I've
had some great times during my prolonged years of tertiary education:
Adelaide University was a bastion of restraint during three years of
my life which were filled, almost exclusively, with drinking,
dancing, and lip-bitten comedowns. Every week of classes that pulled
me out of bed in those torturous days studying politics, morality,
and mindless electives is another week that I can count as having not
thrown away completely into the furnace. I learned some degree of
planning – sitting in the smoking area of a club at 8am on a
Sunday, it seems irresistibly tempting to drop another sixty on pills
and cross fingers that this Monday's comedown wouldn't be so rough. I
learned to keep to deadlines, and I learned – or to be fair, let's
say rediscovered – the joy in feeling smarter than other
people. What did I do this week, you ask? Well I didn't really do
very much for the first three days, to be honest, but on Thursday
night I sat in a computer lab all night researching and typing out a
gloriously passable account of Rawlsian social theory... what's
that? You don't know what that is? Well it's all about... well...
fuck, actually I've forgotten, but seriously guys, I did that
assignment, and for a week afterwards when people asked me what I'd
been up to, that was the dick-hardening answer that I threw out to
their bemused faces.
Had
I not attended uni for the past three years, my life would have been
almost completely devoid of any structure and any purpose. In the
four years that have passed since I finished school I've been at uni
for at least a few weeks each year – fuck in 2010 I actually did a
whole year!! While my measly six upper-level course
completions speaks volumes for the sub-par effort that I've put in
during those four years, it feels good to have done anything at
all... I mean, I almost feel like I've been able to get the best of
both worlds with this double life of uni student slash hardcore
club-head that I've been leading. On one hand, I know what it's like
doing assignments and writing essays and sticking to deadlines and
going to tutes and studying and putting off drinking and facebooking
during lectures etc. etc... but on the other hand, I have delved, at
least some way, into the perilous world of hardcore drug taking and
seen the shadow cast by our society's vast underbelly. I'm no Rhodes
Scholar, nor am I about ready to stand in an alleyway and sell four
nights a week, but I've had a taste of both paths, and I feel wiser
for it... is that an arrogant thing to say? Is that repulsively
self-congratulatory? Am I just trying to warp my own arbitrary
experiences into a coherent narrative to excuse myself for the lack
of direction that my formative years have been characterised by? I
honestly don't think so.
I
paid that eighty-nine dollars today, the blow was made so much
softer by the fact that I cleaned UP on my tour this morning,
but when I paid it I couldn't help but think that what I was doing
was basically flushing that cash away for the chance to be able to
say that I haven't thrown it all away just yet. Uni is such a
clearly defined path, and I can't say that I've totally given up the
idea of going back at some point and finishing my (snigger) Bachelor
of Arts... but right now I'm so happy – so insanely, illogically,
unreasonably content with where I'm headed and the way my life is
working – that it would be stupid to fuck with everything just
because forgoing the safety net of tertiary education feels a little
scary. When I came out here, I came out with the intention of living
without a net. I wanted to stare into the abyss and jump, knowing,
guessing, hoping, that there would be something in between me and
that infinite black to grasp onto, and that that something would be
enough to justify the sheer stupidity of the initial leap of faith. I
wanted to exist beyond my familiar comfort zone.
I'm
not going back to uni next year, but the option is still there, I
haven't lost sight of the path completely, not yet, maybe soon
though. For now, the edge is still out there. For now, I'm still
holding on.
Peace,
Taco.
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