What the fuck happened to my summers?
Summer for a college student is a far cry from those magical months I remember as a kid. If you were white and rich, the way God intended the world to be, childhood summer conjures up images of boating trips and barbeques (seriously, everything I know about white people is from J. Crew ads). If you were black, it meant wrenching the top off of the nearby fire hydrant and race riots. If you were Asian like me, it meant summer school and avoiding the outdoors. Sure this was pretty much like the rest of my year, but the heat slowed down my parents so I didn’t get beaten nearly as often. Plus, popsicles!
So what happened to those perfect three months that I remember? What happened to the delicious iced treats and infrequent thrashings? Just recently I got back home, worn out from eight months of irresponsible drinking, unprotected sex, and bouts of intravenous drug abuse, and I’m not greeted with pool parties and Slip ’n Slides the way TV said it’d be like. Instead, I’m expected to jump right into the real world… and not the fun MTV-sponsored kind either. Summer for a college student now means a job, and a job means work, and work means force times distance. Instead of the irresponsible drinking, unprotected sex, and drug abuse I expected to continue in a slightly different setting with slightly different people, I get old newspapers with circled ads. I get craiglist.org, monster.com, and analintruders.gov. I get crabs. I still get hit, so I guess things aren’t that different.
The summer job search is the most unrealistic part of real life there is. Like the common idiotic person, you’re slowly being taught the most basic of skills in order to function in society—things like not smearing your shit on the walls or chasing people around with your dick (some never do learn the latter). Anyone from the local bumfuck community college to Harvard has difficulty finding a summer job because your credentials are worth less than the careers of most PIC writers or a those with a communications degree. It doesn’t matter where you go to school, or what extracurricular activities you’ve been a part of. It doesn’t even have anything to do with your ability to suck a golf ball through a garden hose, as I can testify to. When the illegal immigrant living in the van parked at the end of your street has an easier time getting a job than you do, it really makes you wonder. Sure, Jose might be getting paid $2.95 an hour, but that’s almost three dollars more than you’re making.
It’s injustice, plain and simple. Look, I’ve just spent $50,000 of my parent’s money playing a yearlong game of hide-the-sausage and Guess Which Drink Gave You Alcohol Poisoning? (Hasbro™) and I’m fucking tired. I just want to sleep for three weeks straight and then wake up, masturbate in the privacy of my own room, and then go right back at it. Who are you to tell me to move my lazy ass off the couch? Well, Dad? Well, Mom? And after your parents kick you out of the house you have to get a job. It’s inevitable. And after you find out you’re not good-looking enough to sleep with women or men for money you have to get a legitimate job. How? When whoring yourself out doesn’t work, what hope do the rest of us have?
Like a lot of problems, including why you can’t find anyone to have sex with you, the solution lies in lowering your standards. Sure you might be going to college, but half of a degree is like a cheap boob job: it might look good from far away, but you really should have dropped that extra two grand to have the surgeon finish the right breast too. Don’t expect to be automatically accepted by anybody, even those you consider beneath you. Don’t think, “Grocery store bagger? Fuck that.” Your attitude should be, “Grocery store bagger? Please?”
You’re nineteen and in college. How unique do you think you are? Do you really think you’re the only one with an almost-degree and a pretty face? People like me are in the market and we are fucking ruthless. I’ve killed a man over the possibility that he would apply to the same job that I did. In all seriousness, I’m wanted by the law. But I’ve got the job, and whatever, he was dead way before I got there. Way, way before the cops found me choking the life out of him with my bare hands. And definitely way, way before the sodomy.
The last thing you can do is so simple it shouldn’t even really count as a tip. But I’ve got twenty more words to reach an 800-word requirement so shut the fuck up and sit down. Who am I kidding; you’re sitting anyway you lazy, unemployed bastard. Like when I say, “I love you, too,” so she’ll finish the blowjob, or when I tell my parents the loud vomiting they heard at 5 in the morning was due to bad Taco Bell, I’m lying. And so should you.
Do you have any experience in retail? Of course… I do tons of shopping. Have you ever coded in JAVA? Absolutely… not. It’s easy, universally accepted, and when the entire company comes crashing to the ground around your ears because of your fictional ability to write computer code well, you’ll be back at college, safe with your English major, alcohol, and legal name-change (they might be a little pissed at you). But come on, you’ve really just been waiting your whole life for an excuse to change your name to Optimus Prime.
And of course, I’m not lying when I say I didn’t steal that joke from Dane Cook.