Unto the Meatiocrity
I started working last week. Quite a simple job, I basically either load steel pipes into a big, greasy rectangle full of mobile angles. This rectangle shoves the pipe around and it becomes the kind of magical shape that can facilitate Industrial Air Conditioner production.
That, or I'm taking the bent pipes (of which there are four varieties) and locking, strapping, and snapping them into a series of square, black plastic zip-ties and locks which hold them together.
So far all of my shifts have been 5:50 AM to 2:10 PM. I have no need to complain about this, because I have nothing to do in the intervening time. I am essentially paid to get exercise for 8 hours a day. I'm working full time, meaning I make about 400$ a week before taxes. This is good for me. Very, very good. I will soon be buying a proper computer that is mine. Also an iPod touch.
On Monday night, the only day off I've had, I celebrated my graduation from High School with my peers at the newest church in Belleville. It was okay I guess. The speech given by one of the graduates, which was meant to be some sort of cross-interest love letter to every student at the school was essentially a well liked person jerking off his and his friends egos, paying paltry attention to the actual milestone of graduating and more just trying to squeeze some of the ineffectual, half-assed school spirit we seem to muster. At least 8 people called him 'Big Willy' because his first or last name was William or Williamson. I really didn't care that much.
As a whole, it was nice to see some friends I haven't seen in awhile and there were no petty comments or attempts at bullshit posturing by anyone (at least directed at me). I could have done without the lengthy awards and scholarships ceremony that followed the actual handing out of the diplomas, since A) They could have integrated the two and cut the night down by about an hour, and B) I didn't get anything. I didn't expect to, but nonetheless, I feel like I deserved some special recognition for my Co-op triumph.
I recognize, however, that it was not a night for me. I do not like High School and I do not like most of my peers. I think that they are witless, uncreative and wore a padded egobra that will become useless and flaccid within the year. Yes, that may sound like bitter underachiever cynicism (and it is) but my point is valid. It was the last spurts of a self serving, four year long ejaculation exuberantly shared by people who functioned properly within the Catholic School system.
I make no qualms about the validity of their academic or athletic achievements, but I will not celebrate what the school system failed to help give me. I was a lowest-common-denominator shoved into an idiot-proof program and came out more intelligent, more mature and with a much, much more employer friendly history.
I don't have faith that most of my peers will succeed. Some will. I will be one of those some. However, I will not leap into the jaws of post-secondary schooling without proper preparation and forethought. I will spend this year working. I know what I want to do, and that is be a Mechanical Engineer (ad after that, I want to make weapons), but I need more money and some time to get out of juvenile High-School habit. My collar will be neither white nor blue. It will be the cold, steely silver of the first Mobile Infantry Barbeque cannon.
Of this, I am sure.
