Now & Then: Gatsby

    I enjoy a party as much as anyone else. There is a great deal of enjoyment in gathering people, mingling, and making new friends. In my past one could have considered me to be a young Gatsby. I would host parties for the simple reason of inviting over women that I had interest in with hopes of wooing them.  

    In my early twenties it was easy to get off of work at 10:30 (PM), grab a case of beer, some Boons-Farm, and invite all of my co-workers and friends over to party. I would give my roommate 15 minutes’ notice to get out of his PJ’s and spot clean the house. Within the hour we would have fifteen to thirty people over playing beer pong. There would be plenty of people smoking cigarettes on the porch and decent pop rock or top 40 playing on the lap top while everyone mingled. Usually a few hours in the roommate would end up on the roof with at least 2 other people while some drunken girl craving attention would have flashed her boobs at least 5 times by one o’clock.

    This method worked well for me and often led to me and some young lady in my room but I have never been a fan of the golden rule of sales…Always be closing. Almost always I would stop things before it went too far and while most guys would say this is dumb of me I honestly enjoyed knowing I have self-control and self-respect to not raise my number just because I could.

    Jump forward to 2015, I am now 26, living alone, single…again, and finally realizing the flaw in Gatsby’s master plan. Hosting booze fueled nights in hope of creating a relationship or connection of any form is a poorly laid out plan. It offers a great opportunity to catch all of the red flags but why even waste the time. I’m not saying that only bad things come from these situations, that is far from true, a great deal of amazing things happened on nights like this but it always had its flaws.

    Building a connection with a woman who is 5 beers and 4 shots in while she flashes the room will not lead me or many others to true happiness. These actions should be the writing on the wall that warn us of what we are about to get into. I am happy that I no longer find appeal in this Gatsby concept but also wish to pay my respect to what it has taught me. I learned that I have a great deal of self-control and that our intuitions and insight can save us from some really bad situations.

    I reflect on these nights and cherish that they are a part of my past. I hold memories of growing close to friends and a lover in these situations very close to my heart and often smile when I remember them. I will never forget the New Years that the roommate and I ended up in our birthday suits with glittery top hats over our junk while playing pong against each other. I will always cherish the Sunday cookouts with horse shoes and fajitas. I will always grow warm when I think back to my first surprise party thrown by someone who loved me even if the surprise was ruined. I know that I usually try to wrap these blogs up with some form of inspiration or call to action but not everything in our life has to be a step forward or a leap in a new directions, sometimes it is perfectly fine to stop, sit, and reflect on where we have been, instead of worrying about where we are going.

 

The American Dream: College

    I am sitting here drinking a Dos X’s with no lime and no salt, thinking about the future and the current state of the American College System.  I have been spending a lot of time thinking about returning to college lately and when I do I get…what is the word everyone keeps using for it…Pensive. The idea really bothers me for a few simple reasons.

   
    One, I have always been bored sitting in lecture halls and class rooms as someone reads off a power-point to me and expects me to pull the key concepts from it fast enough while also maintaining interest and being able to understand it. (If I was getting paid like Charles Dickens that line alone would have netted me $44). I’m not a fan of the being talked at, but preferably talked to. I had a psychology professor once who may have been the most boring psychology professor of all time. It is psychology, the study of the human brain, you are teaching it, and you should understand what makes people tick! She would literally burn through her power-points without pause and if anyone asked her to slow down she would respond, “The power-points are online, you should be reading them at home and taking notes.” Why would I want to listen to you read it in class if I am expected to go home and go over it again! Use the classroom time to offer more in-depth information if you want us to study your power-points at home! Needless to say, I dropped that class since I was constantly skipping it for lunch instead.

    Two, the cost of college is so astronomically high that is really doesn’t allow for the less fortunate of us to even try to pursue it without either going broke or racking up a ginormous amount of debt. I understand there are scholarships, and financial aid, and community college that can all help in the process but be honest, what are the odds that a lower class individual will qualify for a scholarship unless they are a minority or somehow beat out every other kid in their school GPA wise. Why do you think there are so many ethnic teenagers trying to make it as athletes and celebrity types these days? They honestly do not feel like there are equal opportunities for them. Now granted anyone who studies hard enough and tries hard enough can go as far as they want and ethnicity has nothing to do with that so it is a bunch of stereotyping but guess what…Stereotypes exist for a reason and are formed from others evaluating the populous. Financial aid is a great system if you can actually figure out how to fill out (a) F.A.F.S.A and/or qualify for aid because you actually come from what the Government considers a lower income home. The first time I filled out (a) F.A.F.S.A it made no sense to me and although I see why now, I qualified for nothing. Community College, they may as well call it repeating High School for a few years while you earn college credit. You ultimately sit in a class with kids who would have actually been interchangeable in your High School and fuck it, let’s be honest, a few of them probably are from your High School, and get taught stuff you should already know except that the public school system was unable to capture 75% of these students attention and focused more time on a state mandated test! I spent time in Community College; it is High School with less friends, no set lunch time, and longer passing periods.

    Three, the fact that you are paying such a large sum to attend classes that could mostly be taught through an apprentice style system while on job is a real kick in the nuts! I mean honestly, to me at least, it seems like you are going into debt for a pretty piece of tea stained paper with frilly printed boarders on it and a gold leaf name in big bold print across the top just so you can say, “Look where I went, I’m better than you and all it cost was eighty-thousand dollars!” I get if you are a Doctor or some form of Scientist why you need to go to college, so other assholes can try to prevent you from making the same mistakes uppity assholes made in the 1800’s, but does someone really need to go to college for a fucking art degree or a teaching degree? I know that second suggestion is going to really piss some people off but stop and think about it. Anyone can teach anyone else something new. I once taught small children how to play with fire, and an old friend taught me how to smoke cigarettes. We are all capable of being teachers! A positive example of this would be that I know the few things I do about construction from my father who learned it on the job. I have taught a customer of mine how to use the Pythagorean Theorem to find the diagonal measurement of a triangle. Who says you need a degree to tell other people who they need to learn…I have to digress because I am about to roll into a whole different topic and if I do this will go on forever. I believe I have made my view clear.

    In closing, I understand the positive potential college has which is why I am considering returning to it, I just wish it hadn’t become such a costly means to expanding ones horizons. Also, I know this is a horrible closing paragraph in any form of writing but fuck the rules, you get my point, you have the ability to argue all you want, and the American attention span is short so by now you probably have quit reading anyways.