Hmm, something about my computer seems to be slowing down the internet connection nowadays. I'll have to look into that.

Not really the best time to go into full detail about Amazing Race just yet because that damned impending doom just keeps coming back over and over again. I had my business law midterm just yesterday, and thank goodness we were allowed to bring in a cheatsheet that was standard paper dimensions, double sided. I pretty much had my eyes glued to that thing for the entire exam mainly because the class was supposed to be at pg 178 for the reading, and I was at pg 8. Almost just almost! Bastard if a dry textbook.

Well I bumped into an old elementary/Jr. High/High School friend just yesterday as I was taking the bus from Macewan. Most of the 2 ppl that read this blog regularily know her, her name's Jennifer Polluck. Anyhow it was a big suprise seeing as I hadn't seen her since Shep, and even then I saw her maybe once every month or so.

So we got to talking about old friends and ppl we used to know back in school. It was just as if we were at our high school reunion, because the stories had the biggest range of different outcomes per person. It's almost like the game Fable, where all the different choices can lead you to a life of good, or to ultimate darkness. But in this case a life of good would have included going to university/college, having a successful career without going to school, traveling to different countries, or even getting married at our tender age of 19. Whereas the darker side was drug addiction, drug dealing, drinking problems, getting your girlfriend pregnant by accident, having a deadend job, being caught for stealing cash from your job. Yeah quite the range.

Well all of our talking got me to thinking about my situation, or should I say our situation for the majority of the ppl who read these blogs: going to post secondary. I just got to saying that after hearing all of these extremes, you would have never guessed so many different and extreme things could happen to ppl by looking at them back in the classroom. And then there's us, the full-time students. How dull our life seems when our noses are always in books, with a majority of us still living with our folks, and those few individuals that moved out barely scraping by for money. And while we're sitting in our little desks studying, or in front of our computer monitors and typing our frustrations out on a blog or instant messaging window, ppl out there are getting married, maturing 80x faster than we are, making a really good living, meeting the future head-on. Sure makes our life seem dull doesn't it?

Anyway, so I got to telling Jenn about this frustration as a student, seeing as she plans to goto Grant Mac to be a massage therapist and enter the student world, I thought she had a right to know how she was going to feel as a student. That's when she quickly contradicted me and just simply said, "No no no. It's a good thing. You guys are beginning your real lives, and your futures." And that really got me thinking....

(I don't want to make any generalizations out of anyone, so I'm gonna refer to myself directly at the beginning as to not offend anyone. But of course a huge majority of it will sound like your situation as well. It's mainly to serve as a motivation for myself in academics much like Ryan's previous blog, but I'd be really glad if it helped other people out of their ruts too.)

WARNING: May get long-winded.

As a student, I almost feel an obligation in today's world to feel stressed out, or seem like I'm in a rush. I mean come on! Life is tough as a student! We have essays, midterms, quizzes, and assignments all alternating every single week. How am I supposed to keep up?! Why should I grind away at this crap while ppl who chose not to or who couldn't make it to post secondary are laughing it up with their cushy jobs, steady income, and independent life? Why did I ever choose this path and why does society always push school as the ideal life after high school?

Well quite frankly, there is a reason. School is tough understandably, and I have a somewhat expectation to bitch and moan about it. And it's also true that ppl who didn't goto school most likely got a comfy job, and independent lifestyle that I've always been craving all my life. So how is that supposed to motivate me? It's not. It's supposed to make me give up, like so many before me. I may as well throw in the towel, because I'll be better off right? Steady job and independent life, here I come!

Wrong! That's not the way it is. That's the way they want me to look at it. How do you think the student body of your graduating year shrinks so dramatically from the beginning of the whole process, Kindergarten? People give up, and it's a fact. Not everyone is made out for this life. But it is also a fact that my parents raised me up the way they did for a reason. No matter what they ever say to me or do to me, I know deep down that they ultimately want to see me succeed in life. No matter the hostile relations in the past, or any kind of drama that came up, they really do want the best for me, and they want to be able to be proud of me when I succeed. I think it's every parent's dream to be able to point to their son one day and proudly say "That's MY son." It's the life and opportunity they never had at our age, after all.

So here's the big realization. School isn't a life, it's a milestone. People who chose to follow the academic route aren't doomed to essays and midterms for their entire life. It's merely another step on the ladder for us to reach success. And it's something we need to get past in order to grasp that dream life we've always been promised.

Now for all of you nay-sayers that always claim themselves as "Too lazy" or "I have a bad habit of procrastinating" and decide to accept it, you may as well drop your books now because you've already quit. This also goes for anyone who thinks that college or university is about the experience, hence partying/drinking/socializing rather than getting the grades.

The point is clear. For these next few years of my life, my occupation is Student. I have steady hours, and clear and concise duties that I'm responsible for. I'm not just "going to school" or "taking a few courses", I am a full-time student much like a full-time worker. Whenever you ask someone who works, you never hear them just say "I'm just going to work." They just simply say "I'm working." And though it may seem really cheesy to say, I think that's the attitude that some people including myself need to apply to school: "I'm learning." Because essentially that's what we're doing. We aren't doing it on the side, or taking any partial responsibilities of school, but we're undertaking the entire task. And with that comes the possibility that we could get "fired" from that task, by not doing well enough to return the next year.

All I'm trying to say is that, it's not as overly exasperating as many of us contrue it to be. As a student and nothing else, we solely have the responsibility to keep up with readings, and our homework, and do well in our tests. Of course there are the outside obligations, but it really comes down to our prioritizing. If you had to work a shift, there's no way anyone would say "Screw it, I'll just do it later" or go watch TV instead, unless they wanted to get fired, or fail miserably.

So from this day on, I'm going to always consider myself a FULLtime student, with fulltime responsibilities. No more of this BS of whether I 'feel' like getting some school work done or not. And I'm really going to shoot for that extra mile, because even though it's scary, that's the only difference between us and those ppl stuck at the dead-end jobs. We shot for the extra mile when it came to school, and they had other things on their minds. Thus our positions today. Need I say again that us being where we are today is a privelege and we should always remember and treat it as that, because I'm sure many people would trade us for our opportunities in a heartbeat.