Welcome to another one of my rants. Today I will be delving into the vast abyss that is post-secondary education. I will not be using defense mechanisms such as sugarcoating and the like to create this farce facade of “everything’s great.” Rather I will be conducting an honest—if not a little forthright—investigation if you will about what happens behind the walls of ivory and fields of green—and ultimately in the minds of students; I presume.
To begin, I didn’t necessarily chose my program per se—I had failed to meet the requirements for my desired path in degree and thus became my present. Regardless, I give my all in studying for my classes, and I thrive to excel so as to graduate on great academic standing. You see, I had always heard tales of students who had deferred for a year or two—switched programs like pairs of socks and so much more. Those tales however, never truly struck true with me—but on the contrary served as somewhat of a warning. I needed to know what I wanted to do with the rest of life—lest I fall ill to the pressures of being a student as many have. And so when I contracted said disease I was flustered, and my disbelief morphed to anger. Who had transmitted my “failure?” What could I have possibly done to deserve such a fate? These questions I am yet to answer. And in all honesty life sucks. It truly does. You think you have everything carefully thought out—your next 10 steps calculated and your path secured. But then life throws lemons at you—and not the good kind that would make for delicious lemonade; no, the ones that hurt, bruise and knock some breath out of you. You see, what I had been to naive to understand is that life doesn’t care—the universe doesn’t have your best interests at heart and subsequently it could get extremely chaotic. You may not be where you had so meticulously planned to be, you may not be in the program of your choosing—bills and assignments pile up and time waits for no man or woman.
Alas, I have transitioned from one me to another about a million times in the past three years, and although I may not have a handle on the spin of the world I’m okay. And so are you or you will be. Life refuses to relent but that doesn’t mean you should. It’s okay to feel lost, or scared or whatever else you may feel. All that is valid—and post secondary studies doesn’t help at all. For I have grown gradually more dizzy as the years go by; lost in a whirlwind of lectures, work and essays which has hindered my growth as a person. But once again that’s okay because at the end of the day if you do what makes you happy—by making the most out of what you can then there will come a day when everything sorts itself out and you will be happy. However, never let life win, and forcefully make lemonade out of the grenades of lemons thrown at you—and egg on to better days.