there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn

i had a little epiphany on my way to class this morning. i was thinking about the presidential search and generally being a nuisance. i was also thinking about how even though i'm barely at full-time enrollment, i get more burned out and disdainful of academia every day. i was pissed because it was a beautiful warm morning and i had to spend it in a stuffy windowless lecture hall where i didn't have a spare fuck to give about whatever was on the projector screen.

as a disclaimer, i promise this isn't just me bitching. i do get to my more optimistic point eventually.

over the past year or so, i've grown more and more tired and disillusioned and jaded with college life. i don't like that my obligations follow me home when i leave lectures. trying to keep all my ducks in a row vis-a-vis remembering what quiz is due when takes more out of me than i think it should. my reaction to a missed deadline has gone from instant panic to a tiny pinhole of anxiety peeping through a heavy blanket of apathy. i hate that this place sucks tens of thousands of dollars and the best years of my life from me in exchange for a piece of paper. the thought of this money being invested in companies that profit from the ruining, derailing, and ending of human lives leaves me fuming and all the more fiercely resentful of this place and my perceived inability to leave.

it doesn't help that a four-year degree doesn't mean too much in my field, especially when i already have a stable job and people lined up willing to sponsor me if and when i apply to join the union and i have little reason to fear that would change without a degree. i've said since i was first approached about an apprenticeship, "not until i'm out of college".

now, on the other hand, my parents would quite possibly slit my throat if i ever dropped out. they both went to college, and i'm extremely fortunate in that money has never posed significant barriers in attending. i only have one year left (if i stay at full-time enrollment) and i have a partial scholarship and a healthy college fund from my late godmother and i've always been a good student and done well in classes. it feels wrong to let that go to waste.

but as i walked to class and fumed about how i was spending a gorgeous march day stuck in a windowless lecture hall in another lecture i can't force myself to give a shit about, i had a thought i hadn't had before. the glimmer of hope that it brought caught me by surprise.

the threat of expulsion or suspension has always served its purpose as far as keeping me on track and well-behaved. that and the general amorphous threat that comes from having strict nosy parents. when i got to college, i quickly realized that i'd been powered almost exclusively by the looming fear of my parents seeing my grades slip up until this point. it was as if a string holding me upright was cut. now it was just the fear of expulsion and fucking up career prospects and insert anxious catastrophizing here that kept me going. 

suddenly i asked myself what was holding me back from making more of a ruckus, doing bolder things in the organizing scene, being a bigger thorn in admin's side? 

what's the worst they could do? unlike in high school, i'm not on any sports teams, so they can't put me on probation. 

suspend me? great, i can take more work calls and not go to lectures. 

expel me? 

usually, the prospect of being expelled stirs up some amount of anxiety for me. but when i thought about it on that walk to class, i barely felt that at all. 

and that brought a bizarre sort of hope into my whirlpool of burnt-out bitterness. i have a long-standing pattern of decisions and indecisions that i made out of fear and later regretted. but there's one good thing about being stuck here, and it's that as long as i'm still dragging myself to classes and through homework assignments that i can't begin to find the point in, i have a special kind of freedom in that almost any threat the university could level against me for any sort of organizing action carries very little weight.

i've always operated under this vague subconscious assumption that the school i attend has a lot of power over me as far as what they can provide and take away. that i'm over a barrel. in that moment, i began rethinking that. i realized that my fear of getting expelled or facing disciplinary action had almost vanished, that the main reason i'm still behaving the same is pure habit, coming out of learned patterns of "i should be afraid of this vague looming threat" even after that threat has lost almost all actual meaning to me.

it was refreshing, that moment when my hopelessness and exhaustion finally built up and caved in on itself and gave way to a new realization that the university has almost no leverage against me when i care this little. sure, the threat of losing housing still carries some weight, but in just a few months, the university will lose its last bargaining chip with regard to my conduct. it felt like i'd caught a second wind. 

and especially in these next few months, i'm in a sort of disciplinary open season. i'm still on campus, with easier access to all its resources and can still make a lot of noise, but disciplinary proceedings are a lengthy thing, and by the time any hypothetical procedures could begin and conclude, it's very likely that my lease will have already begun. even if i were to be kicked out of on-campus housing, i have several backup plans that could carry me through the next few months.

i realized that i have the final say in how long i stay here and on what terms i leave. my parents would shit bricks if i got expelled, but at the end of the day i'm a legal adult and a lot of yelling and even being disowned won't threaten any of the things i need to survive.

if i can get by without a degree and don't rely on the university for housing or food, there is nothing they could threaten to take away from me that is both vital and irreplaceable.

the title of this piece comes from the song "six" by a band called la dispute, one of my favorite bands. originally, i was going to call it, "what're they gonna do, expel me?" but i remembered that line and that song at some point during the writing of this, and it struck a chord in a way that it never had before. 

"six" is a reading of an older piece of writing: albert camus's "the myth of sisyphus". it discusses what may play through sisyphus's mind as he descends the hill, after he has reached the summit and the boulder has rolled back to the bottom of the hill and he must descend to retrieve it and repeat the cycle.

as i reread the lyrics, there are many that describe my current situation quite well. 

in the first paragraph (the song is effectively spoken word, so "stanza" and "verse" don't feel like the right descriptors): 

"[the gods] had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor."

if there's one thing academia has made me certain of, it's that the gods were onto something there.

describing the pause as the stone rolls back down the mountain while sisyphus watches: 

"it is during that return, that pause, that sisyphus interests me [...] at each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks towards the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. he is stronger than his rock."

the line for which i titled this piece is in the following paragraph:

"the workman of today works every day in his life at the same tragic tasks, and his fate is no less absurd. but it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. sisyphus knows the whole extent of his wretched condition; it is what he thinks of during his descent. there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn."

there is little i could add to elaborate further on why i included this excerpt; it spells out my thoughts better than i could do myself.

and the last lines of the song: 

"all sisyphus's silent joy is contained therein. his fate belongs to him.

the rock is still rolling."

it would be wrong of me to talk about a song i adore and find my own feelings reflected in and not provide a way to hear it for yourselves. in fact, i'd strongly recommend listening not only to this song, but the rest of the saga of here, hear albums (here, hear; here, hear ii; here, hear iii; and here, hear iv) and la dispute's discography in general. i really fucking love this band.

for some reason, here, hear ii, which contains not only this song but "eight", another one of my top recommendations, isn't on spotify. i can only assume that this is some sort of copyright issue as a result of these songs being readings of other works. i've linked the youtube videos below instead:

La Dispute - Six

La Dispute - Eight