Guest post from Vitriol Girl
I am a postgraduate at a very well-known Melbourne-based university. In general, my tertiary experience has been a rather positive one. It was, for example, the catalyst for my introduction to the Captain here—a privilege rarely afforded the lowly, unwashed masses. (Knowingly, anyway.) But the elation I get from a good thinking session or a tidy HD on a paper is rather overshadowed by the fact that the whole institution often feels completely disorganised and totally arbitrary.
Dealing with the university administration system, for example, is like being blindfolded at a party and told to hit the piñata. Only, the piñata is in another building, and so is the party for that matter, and it’s on a different day at a different time, and nobody told you because you weren’t at that unscheduled meeting in the faculty lounge last Friday at 3:37pm where all of this was discussed. They’ve also cancelled the cheese platter but there’s no point in coming anyway because the free champagne is only for professors and you’re just one of their lackeys.
By the way, emailing me five minutes before an event begins does not count as giving me notice.
Speaking of email, no, I haven’t filled out that survey about the inadequacy of the size of the car spaces for the Science Faculty because I don’t park there and I don’t care, I’ve never had anything to do with the Science Faculty and spamming me about it isn’t going to change that.
I’m so sorry I followed the instructions on that form and submitted it to the graduate school office like it told me to do. Next time I’ll completely ignore any written directives and make sure I annoy you with every piece of pointless documentation the system might require of me. Would you like to check over my Medicare claims and tax returns as well? I’ll even attach some passive-aggressive notes to them, just to keep things interesting. ‘Yours in anticipation’ indeed.
And why must the web enrolment system be formatted like a questionnaire from Quiz-Your-Friends? Don’t we have an entire department devoted to information technology? Surely they can come up with something better than highlighted bullet points on a glorified Word document.
Finally, I don’t know what part of ‘I want to have adventures’ sounds to you like ‘I want to sit in an office with a view of a carpark and teach Derrida to bored undergraduates for the rest of my life’ but that’s not what I said and that’s not what’s going to happen.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the appeal of a room of one’s own and an adjustable desk chair as much as the next person, but I’ve never once considered the institution as a long-term career and I’m not going to start now. I have a life and I intend to live it.
Vitriol Girl blogs over here when she is trying to rescue her soul from her university
Showing posts with label vitriol girl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vitriol girl. Show all posts
Tourists
Guest post from Vitriol Girl
Fact: being a tourist makes you look stupid.
Fact: being a tourist makes you look stupid.
I've come to the conclusion, there is no way you can be a tourist and not look stupid. First of all, tourists look at shit, and there’s nothing more annoying than someone who actually takes notice of their surroundings. Don’t try to hide it because we can spot you miles away. No, it’s not the backpack. No, it’s not the bum-bag or the passport pocket or even the Lonely Planet guide. It’s those velcro sandals. You know, the ones that you bought from that outdoorsy looking store because you can walk in them AND it doesn’t matter if they get wet? Them. Nobody—nobody—wears them except for tourists—as if you couldn’t guess, given how they make you look like you’re wearing kneepads on your feet. Kind of like Crocs. Nobody in their right mind would be caught dead wearing them in their regular neighborhood, but for some reason tourists decide that the regular rules don’t apply to them.
And don’t pretend we can’t see you ooh-ing and aah-ing at the top of your lungs over something totally arbitrary. “Look, honey! Look at that chipped plaster awning! Look at this artfully placed rusty spoon! Look at that cup of coffee! / that incredibly common mammal! / your cocktail! / your foot ulcer!” For some reason, the exact same shit that was totally mundane in your own backyard becomes fascinating to you as a tourist. If you’re not gushing about it, you’re bitching about how that rock / building / tree / painting / rusty spoon / kangaroo / foot ulcer wasn’t as impressive as you thought it would be. What do you want it to do, give you a lap dance? Maybe it just looks unimpressive because you’re viewing it through the lens of your camera. Incidentally, is that surgically attached to your face? No? Then remove it. What’s the point in traveling to new places if all you’re going to do is take photos of them? Did you pick up the tourist brochure and go, ‘Hey look at the photos of this place! Let’s go there so we can take our own photos of exactly the same thing!’? You did, didn’t you? How many times are you actually going to look at them? Let’s be honest—you’re going to beg EVERYONE YOU KNOW to gaze at them in wonder (even the blurry ones and the 45 you took of that cockatoo from different angles) but when you sift through them yourself, all you’ll be looking for are the hot / buff / half-naked ones you can post as your Facebook profile picture.
And you know that campervan you’re hauling halfway across the country? It’s fat, ugly, a waste of energy and an oxymoron. You’re not camping; you’re carrying a house. You’re not ‘getting away from it all’; you’ve got ‘it all’ attached to your towbar. Don’t try to tell me all about how you’re getting close to nature; you’re sitting on your arse watching ‘Deal or No Deal’ at 5:30pm just the same as always, only this time you picked it up with a satellite dish next to a gum tree instead of through the antennae on your tiled roof at home. You’re in a national park. Perhaps you might like to listen to the sound of night birds and crickets instead of Andrew O’Keefe. And if you turned that generator off and walked outside you might even—gasp!—see some stars
Additionally, I understand that hauling a 6-tonne pile of scrap metal around the country means you can’t go faster than 75km/h even in your brand new shiny-clean black twin-cab Nissan Navara, but when I’m 8 cars behind you and you’re behind a road train I kind of want to slash your tyres or shove a potato up your exhaust. Not only does it make you the slowest jerk on the highway, but when the speed limit is 130km/h I’m pretty sure it’s a crime against humanity.
Don’t think you backpackers are any better.
The only thing worse than an overprepared tourist who doesn’t actually want to leave home is an underprepared backpacker who has decided that the most important thing for them to spend their money on is booze, and that because they’re not at home they can be the most obnoxious wanker on earth. Of course your $12 tent doesn’t keep out monsoon rain, no I won't shout you dinner.
What kind of dipshit goes for a 20km walk in thongs, without a water bottle anyway? And that car—baby, you’re lucky it got three blocks from the rental yard let alone halfway to Brisbane. Nobody cares about how smashed you got last night, or how many wrong hostel rooms you walked into, or how many girls you failed to hook up with, or how you spewed all over the public toilets, or how you lost your phone, or how hilarious it was when you threw your beer can at that emu / homeless person / member of an ethnic minority / small child.
It’s like someone sold you epic failure and convinced you it was adventure, and now you’re inflicting your idiocy on the rest of us. When you get hypothermia because you passed out on a rock in the middle of the desert in the middle of the night after somebody shaved off your god-awful dreadlocks, nobody is going to feel sorry for you.
Incidentally, could you move downwind? Clearly you haven’t showered since you left whatever planet it is that spawned you, and can you go back there as soon as possible? PLEASE?
Vitriol Girl blogs over here when she is in a better mood
I have an overwhelming grump for tourists who 'do' things. "Then we did Salisbury on our way to doing Stonehenge after which we will do Avebury." If you are just ticking places off a map then go and frack off.
PS Don't start me on backpackers
PPS or travel photos
Captain AR Pants esq
And don’t pretend we can’t see you ooh-ing and aah-ing at the top of your lungs over something totally arbitrary. “Look, honey! Look at that chipped plaster awning! Look at this artfully placed rusty spoon! Look at that cup of coffee! / that incredibly common mammal! / your cocktail! / your foot ulcer!” For some reason, the exact same shit that was totally mundane in your own backyard becomes fascinating to you as a tourist. If you’re not gushing about it, you’re bitching about how that rock / building / tree / painting / rusty spoon / kangaroo / foot ulcer wasn’t as impressive as you thought it would be. What do you want it to do, give you a lap dance? Maybe it just looks unimpressive because you’re viewing it through the lens of your camera. Incidentally, is that surgically attached to your face? No? Then remove it. What’s the point in traveling to new places if all you’re going to do is take photos of them? Did you pick up the tourist brochure and go, ‘Hey look at the photos of this place! Let’s go there so we can take our own photos of exactly the same thing!’? You did, didn’t you? How many times are you actually going to look at them? Let’s be honest—you’re going to beg EVERYONE YOU KNOW to gaze at them in wonder (even the blurry ones and the 45 you took of that cockatoo from different angles) but when you sift through them yourself, all you’ll be looking for are the hot / buff / half-naked ones you can post as your Facebook profile picture.
And you know that campervan you’re hauling halfway across the country? It’s fat, ugly, a waste of energy and an oxymoron. You’re not camping; you’re carrying a house. You’re not ‘getting away from it all’; you’ve got ‘it all’ attached to your towbar. Don’t try to tell me all about how you’re getting close to nature; you’re sitting on your arse watching ‘Deal or No Deal’ at 5:30pm just the same as always, only this time you picked it up with a satellite dish next to a gum tree instead of through the antennae on your tiled roof at home. You’re in a national park. Perhaps you might like to listen to the sound of night birds and crickets instead of Andrew O’Keefe. And if you turned that generator off and walked outside you might even—gasp!—see some stars
Additionally, I understand that hauling a 6-tonne pile of scrap metal around the country means you can’t go faster than 75km/h even in your brand new shiny-clean black twin-cab Nissan Navara, but when I’m 8 cars behind you and you’re behind a road train I kind of want to slash your tyres or shove a potato up your exhaust. Not only does it make you the slowest jerk on the highway, but when the speed limit is 130km/h I’m pretty sure it’s a crime against humanity.
Don’t think you backpackers are any better.
The only thing worse than an overprepared tourist who doesn’t actually want to leave home is an underprepared backpacker who has decided that the most important thing for them to spend their money on is booze, and that because they’re not at home they can be the most obnoxious wanker on earth. Of course your $12 tent doesn’t keep out monsoon rain, no I won't shout you dinner.
What kind of dipshit goes for a 20km walk in thongs, without a water bottle anyway? And that car—baby, you’re lucky it got three blocks from the rental yard let alone halfway to Brisbane. Nobody cares about how smashed you got last night, or how many wrong hostel rooms you walked into, or how many girls you failed to hook up with, or how you spewed all over the public toilets, or how you lost your phone, or how hilarious it was when you threw your beer can at that emu / homeless person / member of an ethnic minority / small child.
It’s like someone sold you epic failure and convinced you it was adventure, and now you’re inflicting your idiocy on the rest of us. When you get hypothermia because you passed out on a rock in the middle of the desert in the middle of the night after somebody shaved off your god-awful dreadlocks, nobody is going to feel sorry for you.
Incidentally, could you move downwind? Clearly you haven’t showered since you left whatever planet it is that spawned you, and can you go back there as soon as possible? PLEASE?
Vitriol Girl blogs over here when she is in a better mood
I have an overwhelming grump for tourists who 'do' things. "Then we did Salisbury on our way to doing Stonehenge after which we will do Avebury." If you are just ticking places off a map then go and frack off.
PS Don't start me on backpackers
PPS or travel photos
Captain AR Pants esq
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
