Dialoguing with myself

[stripforme]

On my walk home from the bus stop I had a brief chat with myself about school and my lack of commitment.

This morning I slept in a half hour and then half-assed tried getting ready so I could leave for class on time. About four times or so I decided "no, I'm not going to go to class" when I realized I still had time to make it if I really rushed.

Comments

[pianist_envy]

Welcome to 3rd year! Here's a rant:

A bunch of people in my class (including myself) are pretty much fed up with learning zoo and just want to get the hell out. I still find the subject matter inherently interesting--anything math and science is worth reading in my book.

But UofT is a graduate/research university, at least from what I've seen in Engineering. I'd say half my profs have been good, half my profs have been terrible, and that's being optimistic. The general mentality seems to be, "I'm here because I have to be" with both students and faculty. We want to get our degrees, because these days you need one, and the staff need to teach class so they can get back to their research. TAs definitely don't give a shit about your education. Marking tests and labs? Busy work, but hey, it's part of the program.

I've definitely made myself purposely late for things. Or woken up in time to catch most of a class, then allowed myself to fall back asleep again so I'd wake up with only a few minutes left of class to not even ponder attending.

Anyway...

It's precisely around this time that everyone is scrambling to figure out why they got themselves here in the first place. Traditionally, University lived up to its name: post-secondary education. If you really wanted to keep learning about stuff, you kept learning about stuff. Now the BA has become a bare minimum, and a lot of interesting Engineering jobs (plus anything medical) require Masters and PhDs. It's a side effect of our economy, which wants nothing more than to expand like a virus, consuming and wasting as much as it can so it can make a few bucks from the conversion.

In coming to this realization, how we're all trapped in a bit of clockwork that forces us to lose sight of what genuinely interests us, I've gained a new passion for sustainable development, preventive engineering, and environmental studies. The other thing to realize is what we study (or do at our occupation) rarely reflects anything that has meaning in our lives. That's why everyone says, "Oh let's not talk about work, let's have fun!". There's a very distinct separation, and that's not healthy. That's why people have a mid-life crisis, and why we suffer the same symptoms at all ages, under different names (teen angst, college dropout, quarter life crisis).

You need to look at what's relevant in your life. What do you value? Why do you value it? When I graduated from high school, I knew I wanted to have an Engineering job. Now I need to figure out why, and for what cause. Yes, I'd love to work with machines and numbers, but not if all we did every day was make hand cream.

You have people skills, an affinity for being friendly, and having a personality people are drawn to. That's a general trait though, and it'll help you in all walks of life. I don't know you well enough to suggest what you'd be happy doing, but you'll have to figure that one out for yourself anyway.

Good luck!