Welcome to the back page. I almost dzdn’t see you there. Before I started writing for The Daily Aztec, I was a reader just like you. I’ve found there are two kinds of people who read the back page. Type A is the person who skims the contents of the front page, glances at the middle pages, but ultimately becomes too bored with actual news and is reading this hoping it will capture their attention. Statistically, I’ve already lost 30 percent of my type A readers.
Type B readers are the ones who didn’t really give the rest of the newspaper a fighting chance. They skimmed the contents of the paper only looking at the visuals, winding up on the back page, and are reading this column by default because they got stuck on Sudoku. You can conclude that without this Japanese pastime I might not have an audience at all.
So why do I do it? People are always asking me, “Is it worth the late nights and empty coffee pots? Is it worth potentially developing carpal tunnel syndrome or even something serious like tennis elbow?”
My answer is yes. When I was a dumb, naive little freshman, I set my sights down the business administration path. Slowly, my course schedule stripped me of most of my creativity and happiness by forcing me to memorize formulas. Accounting 201 actually damaged thousands of serotonin receptors beyond repair. It’s my third year in, and I feel like every calculation I’ve done so far will be done on a computer in the real world, and every business concept I’ve learned is borderline common knowledge. I say borderline because if it were completely common knowledge, then it would be abbreviated “COMM.”
This column is my retaliation against the business major. This column is for all the times I’ve walked out of a class knowing with unwavering assurance, with unfaltering confidence, that those 75 minutes did not benefit my present or future life. If the business world believes time is money, then the mere writing of this column is in complete contradiction; however, if I let go of doing the things I love, the business world wins. This is a classic internal struggle most of us will succumb to when we set aside our dreams for a 40-hour work week.
To my fellow readers who are in too deep with their majors to switch out and would rather bite their tongues and finish in four years, this one’s for you. To my fellow business majors who have chosen to silently repeat, “The ends justify the means,” this one’s for you. To my fellow accounting majors, I cannot offer you any advice because you’ve already given up on everything beautiful in this world.
Steve Jobs said every morning he looks in the mirror and asks, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I’m about to do today?” I’ve been doing the same thing and all I can say is, thank God for online lecture notes.
8212;Matt Powers is a marketing junior.
8212;This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Daily Aztec.
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