Miles of Something

I. How do you like college? I’m not sure who is asking this question, so please anticipate a response that is truly candid and perhaps even a bit luxuriant. Rather than shaping my answer to please one person or another, I’m going to be honest and, at times, surely offensive. So, thank you anonymous person for allowing me to explore my experiences without any reservations. 

I’m a year and a half into my undergraduate education— a band of time that our culture adorns with expectations so lofty that they cannot possibly be fulfilled.

Back in high school, college was painted as the point of escape— from the physics teachers and the hockey coaches and the kids I’d taught myself not to make eye contact with. College promised to eradicate these nasty players by distilling a culture of likeminded students bound by a desire to advance and explore. The Goddamn brochures, with their high gloss photos of leather-bound books and grinning minorities in tweed seemed to be taken from my dreams. This impending notion of the university goaded me from one AP course to the next. I joined clubs I disdained to pad my résumé. I engaged in sycophancy to ensure teacher recommendations. Sometimes I spoke to people simply to avoid walking alone in the halls.

I remember standing onstage, surrendering a novelty-sized check to the winners of a lip-synch competition—they’d performed a shirtless rendition of Cascada’s “Every Time We Touch.” I stood there between the valedictorian and one of the vice principals wondering what the fuck I was doing with my life. None of it related to me. 

Ultimately, in order to ensure the imminent promise of college—that is, an escape from high school— I lost myself as I embraced all that was high school. Then I actually took the leap.

II. The media has always taught me that college is an absolute party. It promises that it is on these sprawling lawns and in those neo-classical edifices that I will meet my best friends, have copious sex and leave with a diploma of incomparable value. Yes, popular culture has warned me that I’ll get alcohol poisoning and have a momentary lapse in my sexuality—but, ultimately,  it pats me on the back with a warm palm and tells me that I shouldn’t expect such little impediments to exceed a comedic montage that also features Will Ferrell in a flaming bear suit. Media has assured me that I’ll never have to worry about college as long as I don’t think too hard.

This phenomenon is particularly interesting considering that I hardly see depictions of college that aren’t intended to be farcical—I’m thinking American Pie I through XXIII. Instead the media pumps out stories reflecting the road to college or the fond recollection of it. Seriously, it’s difficult to recall many depictions of college life in the flesh— its ugly, self-doubting, herpes ridden flesh. Cloaked by varsity jackets and the hackneyed garb of “hipsters”—a term I absolutely loathe—the collegiate visage is all but elusive when I try to consider it up close and critically. Even so, I’m supposed trust Modern Family’s Ty Burrell when he tells me: Those were the greatest years of my life.

Honestly, I don’t see myself reflecting quite so fondly.

III. The following eleven paragraphs are summarized by the following mathematical proof. High School = College. If you’re interested in more anecdotes, skip ahead to the next bolded heading.

It’s not because I hate college—I don’t. My perspective is founded, instead, on the basis of an overarching anomie. Plainly put, I’m disillusioned— disillusioned by the archetypes that bind and torture students, teachers, and institutions. The college campus is just another point of indoctrination, where members of the youth are inculcated to conform—within and outside of the classroom. It is here that I’ve once again been forced to surrender myself fatuously to the expectations of our culture.

Upon arrival, I witnessed the Edenic allure of college shift: it was no longer my final destination. Just as high school was my detestable launch pad to college, college transformed, becoming my terminal to the workforce, to adulthood and to the tantalizingly ambiguous notion of maturity. Undergoing this lateral slide, college became simply another initiation point, where I was expected to toil in the present and contemplate my future covetously.

College is just another link in the concatenation of socially embraced abominations that have stipulated the trajectory of my life. Just as in high school, I’ve been driven by mandates to commit to uninspiring classes like Rhetoric and Media Studies. I’ve joined organizations and societies that I disdain to ensure that extra flourish on my résumé. I’ve embraced a creed of adulation to ensnare the attention of professors and to ensure that they’ll insert my name into the blank spaces of their mass distributed letters of recommendation. And, inevitably, I’ve fostered hollow friendships in the loathsome name of networking. As it exists today, college, like high school, is just another ring of purgatory preceding yet another precarious promised land. 

Upon matriculation, I’d already begun to submit to this system in the most prostrate of poses, my nose pressed to the ground and my eyes fixed to the exit. I conformed and complied because I expected—upon graduation— a concluding payoff. But, through adherence to this regimen, I’ve discovered that there is no ultimate end—there’s just another room to wait out the agony.

And, for those unable or unwilling to break with this regnant template for existence— and, from now on, I’ll refer to them as drones—adulthood becomes just another space in the unending sequence, hosting their continued deference to norms and preset patterns. Yes, gradually, these spaces become better furnished, less intolerable—that is, if the drones are lucky. But, still, these poor people may only inhabit such spaces if they devote themselves to the doctrine of banality that dominates the contemporary existence. In order to achieve healthy satisfaction in this system, contorting and eviscerating their unique identities becomes requisite, particularly if their innate forms are especially original, unhampered, or out-there.

I remember entering one of Bowles Hall’s dingy art deco bathrooms, only to find the porcelain sink basin stained with roseate streaks. They were the lingering traces of a floor-mate’s blood. He’d used a scalpel to slice up his forearm. I stood there, disturbed by the grisly leftovers but, also, stricken by a clear and regrettable understanding. More than anything else, I was disturbed by how much I related.

When the drones submit their personal distinctions as sacrificial offerings and embrace all that is generic, the keys to the minivan are theirs to covet. Seriously, if they’re white or if they act “white,” they are guaranteed at least a middling prosperity.  But is it worth it?

Well, the popularity of banality seems to indicate as much. The pool of supplicants is unsurprisingly enormous, flirting with the notion of demographic totality. Satisfied with their implicitly motivated suffering, drones continue to long for a better future. It’s what they’ve been conditioned to do in high school, in college and beyond. Rather than extracting joy from each passing moment, their gaze never leaves the roseate streaks on the horizon— forever untouchable. These people don’t think because they know that the future will reward them for their penance in the present. Their stalwart belief in the unfounded is on par with those who anticipate reincarnation or the arrival of some ethereal messiah.

Many people mock Islamic fringe groups for their ninety-nine virgins, but, honestly, the sacrosanct notion of Golden Years and delayed satisfaction is no different here in the West. Instead of appreciating each moment in life, the drones delay their gratification until life’s close. Inevitably, they’re dragged along by their own greed, their necessitated triumph at life’s end. Finally, after being scraped across the surface of the Earth after decade upon miserable decade, the fortunate ones can crack one single exhausted smile. Then they die.

College functions only to crystalize this mindset as the reigning paradigm. It heralds conformity, careerism, and the destructive parsing of life in scientific terms. Due in part to college, the vernacular with which we approach life has abandoned boundless concepts like spirit, soul and zest, elevating instead the devastatingly empirical. Today, college is a mill for automatons, produced and primed to function seamlessly in the workforce— that next step in the dance of the drones.  

A noontime stroll through Sproul Plaza is a nonpareil means of experiencing the ethers of insincerity, desperation and intense self-interest that envelope drone society. Clusters of business students in discount blazers strut from bench to bench. Disinterested recruiters, hand out flyers to anyone who will take them. Neon plastic wayfarers abound. The same song is playing from separate stereos—it’s a dup-step mix of an Adele song that no one really likes but that still manages to permeate everyone’s iPod. Unlit, the bookstore looms behind some rusty scaffolding. The Korean Student Union bickers with the Vietnamese Student Union over table space while the Chinese Student Union distributes Pokémon themed cookies. A visiting professor—unaware that professionals aren’t meant to interface with their students– drops her satchel, scattering papers everywhere. Everyone walks by, blasé about everything but their midterm results.

I feel like I’m preaching from the Gospel of Holden Caulfield— I almost regret doing so— but it’s all so painfully true. Call me an apologist if you must, but I will never apologize for being truthful.

IV. Now that I’ve released my cathartic Charles Manson style rant of the month, I’d like to transition from the baseless abstractions of a soapbox preacher and instead consider some more specific encounters and experiences that have shaped my ambivalence about college life.

Boy, you’d think that moving across the country from an uptight suburb to a bastion of urban liberalism would change a guy. It hasn’t. I look the same—give or take a few dozen pounds and a pair of orange pants. I think the same—though, I may have actually become slightly more conservative. I act the same—though, of course, there are now droves of new faces to offend. Continuity is obstinacy’s kindest return.

V. A Few Observations:

Frat parties are all the same regardless of who comes in flannel and who leaves in an ambulance. Three nights a week they invite the naïve to probe and investigate all that is concealed from the streets by dilapidated Spanish Revival facades and dutiful if underpaid Chicano gardeners. Of course, more often than not, these freshmen are the ones who are probed and investigated, humiliated and castigated, called names and coerced into leaving (it should be noted that these allegations are purely observational— with personal experience offering them no basis). Unfortunately, there is one aspect of the Frat experience that leaves no partygoer unscathed: Dubstep (Yes, I was expecting anal rape too…). Universally embraced for its heavy, seizure inducing bass, the popular sound contributes oddly to the mystique of those dilapidated old mansions that creak and sway with each throb of the amplifier. It’s almost as if those historic homes are attempting to purge themselves of whatever vile germ infests and violates them.

Thankfully, there are other types of gatherings too. Opposing the low brow exclusivity of the frat party are apartment parties with their agonizing mix of friend groups and their scarcity of windows to exhale or jump from. Hosts are determined to show that they can manage a room full of disparate souls, many of which come purely for the liquor and the opportunity to be subtly irate. The music usually avoids mingling with Dubstep and its siblings, preferring more subdued tracks, but, really, it depends on the crowd—in Berkeley Neutral Milk Hotel and The Smiths can never be very far away and, though diversity I crave diversity, I can’t really complain. At least two people will practice their Morrissey impersonations, butchering something about a double decker bus and a heavenly way to die before abandoning what they perceive to be profound and picking up a bong or, worse, a Wii remote. In an environment of such clear genius, it’s natural then that attention seeking behaviors abound. Some people will laugh just to be noticed. Others will make outlandish and vulgar remarks because, ostensibly, they share the same agenda. I quote: Can you like drip acid on a girl’s pussy and then have someone lick it off? Like would they get fucked up?

Here, the more acceptable small-talk never seems to escape certain strains of buzz. Fleeting discussions of Four Loko, women writers, nineties cartoons, Obama, and high school (reread Section III if you don’t see the irony there) always seem to circle back to the inevitable spoken exit strategy: Really interesting stuff, buddy. Now let me go get another drink.

Unfortunately, in order to appear normal, we’re all forced to align with at least one of these nasty schools of purported fun, and that means that the displeasures of the contrived social gathering are ensured and on schedule—perfunctory duties not dissimilar to my bimonthly Brazilian wax.

I’m unsurprised by how the taking of Facebook photos has become a requisite ritual at these events (not the waxing, I promise). Now that we’ve all capitulated to social networking and, thus, the threat of constant surveillance from acquaintances back home and that guy with the lip ring from our ceramics classes, it’s essential that we keep up appearances. Unlike all of the generations that preceded us, we are not able to luxuriate over our escape from earlier times; now, more than ever, the past follows us and its talons are sharp and dig deep into our back flesh. So now, in this new purgatory, we write statuses to entertain both our present and our past. Under this tenet of Facebook, we post photos to record our contemporaries and to assuage our histories, urging representatives of both to remember that yes, we’re still normal. With each photo we’re veritably shouting out how common we are, announcing to all that we can fit in away from home too. With each tag, we’re begging for validation through digital likes or simple acknowledgement in conversation. Hey bro, it looks like you’re enjoying college.

Yes, it sure does look that way, bro. But the digital scrapbook is inherently doctored and biased against reality. It’s obvious that some photos have been left out. Where’s the visual record of the guy with the blood dripping from his right nostril after doing a line or four? What about the boy who burned a name onto his stomach with a red hot belt buckle? Who could omit that girl who slit her windpipe with a razorblade after a drunken liaison? And, of course, where are the pictures of us at our most pathetic? Thanks to the ordinances of the game, they’re missing conspicuously from everywhere but our imaginations. And, believe me, without a template to work from, my imagination can still cast your misery in an eidetic detail that is nothing if not vibrant.

I’m disturbed by the number of students who have a Wikipedia education, who read album reviews but neglect to listen to the album. Oh, yes, I’ve heard of Ingmar Bergman—I just haven’t seen any of her movies. Sure, culture is a worthless currency but stripping it from your mind, your discourse, doesn’t exactly make your personality rich.

Confessing that I’ve become more humble won’t really compliment my disdainful arguments against the college student archetype. However, I’ll diminish my own credibility if I don’t concede that in college I’ve met people whose achievements are superior to my own in every possible respect. No, there isn’t some sort of Transformers-esque conglomerate of knowledge chained in the basement of Wheeler Hall. Instead, mastery is spread out over the crowd, attached to anonymous faces and, thus, making the notion of an opponent difficult to discern. The mystery of who is better at what is terrifying. In every crowd there seems to be a brilliant film scholar, a Pakistani med student on the cusp of residency, two chatting emeriti with twelve books on their resumes, and, of course, me— that fat fuck with a chai latte his parents paid for.

What a disappointment this assessment has been. A bit of street corner ramblings here, a set of weak pop culture references there. Then again, it’s your fault if you expected anything more than inflated bullshit, at least from a college student like me.

[Dictated but not read by Myles Parker Osborne on January 13th, 2012].