It always seems like such a fantastic idea to reunite with old friends when you're down on your luck.
That could have been, perhaps, one of the worst moves in my social career. Its not that I don't get along with my friends. It has nothing to do with that. Mostly its that my friends at UMass have some kind of image of what and who I am supposed to be. You know, I am the really smart kid, the really hyper active kid. Zach knows a lot about computers. Zach is this, Zach is that. I do not want to be those things. I want to be my own person, not someone else's idea.
When people think they know you like that, you really have no room for changing who you are, and thats what college, at least I thought, was supposed to be about. Redefining yourself, becoming someone new. Becoming a man, or something like it. So when people already know who you are, and you associate yourself with them all of the time, you don't change. You do not develop and become the person you've imagined.
So that was my social life at college. I hung out with some of my friends from high school, and consequently their friends. Somewhere along the lines, I forgot to make my own friends. I just fell in with their respective groups. Its strange when you do that. You never really feel as though you fit in, because you did not grow with these new people. You just kind of, well, met them.
So I am graduating this year. I am doing something real with my life. I am putting college behind me, and I am going to find out exactly who I am. Somewhere along the lines, I lost touch with myself and now I need to find myself and rebuild. Crazy, huh? You might say, I am sick of being sick.