Were You Not Entertained?
Written March 29, 2004

“School is sucking,” I mumbled to myself as I rolled out of bed. “School is a fucking nightmare.” As I fumbled through filthy laundry amongst the ocean of paper and garbage on my floor for something to wear, I inadvertently smashed my face on the hard wood desk in front of me six or seven times. “Jesus Christ! How is that even possible?” I muttered angrily to myself in a shameless glimpse of insanity. My life was in shambles. It was the last week of classes and I felt like I’d been through an atomic catastrophe for an agonizing four months, weeping and crawling my way through the intense rigors of a Wilfrid Laurier Arts program (with full course load!).

I had been broke for weeks and my parents had taken to beating me heartily with kitchen utensils every time I hitchhiked home to Vancouver to beg for financial aid. More important than my poverty and wrenching hunger, I had seven papers, six journal entries, five case studies, four lab quizzes, three research proposals, two multiple choice tests and a presentation on postmodernism all due later in the week.

As I gingerly poked at my bruised forehead in the bathroom mirror, a thought suddenly struck me. “You haven’t done anything fun in weeks!” I sternly accused my injured reflection. “You haven’t got drunk or gone to a show or seen a movie or listened to music or done anything because you’ve been so busy with school!” My alter-ego took several seconds to ponder the matter while I watched, then nonchalantly agreed. “You’re right old man… we’ve been busy with the studies and such, yes?”

It was true. My social life lay in ruins, my spare time for procrastinating with TV, movies and music was buried in the annals of the past. Entertainment was no more in my life, and it was all because of the tyranny of school! “Damn you, Laurier!” I cried, as I shook my fists to the unforgiving heavens and sunk to the floor, a defeated shell of a WLUer.

Okay, none of that was true at all. But doesn’t it sound a lot like what a lot of the stereotypes surrounding the end of school encompass? People pick up on the myths and whine about their gargantuan list of responsibilities over MSN every year, but I figure that everyone at Wilfrid Laurier is fully capable of enjoying themselves at least once or twice a week, regardless of program or extracurricular involvement. No university schedule is so packed that it cannot possibly accommodate a single free night or period of time for relaxation. Why then would the other stereotypes exist, the ones about freewheeling college hippies frolicking on the campus grass and playing hackeysack and Frisbee all day long?

If you’ve ever played the hit computer game The Sims, you’ll remember that your little simulated people will only stay happy and non-mutinous when you placate them with entertainment regularly. If you cut off their TV or nerdy computer games or sex, they get depressed and eventually pass out on the living room floor in a digital recreation of the weepy school scenario I outlined earlier. Real live people unsurprisingly work under the same basic formula as the Sims: no entertainment makes you cry eventually.

So why go against the simulated life experts and fond nostalgic stereotypes? Leave room in your schedule for entertainment and good times amidst the work while at university, or you face the risk of becoming the excessively lengthy horror story I tricked you with earlier. Entertainment: part of a healthy university lifestyle.

Final editorial during my stint as Entertainment editor. Really just a chance to write a funny column and end the year with a proverbial bang. No actual points made though, as is my specialty.