Misfits, Junk, and Verbal Garbage

As I return to another year of needing to be up at the university more consistently, of needing to see all these people constantly, and of needing to perform crap small-talk, I am sad to announce that all the faculty and grad students have seemed to come down with work-a-holic zombie syndrome. This rampant disease has made everyone act strangely busy with the smallest of tasks, so busy that they are unable to carry on a two-second nicety such as “hi.” It has gotten so bad that the grad students are afraid to even socialize in “public,” opting instead to socialize with one another behind the closed doors of their offices. So far, we cannot locate where this disease is breeding from: could it be our OCD head who badly wants the English dept to have a certain “image”? could it be our relatively new dean whose elitism is off-putting? could it be the crackdown on grad students smoking together outside the building? could it be the sudden drop in drinking and partying together? No one knows. No one talks about it. No one even seems to notice.

So, being the bitter person I have become, I have made it my duty to say “hi” to everyone I see in a loud and obnoxious manner. I have forced people into talking while making copies, regardless of how nuerotic and awkward they become in their subconcious paranoia. But, who am I kidding. I act just as busy as everyone else, to cover up the awkwardness and social-paranoia. And acting busy at work is nothing new in the world of business. All I know is that going to the university now makes me want to run away, screaming and pulling my hair out, before I have to see any of these people. Perhaps, dissertating just does this to people.