Madison's location on an isthmus certainly heightens the character of the city, but it sometimes seems that an island would be a more fitting locale for this campus. Oftentimes, the student population appears to be so isolated that it causes me to question the very existence of those strips of land that connect us to the rest of the world.
Since it is becoming increasingly unlikely that I will drop out of school to pursue my lifelong exotic-dancing aspirations, the elusive apparition of graduation lingers somewhere beyond the horizon of the next five to eight years. If anything, my uneasiness about \stepping out into the real world"" makes a significant point'there is nothing real at all about campus life.
Although education is theoretically a valuable goal, the pursuit of academic knowledge itself plays a central role in the seclusion of the student population. Quite simply, it is difficult to break through the suffocating mountain of physics textbooks and establish a connection to reality. Just the other day, I had an epiphany about the drawbacks of having my head incessantly buried in irrelevant books.
It hit me really hard after spending several hours reading the same paragraph in my meteorology textbook over and over again.
Normally, I could attribute this type of unfocused behavior to the fact that I am a part of the TRL generation, where attention spans have become so short that it is impossible to sit through an abridged version of a music video without an interruption by somebody named Tyler sending a shout out to all his peeps back in Hackensack, NJ.
This time, my short attention span was not to blame. As it turned out, the paragraph with which I was struggling made absolutely no sense, not even in the context of the nonsensical material of the course, and it was only included because a sadistic textbook editor gets his jollies by confusing the life out of poor, scientifically-challenged students who are attempting to complete their breadth requirements.
After spending one of the first nice days of spring dithering in such an academic low point, the sun shining through my window brought with it the realization that I was completely isolated in a world of irrelevance.
While reading useless textbooks and listening to professors who are often concerned solely with the sound of their own voice are certainly major factors, the focus on academics is not the only promoter of student isolation. A general sense of apathy also adds to the situation.
Although our school has a tradition of active participation in world affairs, the majority of students seem indifferent to events beyond the trifles of on-campus existence. For instance, the average student is a lot more likely to know about a special on half-barrels of Leinie's at Party Port than the current situation in the Middle East.
Perhaps one of the only positive counters to the problem of ignoring the world beyond the isthmus is the presence of the student newspapers, one of which does an excellent job of keeping students informed. While I commend you on your wise selection for today's news source, I must express my concern about your choice to read this column.
While many informative stories grace the pages of this very paper, you have opted instead to waste those precious minutes before class reading my pointless rambling. The isolated island of university life is difficult to transcend, but reading the front page of this paper is a good start. If that doesn't work, you can always drop out of school and become an exotic dancer.
