Trying Teen Times - the grown up one- Part the Second

My son has had an epiphany, his moment of realisation, that bit as a teenager when you have a stream of consciousness, the outpouring of everything that you think you've done wrong, in life, in love, with friends, decisions, money, everything.

It's been a while coming.

To recap, #1 Son left school with some A levels, but decided that work was a better option than further study, he's been a poor student, in the sense of application, he's bright as anyone I know, but comes  with low self esteem, and was often bullied. He managed a year of work hard work 5am to 2pm, and then decided to go to University. We worked hard with him to get him to choose a course that was the right one, and he made his choices, signed up all the forms and went on his merry way. A few months in he had angst about if it was the right thing, and recently decided that it really wasn't him and he's dropping out.

So follows  is his long missive about how he feels, and it makes me sad, and I feel helpless about how to help.  I can give him money, which will ease some burden and I can tell him that he's in a place that everyone has been in - give or take, same or different - at one point or another. I can't pay his debt for him, well I can but that wouldn't solve anything. So I have a Son without a job and with dreams, and no plan.

 

I think I've found my problem. I currently have a combination of a few things wrong up there in the head.

I have so many things I want to do. I want to learn how to use 3DS Max competently for Modelling and Animation. I want to learn how to design levels with the Source SDK and the UDK. I want to finish my Warhammer models my Dad got me, simply so I can say they are done. I want to pull out the dremel tool and make a necklace for my Godmother because I know she likes handmade things for Christmas presents and I haven't given her one for a few years now. I have a sketched out design for a laptop stand to have on my knees so I can actually use the comfy chair without burning my knees off.

I just cant decide what to do first because I'll miss out on the opportunity to do the other thing, so I retreat into videogames and the SA forums. Simply so I can put them down and  forget about them for the rest of the day because the Tribes: Ascend thread has 30 more posts and the PYF Macros thread has 3 days worth of content that I'll find momentarily distracting. At this point my laptop is and appears to be a lifeline keeping me from actually realising fully, the impact that I've had on myself through taking a break from Uni, working for a year and being a steadily shittier worker as I became more and more dissilusioned with 5am starts and not knowing when I was going home, signing up for 3pm WoW raids that I'd just get home in time for if I left within the hour of my contracted time didnt help there. More than once I was called out at work for rushing through my last duties and getting grumpy that it wasn't finishing. I have a sneaking suspicion that those actions have fucked up all hopes for using that year as a reference for future work. It really doesnt help that in the last two years I've put hours that number in the thousands into Video Games, merely because that was what let me not care. I want to stop but I keep justifying it as my entertainment, when in reality its just an escape.

I've also figured out that I have a very hard time actually putting what I want to do in words. For example I just tried to make a list of what I want to do in the next year... and I was stumped, even though there is so many things I want to do. I can bullshit my way through a Semester 1 Geography paper. I got 79% on a Essay test I didnt even know was happening, just by turning up and writing. Not even a shred of study because I was sick the day it was announced. And yet I'm so undecided on what I actually want to do I cant make a full list of everything.

Me going to university hasn't helped much in terms of where I am in life.. I'm now more than 10,000 dollars in debt and nothing to show for it except my word that I've gone to university. This has the knock on effect of not having a job when I desperately need one so that I can afford things like Credit for my phone, Fuel for my car and being able to enjoy a night out with my friends. Things that I became accustomed too as I was pulling in 500 dollars a week after tax. Money which I've squandered on being a greedy, selfish person. The entire 8000 dollars that I had from that job is gone merely because I just couldnt control my spending. I feel incredibly rude, almost evil when Sam offers to give me petrol and insists she pays for meals, even though she knows I cant afford if after buying 30 dollars in Petrol and 25 dollars in Bus tickets  merely to get to uni, on top of me buying bottles of cokes simply because I was and still am addicted to the caffiene that I get from it.  Add to this the breakfast I'd buy more than occasionally at uni because I couldnt eat when I woke up, so I'd go to uni and get hungry when i got there, meaning I'd buy food instead of my family noticing that I'd be taking more with me.

The problem with all that is that I've gained far too much weight. In fact I'm at the point where I'm too scared to weigh myself. Knowing how heavy I am this point just wouldnt do me any good. Sam keeps assuring me its okay but I really am not happy with how I look and feel about myself, how my clothes have gotten tighter throughout the year, and how shirts that once fit me are now too tiny to put on. I'm disgusted when I see myself in the mirror these days. If I keep on eating the way I do I'll keel over before I'm 50. I'm pretty damn sure of it. Problem is, I don't know how to stop. I keep telling myself, as my so used its almost broken eftpos card goes through the machine "Next week Cameron".

That's not to say that university is a bad thing. I've made more friends in the 2/3'ds of the year that I was there than all the bullying filled, incredibly low self esteem years that marked my Schooling, Where I retreated into the Libraries, and ending up making better friends with the librarians than most of my classmates that I knew in more than pasing. It's a good feeling, to be able to have a conversation with people your age that doesn't eventually dissolve in me wanting to quit school and fuck off into the wilderness. That feeling was quite rare in High School. It's much better now.

My other current problem is trying to learn something myself through the internet.
On my PC before I reformatted it there was. (Some pirated, some student versions. Not as if I was gonna drop thousands of dollars to learn something.)
-Photoshop
-Vegas 10
-3DS max
-Maya
-Mudbox
-Audacity
-FL Studio
-GIMP
-PLDX Movie Tool.
And I hardly knew how to use any of them because I gave up when someone wasn't there to hold my hand. I know that I describe myself to employers as a "Quick Learner" But looking at this it seems like its mostly bullshit.

My curent goal is to learn 3DS Max and get a job at Weta Workshop. However for all I know I'm going to decide that I want to be a fucking Marketing Expert or a Creative designer. I know my mind craves work that lets me think and express myself. It just doesn't have the attention span to decide what it fucking wants to do and stick to it. This is going to take some more thinking. If I had spare money for Petrol I'd just drive somewhere and try and write about it. But then again, no spare money.           

When Sci-Fi loses the plot - Terra Nova

I've been watching a couple of 'new' programs. "Person of interest" and "Terra Nova"

Terra Nova - an ordinary family from 2149 when the planet is dying who are transported back 85 million years to prehistoric Earth where they join Terra Nova, a colony of humans with a second chance to build a civilization. Yes indeed it's the Flintstones.

Couple of issues with this series, no really, and they are not of the "living with Dinosaurs" type.

• The time travel device "the ring" allows travel back into an alternate past, so that things that happen can't have any effect on the future. There is a "renegade" band of people who seem to be able to communicate with the current Earth. It's not clear how they are doing this, or indeed why.


• The ring deposits people in the middle of nowhere, and they have to march, under an armed escort, to the main camp. They have vehicles, but no it's a march. No reason is given why one is so far from the other, or why, given that Terra Nova is a new hope for Earth that more resources haven't been given to establishing a better, safer, community.


• Terra Nova appears to be under the sole command of an army commander. No council of elders, no quorum, a sole charge position of establishing a new civilisation. And this appears to be going badly because there is a breakaway group of renegades.


• The plot is centered on a group of new arrivals, a migration as they are referred to, and these are referred to as a number, they have issues with "sixers", it's not clear what number of migration the new members are, but the timeline is a bit fuzzy about how long it takes to get from "current" Earth to "Old Earth"

My favourite plot disaster though is the one about the mysterious runes that are carved into some "forbidden zone" rocks. They had to invent a dinosaur to establish why it's a forbidden zone, and of course the "kids" have discovered these runes and are keeping quiet about them, to the point to visiting them regularly and making hooch. Adults though - oblivious! Not however the Commander, and I'd be confident quite a few of his "troops"

It's also full of all the clichés you can imagine, teen angst, parental angst, moral angst, and is almost devoid of any plot. It's already descended into "monster of the week" with all new dinosaurs being discovered.

So a bit unsatisfactory and shallow on many levels and in many places. It's like watching a train wreck, you know it's coming and it's bad enough to want to keep watching so you can affirm your own sense of superiority in seeing the holes that they've created.

Trying Teen Times - the grown up one

Eldest is suffering from boy. Being a boy. Being aimless, feckless and without any clear idea. It is a boy thing. I get that it's a boy thing and somewhere you find your own level, your own pace, and it all comes right. Mostly, in pdubyahworld anyway.

Eldest did a year of work, and the decided that University was a better bet, and that Geography and Philosophy would be his thing. I guess he wanted to both sit an ponder on a hill, and ponder about life and hill. Who knows.

Anyway a year on and that's not what we wanted to do at all. So we had the "chat". He was blabbing on about this and that and came up with the trusted "I don't have a plan"

I waved my arms around a bit, in the way that you do, and see in movies, and explained in a pained and hushed voice "Did you think that This house, the car I drive, the two children I have and the job that I've been in for 12 years was my plan?" I continued "That my son is not a plan it's actually a bit of a nightmare"

He's promised to see out university and get a real job. Although his idea of a job appears to want to be an "animator" which I hope is cartoons and not Dr.Frankenstein type stuff.

Commercial Ventures and the Public purse - #5 - Canterbury University Seeks Bailout As Intake Falls

Canterbury University is pleading for at least another $150 million from the Government as it faces losing almost 20,000 students and $346m in revenue in the next eight years. Based on a report they've prepared along with Deloitte which  forecasts a cumulative drop in fulltime equivalent students of 19,400 from this year to 2019 and a reduction in revenue over that time of $346m

A 65-page document detailing the business case for support asks the Government for $130m in operating support, $25m for capital costs and a  yet-to-be-determined sum for building remediation not covered by insurance, but the amount could be between $20m and $70m.

The February earthquake caused it to lose hundreds of domestic and international students -  About 15,500 fulltime equivalent students are enrolled at the university.

It already has 1200 fewer domestic students and 420 international students  than 2010. Of those about 800 were first-year students and 80 per cent of them would have continued to a second year of study. More than 25 per cent of the first-year student intake either discontinued or  did not complete their enrolment this year.

Here's the thing - the university is therefore  asking for $1,000 per student to prevent it's decline in standards, 1,600 less students is extrapolated over 8 years to be 20,000 students. Somehow. As a concession the university will shed around 300 jobs over 3 years from the 3,000 staff it currently has, that's 3-4% a year over 3 years.

Each Student, using the figures provided, generate income to the University of $18,200 each, per student, and they have staff to student ratio of 1-5

"In exchange for the government money, the university was proposing to make  savings of $134m, double its borrowings to $100m, and reduce its capital  expenditure by $20m to $45m annually from next year to 2019. The savings would include a 3 to 4 per cent reduction in staff numbers for each of the next three years. The university has about 3000 staff."

The university has a good reputation and it has a strong balance sheet with about $90m in the bank. It's not up against any wall and it's not sinking into oblivion.

So - change the name from ABC university to ABC corporation - and you'll see why this isn't really something that I would be in favour of. The user pays education system that we're all familiar with appears to not want to cut it's cloth to suit, but wants to have a Rolls Royce facility. I can't imagine a scenario where a corporation with the same staffing ratio's would be able to go cap in had to the Govt and ask for a bail-out. (Of course I ignore finance and insurance companies, of course!)

Am I in favour of reducing the scope of the offering to suit the amount of revenue, you bet I am. Should the taxpayer fund what is essentially a corporation into maintaining what is an impossible scenario - even they recognise some truths " The university had started many initiatives to attract students, including  increasing recreational areas on site. It was also spending millions of dollars
on additional scholarships. Vice-Chancellor Rod Carr was visiting several countries to get the message  across to potential international students that the university was fully open
and safe after the earthquakes "

So spend a few more millions, after all in for 346million in for the lot! I'm confident the world will not end for the University, I'm sure that student X overseas does not want to come to a city of rubble to live, in over-priced short availability accommodation, unless of course they're on a scholarship, but that's not generating income is it, that's filling seats to tick a box to maintain existing funding for the public purse.

Do I think that there are too many staff? what do you think, in a normal corporation I would imagine that a ratio of 1-10 managers to staff is more normal, it's possibly even more.

I'm therefore a little perplexed by the timing, the amount they are asking for, the reasons given, and the blind way in which it ignores some truths about their plight and situation.

via Canterbury University Seeks Bailout As Intake Falls... | Stuff.co.nz.

On the home front.

I'm struggling with understanding what's going on around me in terms of what my partner is thinking, or her motivation. She'll blame me of course for being difficult and awkward, and "getting the hump", but it seems that unless we're singing to the tune of her drum then "we" don't want to do it.

Specifically tonight was "what's exciting that we should watch on tv" to which I suggested a drama series, and that got me a "huff" and from there it really went downhill. Her counter suggestion was "master chef"

I don't get it and I feel I should be.