I hate school
It is the halfway point of the semester today. And it’s only going to get worse.
I hate school.
My friends and I repeat that at least twice an hour. “I hate school.” “School sucks.” And our personal favourite, if that’s the appropriate word? WHD, Inc. The name of our ‘company’ for our foundation engineering (read: soils) course. It stands for, of course, We Hate Dirt.
We’re away from home for twelve hours a day, between attending classes and doing group projects. I have five such projects in seven courses. We hate group projects… but at least it’s all my friends who are in the groups.
In the midst of this, two of my friends are trying to convince the rest of us to go back to school in September and get our Masters of Engineering. Rather, we've been informed that we're going to grad school in September. Uh, thanks but no thanks.
Also, my friends and I are going crazy. On the plus side, we’re all going crazy together. The word most likely to get a rise out of us? Doo-doo. It started when we saw a whole bunch of truss members on a bridge drawing labelled as ‘do’. Do do do do. We asked the prof, and it turns out, it’s an abbreviation for ‘ditto’. Which isn’t nearly as fun.
We spend nearly all of our class time doing puzzles-crosswords or sudokus, which we pronounce sodukos, because it’s easier. Seriously, in my environmental class, I can do four crosswords in fifty minutes. I don’t know what we did before Vancouver had free daily newspapers.
Also, I locked the cat in my closet last night, by accident, for like an hour. It took me far too long to notice the scratching sounds, and longer still to, in fact, do something about it. I thought it was coming from outside. Cat survived, though, and didn’t even look at me like I’d crossed to the dark side, the way he does when I vacuum.
And my friends are all running up enormous tabs on each other. We charge for everything. Engineering’s all about money, right? “Five bucks for a ride home.” “Sure, I’ll explain to you how to do that question, but it’ll cost ya!” “I’ll hand in your assignment; ten dollars, please!”
And then my friend sent an e-mail to the rest of us last night: “Just so you guys know, I charge to pass on information. The going rate is $2.00 per word but since you guys are valued customers (and frequently returning customers) I will only charge you $1.00 per word. There are 62 words in the prof’s e-mail so you each owe me $62.00. I will be expecting payment tomorrow at 8:00 am sharp.” I replied that we charge for reading his e-mail, at the same discounted rate, and it was 69 words so he owed us each $7.00. A couple of other people replied and, he explained today-after careful word counts and math-we owed him $229.00. “Payment is doo doo by Friday.”
We used to be grown adults, I swear.
I hate school.
My friends and I repeat that at least twice an hour. “I hate school.” “School sucks.” And our personal favourite, if that’s the appropriate word? WHD, Inc. The name of our ‘company’ for our foundation engineering (read: soils) course. It stands for, of course, We Hate Dirt.
We’re away from home for twelve hours a day, between attending classes and doing group projects. I have five such projects in seven courses. We hate group projects… but at least it’s all my friends who are in the groups.
In the midst of this, two of my friends are trying to convince the rest of us to go back to school in September and get our Masters of Engineering. Rather, we've been informed that we're going to grad school in September. Uh, thanks but no thanks.
Also, my friends and I are going crazy. On the plus side, we’re all going crazy together. The word most likely to get a rise out of us? Doo-doo. It started when we saw a whole bunch of truss members on a bridge drawing labelled as ‘do’. Do do do do. We asked the prof, and it turns out, it’s an abbreviation for ‘ditto’. Which isn’t nearly as fun.
We spend nearly all of our class time doing puzzles-crosswords or sudokus, which we pronounce sodukos, because it’s easier. Seriously, in my environmental class, I can do four crosswords in fifty minutes. I don’t know what we did before Vancouver had free daily newspapers.
Also, I locked the cat in my closet last night, by accident, for like an hour. It took me far too long to notice the scratching sounds, and longer still to, in fact, do something about it. I thought it was coming from outside. Cat survived, though, and didn’t even look at me like I’d crossed to the dark side, the way he does when I vacuum.
And my friends are all running up enormous tabs on each other. We charge for everything. Engineering’s all about money, right? “Five bucks for a ride home.” “Sure, I’ll explain to you how to do that question, but it’ll cost ya!” “I’ll hand in your assignment; ten dollars, please!”
And then my friend sent an e-mail to the rest of us last night: “Just so you guys know, I charge to pass on information. The going rate is $2.00 per word but since you guys are valued customers (and frequently returning customers) I will only charge you $1.00 per word. There are 62 words in the prof’s e-mail so you each owe me $62.00. I will be expecting payment tomorrow at 8:00 am sharp.” I replied that we charge for reading his e-mail, at the same discounted rate, and it was 69 words so he owed us each $7.00. A couple of other people replied and, he explained today-after careful word counts and math-we owed him $229.00. “Payment is doo doo by Friday.”
We used to be grown adults, I swear.