The Undisputed Truth

As you may have already realized if you’re the average, check-your-wall-every-hour, Facebook
user, they’ve added a chat feature.

I can bet my head on a chopping block that worker productivity atleast across the States and Trinidad have dropped significantly since Facebook introduced this.

Did we really need that? Especially during exam season? No more cyber-stalking people and then sending your friends messages about it later, you can now do it live! I guess this means people’s MSN Messengers will be put down to collect some dust, people who use Hi5 and MySpace instead of Facebook have become even more stupid automatically, and university students and employees who use computers at work may find work and studying even more difficult than usual.

But, you have to give them credit for yet again adding something which we all sorta wanted but didn’t really request. First was Facebook Applications, now Chat. The people at Facebook are like little elves that live in your house who come in when you’re not looking and switch around little things throughout the rooms to make your life easier.

If only it existed earlier

These last few days have been really weird. I feel as if I’m approaching the end of my life. As melodramatic is it may sound, I can’t prove to myself otherwise. I frequently have flashbacks when I walk around campus, and seeing certain landmarks and areas bring back a rush of memories. I have 2 more weeks of exams and then I’ll be done with university life, i.e., freedom.

No more late night campus walks, skipping classes, nocturnal, sedentary, carefree life, clubbing in the middle of the week, waking up at 5pm, interacting with friends constantly, facebook 24/7, anti-9 to 5 schedule, shoplifting from the mini mart, making fun of freshers, attending all the lame campus parties, being solicited by almost every club who wants to have a “hip crowd” of UWI students, bullshitting in lectures which you know won’t matter ultimately, pulling all-nighters, seriously relying on energy drinks for energy,…etc.

What’s left then? Well, nothing.  All I can think of is a super drastic drop in sexual activity, and being limited to doing stuff I like to do on weekends. “Life” will be replaced by most likely a boring job, average pay for now, facing the fucked up traffic on the roads in Trinidad, complaining about food prices and trying to catch up on sleep.

The sick part of it all is that this is what I wanted all along, to be free from the cursed shackles of UWI, with its shitty lecturers and its system designed to make you fail, with its rude, zombie-faced point-of-service staff and its bureaucracy, with its hectic semesters that leave room only for the completion of midterm exams, projects and cramming for finals, to be free from the fear of being just another drop-out who couldn’t cope.

If only I could continue my “life”, yet still be free of this place. So then I really want to have my cake and eat it too. Closest compromise would be to work at UWI. I explore even this as an option, as my absorption into the matrix of the working life, facing traffic everyday, losing my self, scares me. Should I pursue a masters degree at UWI? Subject myself to more institutional abuse? All for the sake of “the life?” I don’t know. Its all sad and confusing. Is it growing up or is all the cynicism about life taking a toll on me? These next few months will be life changing I imagine, whether I want it to or not.