A Call to Arms Brandon Ferguson, Opinions Editor For a long time now, P?ve wondered about the woeful state of post-secondary education. Not the spirit of it, mind you, but rather the merit. Learning is necessary in life and bettering yourself is vital to living well—we’re all here to take a stab at both. But what was once such a noble pursuit—akin to the brave boys and girls who enlisted for the two great wars—is now nothing more than a government-taxed cash grab. Here’s my basic equation, see if you agree. As a child, getting a high-school diploma was as expected of me as acne. But if I was ever to amount to anything, post-secondary education was a must. Go to university (because college is for retards), blow half a decade figuring it out while learning the basic tenets of psychology, sociology, criminology, history, math, and science—all the things that would’ve been more easily digested when my brain was young and malleable and the education was free. Drop out. Go to college. Universities, colleges, and institutes of learning abound. Two-year focused diplomas. Trade schools. Beauty schools. Esthetician schools. Schools for model- ing, make-up, interior design—there’s even a fucking program to be a cashier. SFU, UBC, TWU, JIBC, BCIT, CDI, NIC, NLC, VFS, UNBC, AI, IGK...WTF? All those schools, plus all our ambition, equals money, money, and more money. And why do we willingly fork over all this money to learn and better ourselves? Because we're the whimsical future of an unrelentingly selfish past. Our parents are bleeding us dry. The governments; the corporations who get tax breaks from the govern- ments and in return offer entry-level jobs to genius-level students; the mostly undereducated unions that disrupt classes with strikes when collective bargains end (as the government stands by, as if they had no idea the agree- ment was coming to its conclusion). Anyone who implicitly allows students to bankrupt their present while chasing an idealized future has got the blood of aborted dreams on their hands. I hate to sound academically snobby, but I resent that I ever could. We’re supposed to be doing some- thing special here. We’re supposed to be the future. We're supposed to be lauded for putting two, four, six, or sometimes ten of our prime income-earning years on hold to pursue an educational passion in order to make this a better world to live in. opinionsubmit@hotmail.com We’re not supposed to be supporting the provincial economy before we’ve even entered it. We’re not sup- posed to be marginalized like every other second-class citizen that the powers-that-be ignore. And maybe that’s why we are being ignored. Maybe our naive altruism threatens the superstructure that has served the elites so well for so long. Maybe the sellout children of the 60s are afraid that we'll achieve what they only spoke (and smoked) of. If given just half a chance, wouldn’t we all facilitate positive change on behalf of the have-nots? The hippies who danced to Joan Baez and burned draft cards to Jimi Hendrix are the same pony-tailed sycophants who now produce Britney Spears and pro- mote Justin Timberlake. Irony? They’re loving it. The point [’m trying to make is two-fold. First, it’s okay to be stupid: you don’t have to read Plato to have an opinion; you can listen to 50 Cent and still care about the bigger picture. I misspelled my name yester- day, and here I go ranting, Second, and more crucial, is this twist on an old adage: it’s not a matter of distrusting anyone over 30; don’t trust anyone who makes over 30 grand more than you. The system’s working quite well for them, thank you very much. Undeniably, we’re all the working poor. I used to think that social rank was like dental coverage: I had what my parents had. Now, ’m making more coin than ever before and still can’t afford to have a cavity filled without the student union’s coverage plan. Even then, I’m not eating well for a week. Right around the time that the BC Liberals bitched about the poor economy, which was naturally the NDP’s fault, they jacked up tuition by 300 percent in some cases. This past election, when the Liberals boast- ed the most robust economy in Canada, was it a coinci- dence that the gross provincial income increased by roughly the same amount as students paid in extra tuition costs? We single-handedly saved the economy, Continued on page 10 Julian Worker, OP Contributor an’ SC My Method of Procrastination Until I was around 30 years of age, my preferred way of procrastinating was what I can safely call now the TPOT method. TPOT stood for “There’s plen- ty of time” and was my way of convinc- ing myself that there was no need to hurry, as there was always another day when the necessary work could be per- formed. Tasks such as repairs in the house, weeding the garden, and writing com- puter programs for the company | worked for could all be placed in the TPOT. Either TEA (topics expecting actions) or BAGS (basic assignments generating solutions) would be placed in the TPOT along with HOTWATER (heavy office tasks/ work activities that expect replies). This mixture of ingredi- ents would be held inside the TPOT method until they all STEWED (solu- tions to tasks expected when exactly? directly?). Oh no! I now had to address the problem with little or no time to do my best work. Emergency repairs had to be made to the dishwasher, the weeds had to be hacked with a scythe, and comput- er code had to be written in the small hours of the morning. None of this made me very popular. As I matured in years, I gradually realised that the TPOT method just caused problems to brew. It took some swallowing when I realized that I could have completed my work a whole lot better, if I had simply not pro- crastinated at all. To sum things up, I have found that prompt action yields BEER (better efforts, effective results).