That Great Philosopher, Mick Jagger

Last night, Singapore time, I was trying to sign up for my classes. And I found that, thanks to some stupid technicality and the fact that I am a mere 3 creds away from being considered a third year student, that I cannot take third year courses. Even though I am a third year student. I kept panicking. I kept trying to call the English Department, I kept getting impatient and angry at their lack of knowledge, their response. That I, the student, had to outline to these dunderheads my situation and then light the path of solution and problems with the solution FOR them. That I had to wait for a response from people who seemingly sit on their ass and do nothing while a whole ocean and several countries or a whole ocean and half of america separate me from Toronto.

So I raged. I cried. I stormed. I left a long, detailed, slightly-shaking-with-anger message on the Undergraduate director's answering machine. After thinking bitter, surging thoughts of the level of incompetency in departmental offices of academia, I fell asleep.

They say everything looks better with sleep, but this is rarely, if ever, true. I was just as angry, just as annoyed and panicking jsut as much in the morning. But the plight of the situation and my own mental neuroticies spurred me to think of another way to reach the same goal. I couldn't do anything; I might as well sit back. I realized, I was re-evaluating, as we must do, when things aren't going our way.

I knew my end goal and decided that, before freaking the hell out, that I might as well see if there were any way to get what I wanted, what I needed, to be done if I took another tack. I'm not going to give up by any means - I am still going to rage and storm and push until they give me third year classes. But...I will be okay and the world will not collapse if, in some bizarre and alternate universe that I don't get these classes.

Mm, perspective, it is a lethal weapon. Would I be able to breathe were in toronto? Would I have ben able to let the matter lie so quickly and decide to search for an alternate solution so quickly had distance and three time zones not separated me? Probably not. I would've charged over there the next day and demanded to be seen, and then using my Inherent SuperPowers of Rhetorical Persuasion (also known as annoying persistence like that of a housefly), I would've gotten what I wanted.

But then I remembered those famous words, bless their drugged british rock hearts: you can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes...you get what you need.

Which allayed my fears only slightly but worked to calmm me. Speaking to a friend this morning (her night), she updated me on her life. Telling me that she was going to be coming to the same university as me and then outlining her thoughts, her goals. I started to think...gosh, I didn't see that happening. Who would've thunk it? Could I have ever honestly imagined that, a year later, she would be at the junction where I was, a year earlier, emotionally mature and ready to explore? No. Again, time and space grants you many boons; one of them is this. As ecstatic beyond words I am at the fact that she will be in toronto, that I will get to see her and that FINALLY she will be purusing what she wants, I realized again:

What she wanted changed so dramatically. A year ago, if you had asked her what she wanted, it would've been something completely different. And yet, here she was, standing at this crossroads, ready to take the plunge. She tried to plough through...then she tried to change her life. And maybe it's not what she originally wanted. But she got what she needed baby. She got what she needs. I am proud of her - and equally astounded with the veracity of those words.

Seeing this in action...sort of blew me away. Filled me with disbelief and then gratitude that I could see these eternal words in play. Put things into perspective further for me.

Because you can't always get what you want. You can't always get what you want. You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes....you get what you need.

Ohhhh baby.

The Promised Land

So I was talking to a friend last night at this pre-new years reunion party thing. She goes to Berkeley in San Fran. San Fran, land of the Andreas fault line, Golden Gate Bridge, many gay people and Full House. Land of the no less than 20 degree weather, surfing and bleached blondes. Land of the - well, you get it.

The last time I spoke to her, she was thinking of switching into Linguistics but totally bailed on it when she realized that Linguistics had more to do with syntax and sound than with the socio-economic and anthropological backgrounds of the language, which is what she was looking to gain. So she decided to take Economics as her major, which sounds drab and commonplace , but of course it's not because she's at Berkeley.

So she's taking a course called Crisis Development, being taught by an actual memeber of faculty who's a UN ambassador. And the format of the class is as follows. This brilliant ambassador bloke will state an international crisis; for example, the president of a major country gets shot. Every person in the clas sthen gets assigned a role in the internation community. Thus, someone could be a CNN reporter, the vice president to the late President, a leader of neighbouring or trade relations country, head of the UN, etc. Then they have debates, convene at summits and UN headquarters and discuss a strategy to calm the masses, to implement on the country, and the social, economic and political consequences of their decisions.

I don't know about you, but I think that sounds absolutely amazing. See, this. This is what I pictured university would be like; full of amazing classes and dynamic faculties, with life-changing experience. I'm envious of her, I'll admit, because she gets to meet people like Simon Hurst and the Guy Who Invented the Laser .

I know that in the grand scheme of things, no one need pity me and that this complaining is rather ungrateful of me, yes? I have the chance to even attend university and for that I'm humbled and grateful, and the experience must and can only be what I make out of it what I will. In other words, I must take my learning in my own hands.

But there is more to university than that. It is a lifestyle; it seems to be a mindset. This physical place somehow molded into a train of thought in my mind and the minds of others. You cannot run away from it: the studying is tied in with the people. The lifestyle is varied; that is, you can make of it what you want. If you want to party, you party. If you want to study, you study and if you want to do a little bit of both then you rely heavily on coffee and sparks notes.

I was talking to Ter and we were just bitching about the stupid people on her residence floor. It reminded me of how I myself hated not only where I lived but the people whom I lived with. And compared to Western, Waterloo was fairly tame. Yet I was still aggravated. I think I would've been the psychotic shoots-everyone kid if I had to be at Western. It's so strange, she told me, because everyone had basically been lying to her all her life. I understood. How was she to blame for being coaxed into loving this place, this notion of university? This living breathing revolutionary thought it had become through no fault of her own. People like us, we saw it as a light at the end of our very very dark tunnel, almost like a salvage and not quite as the prize but not a stepping stone either. More like a place of quenching the thirst, the restlessness. They told her she would meet like-minded people but maybe the fine print was, like-minded people provided you attend university in with your brain off and not inspect too closely.

I feel bad marginalizing because not everyone's brain is off, by any means. But a majority of the people I've had the neutral experience (or thorough displeasure) of meeting have been either completely unremarkable or so remarkably ridiculous so as to blip on my radar for their intense stupidity. It is rather unnerving, I sometimes (I lie: often) think that these people will someday be running countries and making grand decisions for the so-called betterment of society. I only can feel thorough distaste and then I feel guilty for feeling that because, really, it is this society that has caused them to be such mind-numbing idiots.

Then someone such as myself thinks, well, these kids are idiots, the mainstreamers, the engineers, the healthsci or environment kids but maybe there's a small collective underground group that keep to themselves, scholars who'd rather not be marred by the reps of The Others. It's all very hush-hush and the dark, artsy, underground thought appeals to me. And I even find them. But of course, like everything in university, this too requires closer inspection and is a play on the original words. I see, really, that their underground is more the basement of someone's house and their dark artsyness gives way to misinformed, ill-opinionated pretentiousness. I'm rather shocked at their naievety and am somewhat offended at how ignorant they are. In the end I grieve that I ever leant them that much credit and think, well I'd rathr be with the numbskulls anyway: they might not have an opinion but then that means you don't have to put up with the close-minded pretentious crap either.

The Amish have this ritual for 19 and 20 year olds. It's like a coming out or something. Before they transition for adolesence to adulthood, the ducklings are released into the wild so they can have as much promiscuous sex and alcohol as they want, experiment with drugs and the like and basically havea kickass life for one year before they return back to the homestead. Upon their return, most renounce those years as Satanic and move on to their quiet furniture building existence (joke XD) but some - few mind you - decide to head back to what we big city folk call "real life". This is almost like that....except without the hope of these people ever withdrawing.

So what exactly am I trying to say? A good many things here. I'm trying to say...I feel a little cheated, no matter how childish that sounds. I feel different; I am not like these other people who worry about whether a boy likes them or whether he'll call them or who wore what or what club event is going on. I feel very tired and bothersome when friends try to tell me about what she said or he said and why that matters at all. I really cannot seem to connect on the same points as others around me and perhaps that is my own fault for being too uppity in my arse. Perhaps not. It just...shocks me a little and I feel like a...blind, lost soul, grappling for the next crevice of rock to hold on to, to take the next step. I'm sad not because this is a lonely existence but because the Soul of this World seems to be entrapped in something else entirely.

When my friend from San Fran tells me about all these wonderful things she has the opportunity to experience I'm in awe but I'm jealous too. She attends an American University and so she has a broader base, a wider spectrum with which to confer from. I'm bordering on attending three universities by now and I have to say that the experience is pretty much the same, with varying degrees of insanity. There is no depth, there is no importance; there is only frustration and anger at the atmosphere. There is a sense of loss and sense of detachment. I just felt like...this was supposed to be it. It was supposed to be the centre of my world, an overprivileged slice of real life. People looked forward to high school, I looked forward to second year university.

And besides Queens and Western, universities are pretty effing ugly.