Spring Break
Senseless summer fun: Miami becomes a different world
Perspective
Todd Seabrook, Senior Staff Writer
Issue date: 4/26/05 Section: OpEd Page
In Bizzaro World school is in session during the summer.
In Bizzaro World uptown bars are empty on weekends.
In Bizzaro World American Gladiators does not exist.
In Bizzaro World the Greek-unaffiliated GDIs like me move into fraternity houses as if it weren't laughably ironic.
I have lived in Bizzaro World. And I am going to live in it again. And all I have to do is wait for everyone to leave for summer.
Instead of going back to the orphanage or the drainage pipe I called home through high school, I am staying in Oxford for some laid-back summer schooling.
Although I like to think that I once had childhood memories, I have come to realize Miami is my life now, as it has always been and always will be. Sometimes I try to see Oxford as the Emerald City, where once I have had enough of it, I will be magically transported to a place where I actually want to be. That thought - in combination with barbiturates and mescaline - gets me out of bed in the morning.
Miami has been slowly siphoning off my free will since freshman year, but it wasn't until I spent last summer that I felt OK with it.
For lack of a literal home and any meaningful connections in the world, I rented a room in the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity house for dirt cheap, while trying to touch as little as possible for fear of bacterial infection and tetanus.
At the time I did not know if Bizzaro World had anti-toxins or if the classes I would be taking would just kill me anyway.
As most have already figured out, the regular school year is actually a grand-scale psychology experiment with no ends to its means - and it is steadily getting meaner every year.
Summer school chisels away all the torture and mental castration that the semesters have inflicted upon your soul and replaces it with a nice massage to lull you into paying another $300 a credit hour. Acquiescence is bliss.
And if you are like me, you hate people, because people are stupid, which makes summer sessions perfect for all the human-race-hating pseudo-cynical bastards like myself.
In Bizzaro World uptown bars are empty on weekends.
In Bizzaro World American Gladiators does not exist.
In Bizzaro World the Greek-unaffiliated GDIs like me move into fraternity houses as if it weren't laughably ironic.
I have lived in Bizzaro World. And I am going to live in it again. And all I have to do is wait for everyone to leave for summer.
Instead of going back to the orphanage or the drainage pipe I called home through high school, I am staying in Oxford for some laid-back summer schooling.
Although I like to think that I once had childhood memories, I have come to realize Miami is my life now, as it has always been and always will be. Sometimes I try to see Oxford as the Emerald City, where once I have had enough of it, I will be magically transported to a place where I actually want to be. That thought - in combination with barbiturates and mescaline - gets me out of bed in the morning.
Miami has been slowly siphoning off my free will since freshman year, but it wasn't until I spent last summer that I felt OK with it.
For lack of a literal home and any meaningful connections in the world, I rented a room in the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity house for dirt cheap, while trying to touch as little as possible for fear of bacterial infection and tetanus.
At the time I did not know if Bizzaro World had anti-toxins or if the classes I would be taking would just kill me anyway.
As most have already figured out, the regular school year is actually a grand-scale psychology experiment with no ends to its means - and it is steadily getting meaner every year.
Summer school chisels away all the torture and mental castration that the semesters have inflicted upon your soul and replaces it with a nice massage to lull you into paying another $300 a credit hour. Acquiescence is bliss.
And if you are like me, you hate people, because people are stupid, which makes summer sessions perfect for all the human-race-hating pseudo-cynical bastards like myself.
