Triple AAA - Averages, Apathy and Anger.

Well, it's been a while. Hmmm, where to start. I got a first on my last script which was very nice. 75%. It was my first first. So, yay for me. It hasn't gone to my head though, unfortunately. I could do with an ego boost.

My grades on the whole have been shaky this year. They've been averaging out in the late fifties and early sixties, nothing particularly impressive but then again, nothing particularly terrible either. But I am sure when I look back at the end of this university experience I will regret very much the fact that I did not do the Rocky/Stallone thing and "go for it" more. Hindsight. At least I have it now before the third year. That's a plus.

The word is - Average. Anyone and everyone can be average. People want to be exceptional and to excel at something they're good at. But if you don't go for it then it is simply wasted potential you will one day look back on and regret never having explored thoroughly enough. The problem with the kids these days is they just don't have any follow through. I may be young, but I am not stupid. I know what my problems are and what most students problems are, and it has nothing to do with intelligence or ability. It's about laziness. Pure and simple.

So here I am on this blog now at 12 in the afternoon writing my thoughts down for PDP like I have done on and off for the past year and a bit. This time last year I had very set plans and this year I feel like I'm kind of making it up as I go along. Whatever happens I realise that nothing is going to be impossible to achieve on this course if you want it bad enough. The thing that stops so many students (and like I said I include myself in this) from achieving that potential is their own apathy and laziness. This unfortunately is very much built into our generation. We are fucking lazy, and then some. Worse than that, we expect and demand things like we are entitled to them, yet we have not earned them. Half the students I know have never even had a fucking job before in their lives yet see fit to protest about the prices of Costa Coffee as if that is an important cause. The price of a cup of coffee drew more passionate debate and investment then making an effort with the Easter break workloads. This pisses me right off. Over privileged students who do not work to earn their bread mouthing off about rights and wrongs of money. It's the funniest and cheekiest irony I can think of. If they are so concerned by paying an extra thirty pence here and fifty pence there then they should go out and get a fucking job, or better yet, stop spending their precious pennies that they don't have enough of on going out and getting pissed every time there is a "themed" party night at elements.

Students are wankers. Full bloody stop. I have no sympathy for their selfish, "me, me, me" mentality and insincere politics. When I was 18 I thought I knew everything. Now I realise I know nothing. But a large majority of students are aged, regrettably, between 18-21. Thank fuck I am not officially in that age group anymore.

Here is a case in point about the students being lazy, moaning dickheads - the media theory essays were set to be done over the Easter holidays, right? Fine and dandy by me. If the deadline is a few days after Easter, then so be it, that is the deadline. I worked hard on these last two essays. The hardest I have worked on essays since I started the course, not because I suddenly had a new found respect for them, but because I wanted to see if the time I invested would pay off in marks. I wanted to know if it was just my laziness that was making me average in the work I was producing. The most likely answer is yes. (Although this has yet to be determined as I have not yet gotten the marks back for them).

Anyway, back to my rant. Lecturers surely must understand this, even if they do not want to admit it, they secretly must think it. So if they won't say it, I damn well will. And I have said it to anyone who complained about the deadline. So we come back from Easter - we had ALMOST A MONTH to complete these essays. Here I am, Mr. Cynical Lazy Asshole Man, having motivated myself to research, write and complete my essays and allow time to refine and rewrite them, and I did this without complaint or a sense that it was unfair. It was a very reasonable timeframe. Jesus, if I could invest the time, and I am a seriously lazy fuck, then why couldn't ANYONE else.

We came back on a Monday and wthin the first few hours of being back it was clear that every single stupid student in the room had left these very IMPORTANT essays to the last minute. We literally had four days before the hand-in date and somehow, SOMEHOW, these smarmy little shits managed to wring an extra TWO WEEKS out of the deadline because we had a series of workshops during the day for three days that coincided with this very same deadline. Well, I'm sorry, but this is the point of university, is it not??? They were given a month to do their assignments, and if you had not produced even a first draft by the third to last day before the hand-in then you are obviously not taking your course or your education or your future seriously enough. And we're supposed to feel sorry for them? Boo-fucking-hoo. Half of them have never worked a dead end job. They don't know that university is their time to forge a future beyond all that 9-5 hellish crap. They are naive and selfish and expect the rules to bend to their laziness because they don't know what waits for them if they fail.

This in my opinion was unacceptable. The lecturers should NOT have given in. Discipline is a more effective tool in shaping up apathetic idiots then leniency. I had no sympathy for these kids who spent their Easter's fucking about. Someone said to me "Yeah, but I was seeing my family and stuff." And I was like "What are you 12? Grow the fuck up. Surely you weren't in the company of your family 24/7 for the whole holidays. What are they, a family out of The Wicker Man?" There were no valid excuses for why the work had not been done, there were just enough of them who simply had not been bothered enough to do it. These like-minded moaners banded together and inundated the course lecturers. They used that "Life's a Pitch" workshop (which was shite by the way) as a get out of jail free card.

I may have been lazy in the past. I may even have at one point been just as bad as some of these other people I am bashing. That makes me a hypocrite. But I really don't give a shit. This is the truth. Students are dicks. They don't work hard enough and they don't listen to what is being said. I don't care if that is a generalisation because I am indeed one of them. Maybe this is just a development thing. Maybe this is just what happens when you grow a bit older. Last year I might have been just as arrogant. Fuck it, I sound arrogant enough now, but at least I am on the side of sense. And truth. In the words of a classic detective, "In a town full of lepers, I'm the man with the most fingers." Amen to that.

Work hard and reap the rewards. Don't work and suffer the consequences. This should be the message being sent out to students. But by doing what they did, the lecturers inadvertently sent out this message instead - Work hard if you want, but if you don't it will be okay because if enough of you make enough noise, we'll bend over and take it up the ass as hard as you care to give it. My advice, don't let the patients take over the asylum because for the last two weeks it seemed very clear to me that the students were in control of Weymouth House. Not the lecturers.

Rant over with. Hopefully someone will read this and take note. If not, well, I guess I'll have to get a soapbox and start my own Costa coffee-like campaign. But really, I just can't be bothered. ;-)

p.s.

Just a note about swine flu. This is such a croc of shit. I really hope people are not buying into this crap like they did with the SARS virus and bird flu a few years back. This is how the world ends you know, not by biological holocaust, but by the stupidity and gullibility of a mass panicked global public. Fucking idiots. STOP WATCHNG THE NEWS. You'll find more truth up my ass then on the box. Just wanted to get that off my chest.

This blog is rated PG-13.