MayVaneDay Studios (Gopher Edition)
you don't own me, assholes
published: 12-14-2018
In the bottom of my clothes dresser lies a gray and orange shirt. I don't remember when exactly I got it- I think my parents might have forced me to get it during high school orientation, or maybe it was earlier- but it has "We Are (city name)" in big orange letters on the front and "Class of 2018" on the back. Except the front says "We Aren't (city name)", the emphasis added with shaky black permanent marker that's faded over the years.
School spirit celebrations post-elementary school were complete and utter soykaf. If there were no major suspensions, then the higher-ups would hire a DJ to blast everyone's ears out during lunch in the tiny cafeteria. I vividly remember standing in the alternate line, trying to get a shitty peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, and then a gaggle of girls crowded around the DJ and proceeded to throw their backs out doing the Harlem Shake. And then there were Friend Days, where I'd purposely go out of my way to sit somewhere secluded so I wouldn't be disturbed, and then some ninth-grade white girl with perfect teeth and a letter jacket full of athletic patches would sit by me anyway and force me into a conversation, regardless if I was verbal that day or not. Come high school, I just skipped all the pep fests I could and hung out in the classrooms of whatever teachers were feeling sympathetic that day and would let me hide.
My exit questionaires that every student has to fill out before finals keep asking me the same goddamn questions. Do you feel respected by your teachers? Do you feel respected by your peers? Was the coursework more challenging than you expected it to be? Would you recommend this class to a friend or prospective student?
Do you feel like you belong here?
What's the point in taking pride in an academic institution? I wasn't there when my college was founded. I wasn't even a sperm in my father's ballsack yet. I had no part in dreaming it up, or creating it, or filling it with money-hungry individuals who only give a shit about my health so long as it means I'll get to class regularly. All I contributed was a large coerced sum of money and my mental health.
Am I supposed to be proud of this? Am I supposed to be proud of languishing in an institution where my worth is determined by a few numbers on a screen? Am I supposed to brand myself as one of their products, like a piece of cattle handed its own branding iron?
There's a flatscreen TV hanging outside the offices to the math and computer science department professors. It runs on a constant slideshow. "CARE", one of the slides proclaims, one of the many faculty groups on campus whose full name I can't remember. "Empowering (college name) students to thrive academically." (Emphasis mine.) It's the "academically" part I can't get past- who cares about all the other stuff I can do outside of the classroom? What does it matter that I've already written five books in my short life, that I taught myself a great deal of Python before I ever stepped foot in a college, that I practically already have the skills necessary for the job I want(ed)? Who cares that I'm a friend, a lover, a brother? It's just the grades that matter. F means Failure at Life, and A means Acceptable for Capitalism.
If you're from my college, and you know who I am, I have no loyalty to you. I feel no sentimentality for the institution that threw me back to anhedonia-era levels of depression just when I was finally starting to recover. I would turn my back and leave in a heartbeat if I knew that it wouldn't immediately financially fuck up myself and my family.
Despite these shackles on my wrists, you don't own me, and you never did.
With that being said, I don't know exactly where to go from here. I wanted to be a computer systems administrator- like lots of people on the fediverse are already, taking care of a system and making sure that the people who use it don't turn the place into Fortnite a Battle Royale and all kill each other and then nuke the server. But the current state of colleges seems to be churning out more and more employees for Google and Facebook and the like. I don't want to work for surveillance capitalism- I want to dedicate my life to fighting it! But that's not profitable in this current climate, apparently. If I'm not learning about Big Data and Big Companies, then I'm Big Worthless.
I don't think a communications major would take me down that path. I'm loathe to follow in my father's footsteps, but... with the focus on writing, I'd be free to pursue computer-y things at my own pace, without having a mental breakdown over not being able to write Python Text Facebook with three days left to go before the entire assignment turns into a Big Zero. I'm already more than proficient at writing- I should be able to ride on that... right?