the big fat whale

ok, so I have been working at the Uni for a few weeks now and have started to get into a rhythym. the first day of classes was yesterday and a friend who works in the building and I walked downtown for lunch.
oooooh, Bloomington.
i love it, i really really love it. but here's the thing-
everyday i see the applications of prospective students who desperately want the chance to mortgage their entire futures to come to IU. they are arguing for the chance to spend 80 to 120 grand over four years to come to a college. why? because we as a society have convinced them that they have to have a college degree to survive in the world. to get a job. to be anything. to be worthwhile.
we are selling validation.
and that's kind of fucked up, no?
who convinced a seventeen year old that he needed a resume? a four page resume at that? declarations and passionate essays about career hopes and planned majors from juniors in high school! who created this system?
and how can we slow it down?
i hate that it's like this. i want to pull them all aside and tell them not to sweat all this.
we went down to the cool hipster burrito place for lunch and there was a cute girl behind the counter. typewriter tattoo on her chest. i think she gets it. i think most of them do. the kids at the hipster coffee place, the anarchist bookstore.
we all live off the byproducts of this economy. the townies, the hipsters, the drop-outs. we're all barnacles. living in a college town means we gets lots of freebies. cheap eateries, lots of art and music, entertainment, cool bookstores, thrift stores, lots of social groups to join.
and those freebies, those byproducts are what make Bloomington so cool. they are what make it different. special. it is the mix of leftovers which creates this creatively charged atmosphere.
so without the Uni, we don't get Bloomington as we know it. we'd all be living in Bedford. and it would only be a few of us, cause a lot of us ended up here because of the Uni in the first place.
a catch 22, huh?
i am choosing to hope that most of the kids here are beind paid for by the salaries of their big-corporate working parents. the fact that i know this is not the case for many students is what kills me. kids who don't qualify for financial aid, but also don't have enough parental income to pay for school. kids who take on enormous student loans at seventeen in order to get an ever devaluing B.A. kids who don't know enough about this decision they are making. who feel pressured into going to college. who are betting on getting a decent job after graduation in order to pay for these loans. (and pay for thirty years in some cases.) tuition goes up, salaries go down, loans get extended.
i have to accept that this is the system. that this is the way things work. and that if the whale leaves or weren't here, i wouldn't get to eat the tidbits on the surface. really not that different from learning to live with capitalism.
learn to live with it and do as much as i can beneath the surface. out of view. take advantage of what is here. that is my mission.