Local news. The word local is so local. It is right here on the page: local. My Thanksgiving dinner was so local. It was right there on the table. I have been away from Canton for a week and so I’m really not up to date on the local news. No indeed. And because I have lots of homework to do, I’m not even up to date on the campus news, because I am too busy pretending to do homework. And so the only local news I have is about myself, and I am pretty local. I don’t like to talk to people who aren’t local, so I don’t use a phone. If you aren’t right there, you aren’t local, and so you aren’t sustainable either. And sustainability is everything.
Do you ever start to turn against things you actually care about because you are so over it? I am so over Fall Semester ’09. I’m over it. And I liked it, but I’m over it. Great, we can just have two weeks to enjoy what’s left on our meal cards and have tea and cookies with the friends we’ve accumulated over the semester. Thanksgiving means thanks for giving us a semester of learning, now we will let it soak in like sunscreen until Christmas. Because this three-week stretch before winter break may be local, but it is not sustainable.
I cannot sustain a workload of two papers per day. It hurts my head and encourages unhealthy sleep habits and makes me even more self-centered than I usually am as a self-respecting, grade-conscious college student. The harder I work, the more self-absorbed I am, and the more firmly I believe in a well-deserved break: a lavish vacation to an un-local place via unsustainable air travel.
I don’t actually treat myself to a vacation for getting through finals week, but I could, because my awesome grades will make me millions of dollars eventually and then I will get to escape! Or maybe I need to network instead of wasting my time getting good grades. That way I will be able to find a job when I graduate. Should I network or should I get a stellar grade? I think for the millions of dollars I should network. With tea and cookies and my meal card. It would be so local.
Everyone is so local right now; it would be the perfect opportunity. Vegetables are local in the summer; people are local in early December. Done. Everyone is cold and comes into the Student Center looking for people to network with. False. Everyone comes into the Student Center looking for food and then a place to pretend to do work. This is where I am innovative. I come into the Student Center and network. No competition!
Everyone except me writes their final papers, and I network and make handmade, local, sustainable sock puppets for my family and friends as Christmas gifts. Everyone else will spend the money they could have invested in lucrative stocks on unsustainable, expensive gifts made in China. Not local unless you are in China, where they speak Cantonese, which is not spoken locally here in Canton. We speak Mandarin here. And we have mandarin oranges at Dana. Again, not local, not sustainable.
Be sustainable, stay local: love your friends, have cookies and tea (people might try and tell you tea is not local: shove it in their face and ask them how much more local they want it), make handmade gifts for those you cherish, don’t isolate yourself by writing papers, and most importantly: network. It will pay off in the future.
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