After a year in university, I have killed so many trees I feel compelled to speak out for them because they cannot do it for themselves. I am driven by the need to heal the world, make it a better place, for you and for me... and I better stop now before people start rolling their eyes.
Everyone knows that the only people who really want to save the Earth belong to two breeds. Tree hugging idealists and politicians who want the votes of tree hugging idealists. Neither of these exist in Singapore, so I should stop pretending I really give two shits about the environment.
Ok, the real problem I have is how much reading they try to stuff into our systems in university. The sheer volume that you have to take in and digest is disgusting. You can't even try to eat it and hope it diffuses into your brain by osmosis like some people do in desperation, because you'd be dead before you finish chapter 1.
To top things off, professors simply cannot bring themselves to use simple English in their readings. In news writing, we learn to use the simple and familiar word. Professors however, will always use the more obscure word, and try to explain their concept in 50 words when 5 would do.
You know who invented the thesaurus? Yes, professors, the very same people who needed to find more and more difficult words to say the same things so they could marvel at their own intellectual superiority. Like "ha ha bow to my unfettered genius and be overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of my voluminous readings"
They have little sympathy for "lesser beings", or people of less intellectual calibre, hence they must write in a way that is unreadable except to others like them. In other words, people with no life who spend too much time reading and producing more of this shit.
Look at all the shit they produce sitting in libraries worldwide. Who the hell reads them? Thank goodness it's all biodegradable. At least it can be used as fertiliser.
Thousands of undergraduates around the world wonder everyday just what on earth they are reading so much for, because they don't even remember it the moment they finish reading it. Hell, I don't even remember the last line I read. Don't ask me to tell you what I learnt from a reading, because its out of my system the moment it goes in. The only way it stays is if I cram so much of it the system gets jammed and hence some of it is retained, so that I can take a dump in the exam hall and leave feeling relieved. Figuratively, of course. Unless the paper is so hard you can't help doing it literally.
Do you remember what you learnt in school last year? Something is seriously wrong isn't it, when you graduate remembering almost nothing you have learnt. Unfortunately, I think people have kind of forgotten that it shouldn't be the case, how maybe people who graduate don't really know a lot more than when they went in all those years ago.