It's around this time of year, students who pretend to care about the way things are run in order to gain popularity amongst their fellow kin litter the halls, the cafés, the walls, the ceilings, the shops, the classrooms and even parts of an unknowable fourth dimension with light-hearted propaganda detailing how they plan to make University a better place. In most cases, these are usually the same pledges made by the same people as last year who were elected then and are gunning for re-election now.
When it comes to politics, I may be a cynic, but it's only because I find politics to be complicated; so complicated, in fact, that only idiots think they know what they're doing because they're too thick to realise they don't know what they're doing. That's why I think the Alternative Vote referendum should've passed last May and if I was able to vote at the time (which I wasn't due to circumstances revolving around address transferral and generally having a busy life), I would've gone for a 'yes' vote, not that it would've made the blindest bit of difference.
The AV system of voting is complicated, which is exactly what politics are. Voting under the current system is easy to understand, thus extremely simple, thus flawed. To me, the idea of using a stupidly simple method of voting to elect political officials is like washing a plateful of discarded roast dinner in a dishwasher: yes it's the easiest, quickest fix, but ultimately you end up with specks of gravy and cabbage permanently dried to the plate, which only leaves more damage for you to have to manually clean up later on anyway. But the Uni seems to have the right idea since votes for student elections (no matter how dull or pointless they may be) are conducted under a similar system to the once-proposed AV style.
Why am I babbling on about this? Because yesterday, during a particularly enjoyable afternoon workshop session, my phone began to ring. Embarrassed, I terminated the incoming call, which apparently sent it to Voice Mail. I'd pondered who would be calling me from an unknown number in the middle of the day, even allowing myself to wildly believe that one of my previous endeavours into the world of potential part-time work was letting me know they wanted to offer me the chance of giving me money. Once the session had ended, brimming with anticipation, I went straight ahead and listened to the message left for me. The voice that emanated from the phone was far too friendly and optimistic...
"Hi there Jamie (as if she knows me personally), it's Sally (or someone, I don't remember the name) from Student Services, just wanting to let you know about student elections coming up, et cetera, blah blah, pointless information you've already heard, blah-de-de-blah-de-de-bl- **Message Deleted**"
Many things ran through my head at this point. One: I don't care. Two: HOW THE CRAP DID YOU GET MY NUMBER?!?!!? Three: I really don't care. I voted in the student elections last year and nothing particularly special happened, I noticed no change, I was not directly affected by anything and I have other, more important things to concern my time with.
The University and its affiliates are now just going out of their way to definitely make sure every single droplet of information is distributed around every single student seventeen times, way before anyone's supposed to even care. As well as the election shite, unit choices for next year's studying had been open for a week or so before the reminder emails were circulated - a good three weeks before the actual deadline for them to be done.
An email I received last Monday lovingly informed me that I hadn't made any choices yet. Naturally, I was aware of this since I've been waiting for information from certain course officials to allow me to tailor my course specifically the way I want it. It's a situation that only affects me personally, so I could forgive the generic reminder email on the Monday telling me that if I'm confused, I can find out more information at the Options Fair that Wednesday. Pretty standard stuff.
On the Tuesday, I received the exact same reminder email telling me that if I was still confused I could find out more information at the Options Fair that still hadn't actually happened since the last email was sent out.
Luckily, I'm now on track (or at least as 'on track' as I'd like to be at this point) with assignment deadlines since, of my three assessments due next week, two are completely done. I'm now staring into the face the biggie (4,000 words on a bunch of stuff I don't know or care about), with a week or so left to do it. I've vowed to myself to keep my head down, to get on with it, and not to interact with the world or its affiliates for the whole week, meaning the chances of me dealing with an email reminding me about student elections, or any other banality I genuinely don't care about, shouldn't come to my attention until this time next week.
Unfortunately, I have a whole week to deal with a massive something I genuinely don't care about just so that I can pass this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment