This is just a rant, want to get some thoughts off my head.
Back when I was too young and stupid to care, I did fine in high school, with all the rules, infantilisation, pointlessness. Then came University – and I thrived. Don’t show up to class? No one cares, it’s your problem. Want to sleep all day and then study at night? Whatever, you make your schedule. There was so much freedom. I could craft my schedule how I wanted it, study in a place and way that benefited me, no dress code.
And then came my first job- it’s like a ‘grown-up’ version of high school, except you’re not learning for yourself, but slaving away for someone else.
All of the pointless rules are back- you must dress in a certain way, be in this soul crushing concrete building by this time for no reason, suffer under endless micromanagement instead of being trusted to do your job right.
It really feels like all of the freedom and flexibility of University was a pipe dream, like it never happened. Like, I understand the visceral need employers have to control every iota of productivity their wage slaves have to pump out, but in terms of the system as a whole, why do you get a brief taste of freedom during University? Why are we taunted with that, and then launched into what I like to call the kindergarten prison (treated like infants in a prison-like environment where we are monitored all the time while every inch of productivity and energy is squeezed out from us)?
It makes me so frustrated and angry to think about the days I could just choose to study at home or not, have a day where my schedule started in the evening, where I could listen to a lecture online later and so instead use that time to grab lunch with a friend.
Whilst now, again in a cruel parody of high school, we have a chiming bell that informs us of the paltry one hour we get to scarf down some food. We are fucking adults, yet they treat us like children, no trust, no respect, they just expect blind obedience and total subservience.
I am aware some good jobs exist that have elements of that freedom, but the majority are the anathema is of what freedom University offered. It’s cruel, to have a semblance of freedom for a few years, and then never experience it again, have it ripped away from you, under the veneer of ‘professionalism.’ Fuck that.