The feel-good article of the millennium

You are not your job. What a feel-good, positive mantra. What a fantastic lie.

We can't kid ourselves. Employment is more than the nine-tofive on-the-clock hours. It's the hour-long trafficADAM GREENBERG logged commute to and -------------from, the stress about your latest project haunting you in your sleep, and the force draining your time and energy on a daily basis.

Modem life is built around the job. Why do people go to college? The pursuit of knowledge is a noble endeavor, but the hope of securing a decent job is the truth. Over half of our surprisingly short lives is spent on putting in hours for a paycheck.

There is a crushing dullness to this lifestyle. The popularized humor of cubicle culture, so well chronicled in Dilbert comic strips, only makes us laugh because the absurdity of it is so dead-on accurate.

The reason for my concern with the whole workplace lifestyle is that I see the end of my college days rapidly approaching, leaving me to wonder where I might be one year from now.

I refuse to end up working in one of those offices that can be found in every city across America. You know the ones where the air conditioning runs all year long and the atmosphere is permanently caffeinated with the aroma of burnt coffee. I think that these cookie-cutter environments would tend to breed resentment among the individuals that work in them. Recently, I saw some news coverage of a "Doom" -style computer game set in one of these typical offices has come out. The goal is for the player to kill their boss.

Now some people will say that this is yet another contributing factor to the further desensitization of societal attitudes towards violence. I think it's more indicative of people's frustration with the dehumanizing nature of the corporate world, where a select few hold all of the power and everyone else can be filed as expendable. Qualities like loyalty and character count for little-to-nothing anymore. It's all

It's all about the squirrels, baby!

It has come to my attention over the years here at Cabrini College, there are some significant issues that need to be dealt with more efficiently. The college newsroom becomes MEGHAN MERKEL packed every week with complaints to be submitted to the Loquitur.

The chaos is unavoidable.

Public Safety roams the campus with bewildered looks and hands stuffed with red-inked tickets.

Silly students run free, binge drinking until they are found in the woods by the albino deer or a common hiker.

The parking situation parallels that of another universe, a planet in which only the fit survive. The others, the inferior species that can only attempt to proclaim a parking spot for their very own, wither away with pulp-filled papers claiming they owe $30, $40, or $50. •

Do I need to mention the hellish ways of registering? Lines of tortured souls gaining inches to the door that tells their fate. Once they enter, another class "closed."

This is no college community.

This is a pandemonium of havoc isolated from the real world. Residents maintain their four years in a whirlwind maze consisting of booze, premarital sex, and an occasional essay or assignment. The professors that are hired are nothing but students themselves, learning as they go on how to deal with the corruption and madness evident in such a world.

And yet aJas the answer is so simple

Its all about the squirrels. They run free and feast on the garbage the rich suburban students carelessly toss away. about the bottom line.

They are fat.

They carry diseases.

And they secretly rule the campus.

Solutions are not as hard as they seem. I put in front of you a proposal oh so modest, and yet so superior to any statement made in any handbook or from the so-caJled President's mouth.

The squirrels need to be given power. They have it already, top secretly informing public safety of the crimes found throughout the wooded campus.

Public safety are but dolls, the squirrels are the ventriloquists.

Is it not obvious? If only life was so simple as this. Everyone needs a pet squirrel. I believe it was Jonathan Swift who invented a story of a far away land where the humans, or yahoos, lived as the grotesque animals and the beautiful Houyhnhms, or horses, ruled the land. Swift speaks truth as he metaphors British government. Similarly, the squirrels possess an elegance easily overlooked. If each student here took one in as a "pet" we would breed better people immediately.

As for tickets, the squirrels have been working on an edible paper.

Soon, tickets will begin disappearing. This will help the deer starvation problem, and we will no longer have deer boozing it up with the drunken students in the woods. The tickets will have nutritional value, and the public safety officers will not catch on for years. For we all know how slow they truly are. If only the rest of life was this easy, our world of Cabrini College would be a Utopia.

Meg Merkel is the assistant perspectives editor of Loquitur. She was hit in the head with a softball before writing this. She will get better with time.

You are nothing special. You can easily be replaced.

What does this kind of mentality do to a person's sense of self-worth? The producers start to feel like the product: mass-produced it~ms that can be thrown away when something seemingly better comes along.

I can't wait to sit in my cubicle, drowning in memos, phone in hand and waiting patiently while a recorded voice on the other end assures me that my call is important.

Wait. No. We should all expect more than that.

As I enter the job market fray, I will seek a position where I can create and express my individuality, while working in an environment that's not stifling, rigid and deadening. If that doesn't work out, see you at the water cooler.

Adam Greenberg is a staff writer for the Loquitur. If you ever see him walking down the street after his 9 to 5 shift, please give him a hug. He needs it.

Masuccl-A&E

Mcghan Merkel-Perspectlns

Jessica Snow-Sports

MJtt Tholey-Perspectives

Chris Vesct Copy

Photojournalist Shannon Downs