(no subject)
i've decided to leave st. john's at the end of this year.
there are a million reasons . . . for the sake of not ranting my fucking next two hours away and being boring, i'm going to make a little list. and those of you who want to know more can call, or email, or i'll try to be on IM to talk to everyone about this cos it's a big deal.
1. santa fe is shitty, as is new mexico generally. the college purposely picked santa fe in order to create a monastic atmosphere of quiet solitude in which we could focus on our studies-- yeah, yeah. this sounds brilliant in the booklet, but it's FUCKING KILLING ME. there is NO ONE HERE. there is NOTHING HERE. I CANNOT DEAL WITH IT.
2. johnnies are emotional retards who want to be philosophers when they grow up. i've developed varying degrees of friendship with a few people who are blessed exceptions to this, but generally people are too fucking self-important about their intellectual-basement-creepiness, and treat their isolation from people and the world as some sort of massive achievement. i did that already: wore army pants, read nietzsche, felt really big. and then i grew up. the people around me never will.
3. perfectionism is more of a curse here than anywhere else. you are basically expected to drown in work and not have a social life, and people generally achieve this with pride. i was proud of it for a while, but it's a big fucking ego game for everyone (and it was for me, for a while). congratulations on reading every book ever written and never having any fun, you fucking losers.
4. this perfectionism encourages a horrible sense of self-destructive anxiety among the students-- including myself. many describe the impulse as: "kill your brain before it kills you." people around me are generally in the process of achieving this with hard drugs, hard liquor, meaningless casual sex, and the cigarettes that 90 percent of the people on camus smoke. it's disgusting, but sadly understandable given the workload and level of expectation. these days, i purposely swear myself to a straight-edge lifestyle in order to avoid these pitfalls, but this means that i get to experience even MORE of the anxiety and emotional stress that others are escaping in the aforementioned ways.
even after quitting drinking, i became obsessed with exercise and stopped eating much, so that i was either studying or exercising pretty much all the time. this meant i stopped making music, was only able to write angry, depressed, desperate poetry, and never found time to talk to people who are most important to me-- yes, this means you, nik, ben, and marla.
this feels too much like adolesence, only this time it's not my fault. i'm being driven to depression and anxiety on the premise that i should become a disembodied aristotelian mind, and i FUCKING DON'T want to be one.
i COULD keep living in a little isolated shithole.
i COULD keep working myself to death.
i COULD sit around waiting for people to stop being philosophical trekkies.
i COULD try to have a fucking life here even though you're not supposed to . . .
but i could make things easier and happier for myself by leaving. so i'm leaving. i refuse to go through hell for the great fucking books. i want to live.
there are a million reasons . . . for the sake of not ranting my fucking next two hours away and being boring, i'm going to make a little list. and those of you who want to know more can call, or email, or i'll try to be on IM to talk to everyone about this cos it's a big deal.
1. santa fe is shitty, as is new mexico generally. the college purposely picked santa fe in order to create a monastic atmosphere of quiet solitude in which we could focus on our studies-- yeah, yeah. this sounds brilliant in the booklet, but it's FUCKING KILLING ME. there is NO ONE HERE. there is NOTHING HERE. I CANNOT DEAL WITH IT.
2. johnnies are emotional retards who want to be philosophers when they grow up. i've developed varying degrees of friendship with a few people who are blessed exceptions to this, but generally people are too fucking self-important about their intellectual-basement-creepiness, and treat their isolation from people and the world as some sort of massive achievement. i did that already: wore army pants, read nietzsche, felt really big. and then i grew up. the people around me never will.
3. perfectionism is more of a curse here than anywhere else. you are basically expected to drown in work and not have a social life, and people generally achieve this with pride. i was proud of it for a while, but it's a big fucking ego game for everyone (and it was for me, for a while). congratulations on reading every book ever written and never having any fun, you fucking losers.
4. this perfectionism encourages a horrible sense of self-destructive anxiety among the students-- including myself. many describe the impulse as: "kill your brain before it kills you." people around me are generally in the process of achieving this with hard drugs, hard liquor, meaningless casual sex, and the cigarettes that 90 percent of the people on camus smoke. it's disgusting, but sadly understandable given the workload and level of expectation. these days, i purposely swear myself to a straight-edge lifestyle in order to avoid these pitfalls, but this means that i get to experience even MORE of the anxiety and emotional stress that others are escaping in the aforementioned ways.
even after quitting drinking, i became obsessed with exercise and stopped eating much, so that i was either studying or exercising pretty much all the time. this meant i stopped making music, was only able to write angry, depressed, desperate poetry, and never found time to talk to people who are most important to me-- yes, this means you, nik, ben, and marla.
this feels too much like adolesence, only this time it's not my fault. i'm being driven to depression and anxiety on the premise that i should become a disembodied aristotelian mind, and i FUCKING DON'T want to be one.
i COULD keep living in a little isolated shithole.
i COULD keep working myself to death.
i COULD sit around waiting for people to stop being philosophical trekkies.
i COULD try to have a fucking life here even though you're not supposed to . . .
but i could make things easier and happier for myself by leaving. so i'm leaving. i refuse to go through hell for the great fucking books. i want to live.