Even though this song came out when I was quite young, this song reminds me of my 1990’s. This was a time when I was first at university and immediately after. I went to university on a mission, got beat up a bit, got beat up a bit more and then finally won my freedom and made it out alive.
I have likely said it before but it is worth repeating. I was raised to believe in the idea that you worked for what you want. Nothing was free. If you wanted something you had to go work for it.
That did not mean that you were going to be successful at it but you had to at least try.
So, this is the mindset I went off to university with. Fellow American readers may note that I’m not saying “college” despite that being common here in this country and was the term that I used at the time and for many decades. This is because that many people all over the world use “college” and “university” to mean two different kinds of education. So, I use the term that is most recognizable to most people.
I went in with a different mindset then I think many do. I knew I needed to be there because this is how people got ahead, that is what I believed. Besides, it wasn’t likely for a visually impaired person like me to be able to get a decent job without a university education as far as I was concerned.
I had tinkered a little with computers and I believed that computer technology was going to be terribly important in the near future so that is what I studied first. Most of the school work was easy enough, although some of it did take me longer than I would have preferred. Being easy though at times was a bad problem because then I could blow things off until I really needed to get something done. I’d then dash it off in a day or less and toss it off to the instructors and get a fair grade.
Most of the time.
I am glad that I learned a little programming, I don’t know where I’d be if I didn’t learn about it. However programming is too detail oriented, too linear in thought for me. The same with algebra. While I did pretty good at the programming courses, solid “B” average usually, the required algebra I had to take three times. That wasn’t the first class I had to take more than once, but thankfully I never did actually succeed in getting myself kicked out of university due to Academic Probation. It wasn’t algebra alone that put me on AP so obviously didn’t sail through all my classes. If you look at my grades from then you will see a major split that’s common. My “in major” GPA was a lot higher than my general GPA. My last semester at university was really the worst though. I was interested in linguistics and piano so I took those two course due to outside requirements. I failed out at both but since they were not required by that time that didn’t effect my graduation. I was just so burned out on going to university classes by that time. It was six years after I started.
I wanted to be out in the expected four.
I wanted to be out doing stuff and university was just my job at the time, a job that wasn’t making me money or moving me forward in my life. I was done, for now. I had considered graduate school and had even visited a few places I was considering. Still, I was done for now and I wanted a job.
It took me almost 6 years to get my first job that required me to have the degree I just earned.
So, this is what I think about when it comes to this song. I wanted to be a “productive member of society” but for many reasons, many of them were not my fault, I was prevented from doing so. I eventually did get some jobs but this was a really tough time in my life that was filled with a lot of frustration, depression, flailing about and some determination to make it through, somehow.
This period of my life didn’t really end until 2006, but that’s for another post.
