I am presently attending the remarkable, unsinkable, crunchtastic, University of Alberta. This fact is the outcome of a turn of events that I really don't want to get into at all. And at this fine large institution, just like any university, courthouse, mall or prison, all sorts of of things happens and transpires. Those transpirings and happenins are all probably very interesting to the people they happen to, and usually very boring to anyone else. Except sometimes. Also, by the way, I am about to write about something that didn't happen at the University, so that whole introduction was just me wasting your time. Anyway ... a while ago, on campus, I happened to catch a glimpse of the front page of the campus newspaper of my local university. It had the eye catching headline "RCMP breaks up Lake Louise party".
The article was about a big commotion in Lake Louise, Alberta, surrounding an event held over some weekend, called the Western Business Games. The Western Business Games were some sort of occurrence of university business student's games. I have an idea what these games are because a major part of business education involves competing in things they call games. They are team events where you use your ultra sharp business skills to dream up unworkable, simplistic and doomed business strategies. You then present them to each other and a panel of judges who are luminaries handpicked from the highest corridors or power in the business community, such as tire salesmen, retail store owners, maybe a consultant with a sparsely populated schedule. Anyway, these games are gay and are without exception less educational than a cooking class taught by Nicole Ritchie. Anyways, back to the story.
Apparently a team of University of Alberta business students were one of the teams present for the Western Business Games in Lake Louise, as well as a bunch of teams from other business schools in western Canada. The good part of the story, or the funny part, is that the RCMP, who are the Canadian version of fat southern sherriffs, were called out to the hotel several times over the weekend to respond to complaints of debauchery. Several times the pigs arrived to find students in the hallways drunk carrying around open liquor, walking around in underwear and thongs. The cops also confiscated drugs and drug paraphernalia, and one student was taken to the hospital because he hurt himself trying to jump across some stair railings and fell 2 floors. Jackass 2 claims the first in a new batch of victims.
So the faculty of the Business school at the U of Alberta were pissed off about the way this made the school look. But thanks to the faculty's need to keep their standards for their business students realistic there was no finger pointing or witch hunting, which could have been quite an amusing circus.
A lot of young people go to college with sky high hopes, but then wind up mastering how to party, getting bad grades, genital warts, minor drug problems and then eventually leaving university to start a full time job they had the skills for right out of high school. This isn't true of all students, but its true of business students. And just as a footnote, I happen to have an undergraduate degree in Political Science and an after degree in Business. My business degree was a waste of two years and I graduated into a stimulating full time job as a data entry clerk. So I really put that education to good use. But I did learn one thing during it, I learned that I wasn't wasting those two years in school with the brightest kids around. However, my generalization of business students excludes a few examples that I can think of who were actually there for some useful purpose and they might even somehow have benefited from the experience. But I wasn't one of them. And the only reason I even included that disclaimer is because they might actually read this. Anyway, other than the rare good ones I know, an average business student is a unique personality that is made up of what I will call the super synergy pyramid! See below.
Now this doesn't apply to all of them, that would be ridiculous, it only applies to like 95%. For whatever reasons which I can't even begin to guess, a lifetime of not being smart or good at anything has left a lot of these kids somehow impossibly self confident and ambitious. Weird. And also, they are kind of irritating because the norm for them seems to be to believe they are entitled to wealth and fame. The catch is that they aren't really good at producing anything worth trading for wealth and fame, except maybe unintentionally causing funny campus newspaper articles.
I blame society. We grow up receiving mixed messages. T.V. shows, movies, and Archie comics try to impress on us the dangers of being irresponsible, and they try to teach us the value of personal dignity. But the people in the media who become our heroes don't act that way in real life. So its confusing. Plus, all the sex, drugs and total havoc look pretty fun if you don't have to take any responsibility for it. But sooner or later, you do. And many business students, being highly impressionable dunces are easy victims of a confusing culture which seems locked in orbit around youth, money, sex, and fashion. So its monkey see monkey do for a lot of them.
These poor suckers are a product of society. And in my opinion society has failed them. Someone other than me might say that a lot of them haven't been taught to view the world with much more than hollow greed.
Some might say that because of that, outside of the pursuit of their own narrowly defined self interest, whatever value system they do possess is ethically stunted. The impact of the media and the impact of the shallow culture we attach so much importance to can easily be witnessed in action. It is very obvious at the times when when I am in the business building on the university campus at certain busy times in the day. If you tossed a motorola razr down one of the hallways it would ricochet off 100 clones. And it sucks, but I can't help but notice how many of the women look to me a lot like whores, going to class wearing night club heels, skin tight pants, eyeglasses with Chanel frames, and D&G purses. And the men are generic mohawked metrosexual douchebags who look like blow dried sewer rats puffed up from hours at the gym.
If these young future winners(probably losers) of the rat race wind up not knowing how to act like productive human beings can we really say that its their fault? As a society we haven't offered the kids a good looking and fashionably dressed young moral compass to look to, at least not one that doesn't wind up turning out to be a total fucking phoney. And who else can they trust? Who will provide guidance to them, and to all the rest of us?
The world is changing and its hard to know the right thing to do. Too bad we don't have someone like Guinan on Star Trek to give us advice we can depend on.
 |
|
Sure I seem cool and relaxed now, but mention the Borg and its a whole different story. Note: my hat and shirt always match. |
Wouldn't it be great:
Dear Guinan. How many times do the police have to show up before I put the brakes on this drunken orgy at the Western Business Games in Lake Louise?
She might say. "Follow your heart, if you listen you will hear your heart is trying to tell you something. Like maybe, 'there's some kids from Simon Fraser with a bong in room 210, get in on it you stupid business zombie!'"