Save the sweetness of home for a rainy day

This is a slightly delayed blog considering that the weekend has already passed. This is also not about what happened n the weekend because it has nothing to do with Rhodes as I did no work at all but more to do with the risks of going home as regularly as I do. I had successfully stayed at Rhodes for two whole weeks and one weekend and it was high time to get out of here. So I once again skipped town as soon as the last “school bell” rang with the excuse that I needed to fetch my camera charger so that I could take photographs for this blog even though I knew that it was not a necessity. I even missed the glamorous hall ball but I blame my absence on the fear of not being able to fit into my matric dance dress. So dress hanging abandoned in my cupboard I went home and spent a lovely weekend with the family and the boyfriend and felt confident that I would handle the departure with no upsets because the last weeks at Rhodes had been great and I felt happy about everything. I was to take the bus early Monday morning to be in time for my lectures and tutorials but as soon as 6am reared its ugly head and ripped me from my mothers warm arms, I was back at sobbing square one. Not to mention the irritating fact that the bus came late so I ended up missing most of my lectures and a tutorial. Back at res I felt the same sadness and lack of motivation to function on any level because as any student will discover, Rhodes is plain crappy compared to your other life, which is why we should not subject ourselves to the constant comparison that leaves us dishevelled and depressed. Stick it out for the whole term or at least half and savour the sweetness of home for a truly rainy day.

Student apathy

With regards to my previous post entitled “The many forms of offence” I was reminded of a politically charged discussion that I and a few other girls from my residence had over chocolate pudding in the dining hall. It was the usual setting that surrounds any political conversation: those that have nothing to say because they think its trivial, those too afraid to offend, and those (like me) who do not know much but just want to argue and the token individual pioneering the debate. We were discussing whether Jacob Zuma was a puppet for whomever or if he truly was the one that will destroy South Africa “single handily”. As you can guess, there were no Zuma supporters at that table.
The discussion went all it’s which ways with no epiphanic conclusion but the individual pioneering the debate was still fuming as we put our trays and our political thoughts into trolleys. She is one of the small handfuls of students who actually attend student forums, which deal with all the big issues at Rhodes. Her anger was geared toward the apathy and the scary fact that at every meeting it is about 25 SRC members, 5 students and some others who have to be there, who actually attend. But it is these people who "represent" the student body and have the power to change Rhodes even if that change is extremely biased and in no way reflects what us students really want. Do us students even know what we want, do we even care that there is a tiny group who are making decisions on our behalf? We are notified of these forums via posters around campus and Studentzone. It is apathy that results in people like Jacob Zuma or the like governing our country and it must stop here! Only about 1500 students registered to vote, which leaves about 1500 South African students unregistered, which halves the chance of change and please believe me when I say that it does matter what you think, in a big way!

Emotional and physical hangover

One night out in Grahamstown and a severe hangover later, I am walking desperately (at seven in the morning) in an attempt to get away, to move, to do something to distract myself from my physical and emotional hangover. It's only about the fifth time that I have gone out in Grahamstown and every morning after, I feel the same isolation and desperation. It honestly takes a night out in this place to remind you that you need to get out of here, pronto! A night out is destined to leave you hanging in some way or another, either because you have consumed too much alcohol just to survive the repetitive bull or because you realise how very depressing the culture of drinking is and the individuals that are spawned from it. I am no better than they because I too fall into my tequila with haste and every time promise myself that this is the last, but then do it again and again without a moment of hesitation. I do not know if my feelings are that of admiration or disbelief toward the students who diligently go out every single weekend. The way I feel right now renders me speechless because if I had to subject myself to such physical and emotional abuse on a regular basis I would not survive.

I guess that I understand why this is the norm because technically that is all you can do at Rhodes and as research has shown there is practically no activities for students who prefer to walk the straight and narrow. But it is so frustrating that our options as students are so limited but what's even more disappointing is that the majority of us don't seem to mind and so are destined to wake up with emotional and phyiscal hangovers. I just worry that this is what students live for at the end of every week. Is the system to blame or are us students as pathetic as everyone thinks we are?