I collected a lot of pens this week. Well, all right, two, but I got them for free at the hands of faceless corporate establishments, and while that may be insignificant to you, mister or miss with no time on your hands to worry about trivial things and carve mountains from molehills with naught but your own paranoia for a spade, it means an awful lot to me.
The first pen I got from my bank. Early last week, my checkbook turned up missing, and after several days of mellowly searching for it in a timely and efficient manner, I had what is known in medical terminology as a "spaz attack", and ended up skipping a Latin quiz to go to the bank and close my account. Disenfranchised by panic, I wrote the bank a check for $350 -- the sum total of my worldly wealth -- for transfer to the new account, got myself a non-functional ATM card, and ended up back on the waiting list for new checks. I also got a free pen. It was nice of them to actually give me the pen with which I signed myself into temporary economic limbo. There's not a store in the world where I can buy food with these dipshit, temporary checks they give me, but yet I have this pen. No official documents to sign with it, but hey, what's important is that I have a writing instrument in case I get stranded in the Solomon Islands and want to carve my last will and testament onto an artillery shell.
The second pen I got from my student loan exit interview, grand patriarch of all suicidally depressing experiences. Let me just sum up the experience as neatly as I can.
While I realize that the MGSLP, MHECS, and University people are required to give us this information by law, I don't know why they couldn't just mail out a flyer that says "Pay up or we'll take away your birthday". Do I really have to listen to sixty full minutes of
Does this really accomplish anything? Even more amusingly useless is the sage advice: "Don't overborrow. Only borrow what you need." Thanks. Good to tell me now, during the exit interview, when I can't possibly do anything about it. They told me before at the entrance interview, and I didn't listen then. What purpose does it serve to remind me of the fact when my student loans are already set in stone, you sadistic bastards?
Maybe I'd be less bitter if I had successfully completed a bachelor's degree in Consumer Culture Sell-Out and was well on my way to being Affluent Android #111752 at Dominion Hegemony Logicorp International, my collie dog and Acura waiting for me at the airport. I could live a happy, unexamined life, never giving myself the time to stop and torment myself about the gnawing emptiness and the ulcer in my gut. I could be happy, wallowing in my dollar-bill pigsty. Instead, I'm nineteen-five in debt after five years, in a so-so town with so-so prospects, with a wretched GPA and a head full of high-minded criticism about the state of the twentieth century. I feel destined to recreate the existential arc of every tormented critic of modern life who ever died insane and with a heart full of bitterness. The only difference is that my words won't be taught at universities to disillusion the students of the future.
What a squandered life. Have I truly educated myself? Have I emerged from this academic coccoon a better person, with a knowledge of Western culture and an appreciation for all things? Maybe. Or maybe I've just learned that, no matter what,
I did get a free pen, though. It has the Guaranteed Student Loan Program's 800 number on it. You know. Just in case I need it. And it's shiny.