confusion

It’s months into the campus experience and the glow of newness, that enigmatic aura that surrounds those things in life that seem to us mysterious, has faded. The idyllic enchantment that is synonymous to all freshmen with institutions of higher learning has fizzled off.
It’s High School all over again albeit with a few perks such as a liberalized dress code; the self-aggrandizing tags- lecture halls for classrooms, mess for dining hall, tutorials, e.t.c. Yes, there’s generally an air of self-importance. But one gets the feeling that something is amiss. Where is the intercourse with brilliant mind? Where is the colour and vibrance of youth…the bubbling of great ideas? The sad truth is that nothing substantial has changed. And nowhere is this stunted growth more evident than in the social scene.
There is still that pointless obsession with lyrics- remnants of the teen years. You’re no one if you can’t hum to the latest Rihanna tune. And to give you a glimpse of  just where I stand in the social ladder…pure rap is lost on me, hard rock too- all those suicidal lyrics and the lunatic headshaking; what’s that about!? And there’s something adolescent about the unwavering interest in gadgets- cell phones, I-pods. Something near-menacing about earpieces popping out of underclothes, and something infinitely sad about a generation more at home with automated  voices than the warm laughter of those around them.
Come to campus and there’s a silent declaration: it’s beer o’clock. Booze and sex are the basics of life. When you’re not brain-dead wasted from drink you’re shacked up with some one night stand whose name you don’t even know; and here the world revolves. The more liquor you gulp down and the less classes you attend, the faster you achieve legend status. There’s still that same popularity contest; the girl who shows the most skin wins. These are the simple but illusive principles of popularity as laid down by the gods of fame.
For a first year girl, the mood is unapologetically predatory. There are pick up lines used that are an insult to seduction. Lines that would make Romeo turn in his very grave. Some actually work…more’s the pity.
But there are also the lovers. The Don Juan of the Denim generation. The ‘smooth operators’. The ruffle of skirts excites them. The clinking of heels enflames their blood. Ahh, they live for women these gentle rogues, and the women live for them. With subtle whiffs of musk they make provincial girls swoon for them.
When one reaches university, the journey of re-invention and continual self-improvement begins. To the Problem girls of High School who discovered that their beauty could get them attention is the realization that this attention could be converted to economic remuneration. They are trophy women and nocturnal creatures with a penchant for shiny jewels, flashy cars. They are the skeptics of this age with no love left but the love of money. And who can blame them? Love dies…money has continual life. Behind each jewel is a sob story that could syndicate a back-alley Kenyan tabloid and Daddy-issues that years of therapy won’t crack.
In campus, there’s something irritatingly predictable in the turn-over from Evangelism to bar-hopping. The choir girls of High school who refused to glorify the flesh are now party girls on a mission of debauchery and drunken dissipation. They have set aside the Stoicism of religion for the Epicurean delights of sensual living.
And the cliques! I have nothing against social stratification, honest to goodness, but the manner of groupings…it’s like the minute you come here you have to be branded and tagged and placed in a little box.
Yes, life here is pretty much a cliché. At first you’re wide-eyed, basking in the light of your youthful idealism. You vow not to become one of these cheap imitations, you swear to be different, and for a time you truly are. But then you see how easy it is to belong to this headless revolt. See how good it feels to be admired even by those who matter least and it becomes a drug. This need to impress and gain favour.
Yet there are a few brave souls. Those who know who they are and who refuse to be lesser men. We label the ‘weird’ and we condescend to them. We hate them because they show us how pathetic we are…because they are better than us.
It’s months into the campus experience and I feel terribly unprepared for it.