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As I was driving around school last week, on my last trip of junk from my nearby summer apartment, I noticed some writing in chalk on the wall of a parking building on a parking lot wedged between the Computer Science and the Chemistry buildings. It was hard to read, but I squinted in the extreme humidity, and managed to make out in huge chalk letters: "The Death of Creativity Begins Here."

That's pretty much how this year looks to turn out. Albeit, this is another early judgement, being that I've only been to two classes out of five so far, but it's not looking so hot. I've developed the useful habit of always carrying a book around with me wherever I go. Whenever a class gets boring, I pull out the book and start reading. I've developed some sort of knack to be balance the amount of attention that the class and the reading both deserve so that I can do both at once. But, it's depressing to go to a class only to realize that you are going to do nothing, and that your being there is almost a total waste. Today was already a 50% reading day. I finished my book. (Rainbow Mars by Larry Niven if you care. It was...ok, to say the most.)

School makes me feel like a droid. Going to class tends to make me lose interest in whatever subject I had wanted to pursue. I begin the school year excited about my classes, thinking wow...look at all this cool stuff I'll get to learn about. I'll admit it: learning excites me. Yet, for some reasons the teachers more often than not turn off whatever interest I have in the material. They force me to do work that has little to do with the class itself. They have poor teaching methods. They don't care about their students. Favorite well-read books once presented in class become a part of my dusty shelf, never again touched. I almost wish I could have the learning without the school. I don't mean without the work, because learning is not automagical. But...the school...school itself kills any sort of creative push or drive I have.

"Intellectual climate", my fscking arse.

It sounds weird, and it almost makes me wonder what I'm doing at school. I got offered a job (if I would quit school) at perhaps what would be my dream job. I turned it down so I could finish and get a degree. But why? What am I doing here if my creativity and drive to learn is stifled here at college?

I guess...well, hmm. I'm in Marching Band. I don't particularily like the music we play, I'm not partial to the marching itself, and the uniforms I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole if they weren't required. But I do it...because of the people there and the fun they make me have. I guess I'm at school because I can be. I don't have another point in my life to be this close to so many different friends, so many different people, and have a chance to develop socially and emotionally.

School is the death of my creativity, in part, and it tears me up inside when I can see that on a daily basis, but at the same time being at this school helps me grow in more ways that intellectually. I guess that's probably what college is more about anyway.