What's going on?!

Apparently, Canadian university students are experiencing crises of mental health issues.  Huh!?  What's going on?  When I was at university, no one had these issues -- at least no one I knew.  How did we handle pressure?  Hit the student bars, as I recall.

It's all very sad because frankly, unless you are going into medicine, dentistry, engineering, architecture or law, don't bother with university.  All other disciplines are luxurious wastes of time, in my opinion.  I mean, fascinating and charming though it may be, what can you do with a degree in philosophy?

I took English, which was useless even back in 1968 when I graduated from Carleton.  We had brilliant professors, mainly from England, and I loved it all, but B.A. in English?  Where does that take you?  Luckily, I landed a job in the advertising department of IBM Canada.  But that was an embarrassing fluke.  I had moved to Toronto and pounded the pavement to a bunch of advertising agencies on the advice of a then-boyfriend, who worked in one.  He suggested I go through magazines and re-write ads and present them to creative directors who interviewed me.  So I did.

After getting rejection after rejection, I ended up in the office of one kind, middle-aged man who again told me to forget it.  At that point, laid low and rejected yet again, I burst into tears.  The poor guy was so taken aback, he jumped up and said, "You poor thing, you're probably hungry.  I guess you haven't eaten in a while.  Let me buy you lunch."  So he did.  After lunch, he phoned one of their biggest clients, which happened to be IBM, and got me an interview.

I went and got the job.  How?  By crying.  I then moved on to Maclean-Hunter, the 'Mad Men' of the day, where I had a ball and indulged many very naughty, sixties things.  We all smoked all the time, drank in the office, partied and....well...."socialized" very intimately with each other.  I also learned to be a fairly decent writer, thanks to a brutal editor named Jean Portugal.  Her red pen had a field day with my copy because in those days of hot type, every word cost money.  To this day, I have yet to read anything I don't mentally cut to shreds.

So, to those innocent university students, toiling away in emotional and psychological agony, I say:  Get yourself to a community college and get a degree in something which will make you employable.  Please, please don't keep committing suicide.  The other thing you might consider is falling on your knees and asking God for help.  As scripture says, ask and the door shall be opened.  Might put a whole bunch of psychiatrists out of business.