What purpose does a title serve in the grand blog of things?
The future is like a bus. You wait for ages and then three of them come along at once.
...
No, that's not right. Let me try again.
The future is a like... a charging hippopotamus. It sounds funny when it's a long way off but it's scary as hell when it's fifty meters away and closing.
Given that I have Higher exams coming up in a little over a week, I've given a surprising amount of thought to the far flung future (that's “next year” in young-people speak, I believe) today. It all came about because during PSE (Personal and Social Education, the most dreadfully dull and useless subject on the face of the planet), instead of the usual drivel about why it's a bad idea to try to direct large lumps of metal around a populated area at high velocities while inebriated, we had to look over “Skills and Qualities” sheets.
Now, these things come up about once every year, more often as university applications approach, and I've hated them since we started doing them. It varies a little time but the gist of it is, you write down the various extracurricular activities that you do, making sure to note all the awards you kick-boxing horse has one you and so on, and try to evaluate what you've learned from the experience. You're skill at kicking a ball around a muddy pitch while yelling at people is then translated into words like “teamwork” and “communication” and people are impressed.
But I don't do anything like that. I don't spend my free time doing sports or playing a musical instrument or doing work experience. I sit around and I watch DVDs and I fiddle around on the computer. That's not to say that I don't do anything; I write this blog, I do the VCOM podcast, I write the occasional comic strip, I do all kinds of things which, while I feel good about them, can't really be measured and quantified and turned into a good thing.
Maybe it could and I'm just far too cynical to see it that way. I've never liked the idea of summarising hobbies and activities into buzzwords and relying on them for your future. The whole process is just too random and, while I'm all for a bit of chance and luck, randomness in such important things has always bugged me.
Still, I have numerous little projects that I plan to start once the exams are over, though I would be dong them whether or not I felt that I might need them. For example, I've been meaning to read through a few Dummies books I have to raise my technical knowledge. I plan to completely revise and restructure VersusCOM (temporarily out of bandwidth owing to administrator incompetence), as well as getting some more stable arrangement set up with the podcast. I'm still determined to do my long-planned webcomic (it's probably been over a year now since I conceived the groundwork). If I can get my hands on a camcorder, I have a few parody things that I might like to try, along with some audio stuff for another podcast, perhaps.
Still, all that's in the future. Today's post has been a little bit more introspective than usual but since nobody reads this anyway, I feel I can use it to summarise stuff like this for my own benefit. And just so you feel you've walked away with some new and interesting knowledge...
Did you know that the hippo is often cited as the deadliest animal in Africa?
...
No, that's not right. Let me try again.
The future is a like... a charging hippopotamus. It sounds funny when it's a long way off but it's scary as hell when it's fifty meters away and closing.
Given that I have Higher exams coming up in a little over a week, I've given a surprising amount of thought to the far flung future (that's “next year” in young-people speak, I believe) today. It all came about because during PSE (Personal and Social Education, the most dreadfully dull and useless subject on the face of the planet), instead of the usual drivel about why it's a bad idea to try to direct large lumps of metal around a populated area at high velocities while inebriated, we had to look over “Skills and Qualities” sheets.
Now, these things come up about once every year, more often as university applications approach, and I've hated them since we started doing them. It varies a little time but the gist of it is, you write down the various extracurricular activities that you do, making sure to note all the awards you kick-boxing horse has one you and so on, and try to evaluate what you've learned from the experience. You're skill at kicking a ball around a muddy pitch while yelling at people is then translated into words like “teamwork” and “communication” and people are impressed.
But I don't do anything like that. I don't spend my free time doing sports or playing a musical instrument or doing work experience. I sit around and I watch DVDs and I fiddle around on the computer. That's not to say that I don't do anything; I write this blog, I do the VCOM podcast, I write the occasional comic strip, I do all kinds of things which, while I feel good about them, can't really be measured and quantified and turned into a good thing.
Maybe it could and I'm just far too cynical to see it that way. I've never liked the idea of summarising hobbies and activities into buzzwords and relying on them for your future. The whole process is just too random and, while I'm all for a bit of chance and luck, randomness in such important things has always bugged me.
Still, I have numerous little projects that I plan to start once the exams are over, though I would be dong them whether or not I felt that I might need them. For example, I've been meaning to read through a few Dummies books I have to raise my technical knowledge. I plan to completely revise and restructure VersusCOM (temporarily out of bandwidth owing to administrator incompetence), as well as getting some more stable arrangement set up with the podcast. I'm still determined to do my long-planned webcomic (it's probably been over a year now since I conceived the groundwork). If I can get my hands on a camcorder, I have a few parody things that I might like to try, along with some audio stuff for another podcast, perhaps.
Still, all that's in the future. Today's post has been a little bit more introspective than usual but since nobody reads this anyway, I feel I can use it to summarise stuff like this for my own benefit. And just so you feel you've walked away with some new and interesting knowledge...
Did you know that the hippo is often cited as the deadliest animal in Africa?
posted by Alasdair Corbett at
11:05 PM
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