I was a terror since the public school era. - Biggie
Today is the end of summer or the first day of school depending on which way you see it. I was reminded of this from the time I got on the bus this morning and saw the high school neophytes with their faces filled with that mixture of eagerness and anxiety.
Apparently learning to keep your eyeballs to yourself and not stare at big people is a skill they teach in high school now cause one fresh yout was eyeballing me hard until I gave him my best old school Ice Cube look. That'll teach him. jdid doing his part for edumacation.
Anyway its so nice to see them before they get corrupted and become the loud, obnoxious terrors posing like they hard that they will be in two weeks time, slouched over the bus seats or with their bags riding next to them like they think their bags paid bus fare and I should stand up. You best to move that ish son!
I barely remember my first day of primary school or high school just odd stories from my mom about how I just took off and never looked back in both cases. I do remember my first day at University though and all the drama and trauma that it entailed: going to the Brunny(first and last time ever), really dumb ass initiation rituals, getting attacked by students from another faculty, etc etc but I wont recount it in detail because I just dont want to and to be honest after high school I really expected University students to act more like adults as opposed to alcoholic morons. University students adults ha! Shows how much I had to learn back then.
And I was 19 at the time so you can imagine what its like these days with Ontario churning out force ripe high school grads at the ripe old age of 17. Downright scary!
And you can see it on the faces of the frosh (freshmen) who I saw on the subway this morning. "Aint even lose their mother features" would be the phrase to best apply here. Clueless, wide-eyed, but maybe not so innocent. Think they know but really haven't the foggiest. Its a right of passage I guess but still you see these kids and really wonder was I ever that young? Well I know I wasn't that young in first year university but maybe I was that naive, that fresh faced, that whats the opposite of Jdid again?
Eventually it disappears. The weight of having to make adult decisions, living on your own, balancing a budget, the endless drudge of the commute, balancing school and work, the endless lectures about professionalism, pulling all-nighters to hand in, in the grand scheme of things, meaningless assignments that masquerade as important feats to be performed, etc slowly sucks away if not that youthful energy that young, fresh and green appearance.
They name it gaining experience and it is good to have to survive life but like every other situation where someone says its progress something had to be given up in order to make that progress. A so it a go!
9 comments:
Seeing as I'm still on the finishing leg, I can't join you in bashing the university peeps just yet. I probably fall in that there "fresh" and "green" category...
But I am three years clear of high school, so I can give gun and ammo for that: and you're right about their precocity and force-ripeness.
I think it's tragic tho, that today's youth are in such a hurry to grow up... My parents tell me all the time that their childhood was nothing like mine and they are convinced that we are just deviant, evil and rebellious (my mother's pet word).
I never expected to feel like that about the generation following mine before I was, say, forty. But I look at these kids and feel like a 20yo old maid... Sometimes I despise them and think they're just plain evil, but other times I look at how the world is going, and the high levels of exposure that they have and sympathise...
One thing for sure is that school days are some of the best damned days of anyone's life. I hope they realise that before they turn, say, forty...
Whenever school starts and I see those fresh faced kids I can't help but think:
Is someone beating this kid like they should?
De opposite might be suppem like "idealistic" -- except that yu still kinda idealistic (yu nah beat down de freshman dem wid de real zeal), an' ah guess all de idealism haffe gone before pure playa-hatin' can enter at de final level a de game.
I yearn for that time, devoid of the cynicism, when Mommy and Daddy did everything for me, and I had no responsibilites, and was sheltered from the evils of the world...
If I knew than what I know now, I would rule the world...
I'm with Afro. Actually, if I had it to do again, I think I would have done law instead of business and I/T.
I get nostalgic about the first day of school too, the new bag, the new clothes, the lecture from Sr. Fosca.
The first day of school came and with without incident, here. Thankfully.
Yeah, back to school and back to the traffic!
I remember my first day of high school and university, especially university. The anxiety, being awed of the increase in size of the campus compared to my previous school, the excitement! Those were the days.
i still remember the tag line for frosh week one year (i was an exchange student at UofT from UWI): "better than the real world"...
truer words have never been spoken...
lol @ amadeo...
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