This World is Absurd

Really, there are so many times that I wonder how certain things in this world can happen. Why do good things happen to bad people and the converse of that are often on my mind. I worked hard in college. I was one of those few kids that would take a Friday night to go hang out in a study lounge to contemplate the readings of Camus and do my discrete math assignments instead of getting plowed beyond comprehension and trying to hook up with random chicks. Yeah, I was that guy--the nerd, the dork, the "studious one". I really, really tried in college and it paid off, I thought, in that I graduated with two BA's, one in computer science and one in philosophy, and had a cumulative GPA of 3.6 something. Personally, I was pretty proud of myself and what I learned at St. John's University.

After doing as well as I did at school, I had hoped it would translate over to success in the real world as well. As you know, I am getting close to finishing up my first year as a tech writer for Kingland Systems in Rochester, and I thought that I was doing pretty good. I was on par, salary wise, with some of the people I graduated with and was doing better than some others, but then I learned about one of my college classmates and the job he has.

First, let me tell you a little about this mysterious guy from college. He was that guy that spent more time in the weight room than in class and even more time partying and trying to find easy chicks. He was prone to doing really stupid stuff and getting horribly tanked for just about any reason. The list of some of the stupid stuff that he did is pretty darn long. One drunken night he and some friends took all of the furniture from our dorm lounge and tossed it to the street three stories below. On another drunken escapade he thought it was a genius idea to simply kick apart the doors to the stalls in our dorm bathroom. On another ocassion, he put some mice in his neighbors room.

This kid was simply amazing in the ways that he lived up to every stereotype of the big, dumb, partying college kid. Even on the night before our graduation he exercised his stupidity and made my coffee cup look smarter than him. It was our senior party and we were all out at the bar. Oddly enough, party dude wasn't all that drunk, but that didn't stop him from stealing the car of a pizza delivery man "just because". He wasn't allowed to walk at graduation and I'm not sure if the owner of the vehicle pressed charges or not, but any way you look at it, this was a stupid thing to do by a guy who was known for doing stupid stuff.

Now, it's about a year and a half after he's graduated and I fully expected to hear that he was working at Kmart or McDonalds, but instead I find out he's selling mortgages to people and raking in a six figure salary. How the hell does something like that happen? He's easily making double, if not maybe triple, what I am and he was a total screw up in college. All he did was party, act dumb, and made school out to be a joke. I worked my ass off, actually learned stuff, and I'm the one who came out on the short end of the stick.

Really, when I think about it, I wonder what the hell is actually up with this world. Sometimes I wonder if God has it out for me. Maybe I'm his pet joke that he can always turn to for a laugh. I can see it now, after a long hard day of watching over the atrocities of the middle east, God plants his gaze on the midwest and focuses on a lowly character... me. He sees the ironies of his life and the frustrations he is confronted with and chuckles. "What a funny, little human," He thinks to Himself, "but at least he's fun to smite when I'm bored!"