This Is Postgraduate Work
in times of uncertainty we look forward unto time unexperienced and ask: what is postgraduate work supposed to look like? no one wrote a manual for this. no one teaches you what you're supposed to do after college, not even in college.
the class of 2020 was born 1 year too late to exchange chemsex for placement in a gallery or a little program, 1 year too early to ride the wave of public financial consciousness and put their student loan refunds into something useful and eternal (btc) instead of fleeting (food, rent).
the graduating year of 2020 has been specificially targeted and harassed by circumstance. i lay awake at night wondering if its my fault. i think about what i could have done to save my class. fate is too kind, i must have been punished.
we spent 4 or 5 years assuming that once we were done with our chores we would be able to do our little FAFSA, send our little applications to nyu, cranbrook, risd, somewhere else, a little experimental program in europe, maybe we do a little internship at the countrys hottest media company, and prosper and thrive until our 3 children euthanize us, then they OD.
we were wrong to assume this. an unbelievable public health crisis befell the public and we, the elites-in-the-making, had our futures stolen from us. somehow a year has passed; i am the age of a failure and the age of a winner, and depending on how you read my wrinkles i am one or the other. when i look in the mirror it says winner because i love myself, but i know that objects in the mirror appear in reverse and i am a failure.
i have spent a year in isolation, finishing my online classes, buying xanax on the dark web, sleeping for 3 months, looking at a zoom rave, taking my penis out on a zoom rave, getting my data harvested and sold by zoom, making gooey coffee, putting gooey coffee on my penis, voting for tulsi galabran in the primary, tearing whats left of my hair out in deafened rage, listening to mitski, being sold one adderall, starting a new passion project, becoming impassioned (unpassioned?), abandoning all of my passion projects, still being charged $32.99 a month for web hosting on my abandoned passion project, learning ableton, making an EP that sounds like male manipulator reggie watts, selling it on bandcamp friday, getting one sale, reporting it as income on my pandemic unemployment claim, suddenly panicing when my savings have become exhausted, listening to leftist podcasts all day, eating apple cinnamon rice cakes. i havent gone outside once. thats right, and it shouldnt surprise you. we have all been doing this, i might as well have never told you i never went outside. well, i told you, and i never went outside, so theres that.
we've all put "ui/ux" in our twitter bio not knowing what it means, the same way we went to college not knowing what it means, or will ever mean. the books we read and the professors we talked to could have been read without paying all that money, and the smartest professors will respond to your emails and are usually chill. but something drives us to do what we do, and thats the desire to be elite, to call our dribble and pained breathing "work", even though we just ate too much. and we're wrong, but we want to be right, so we're going to hurt people, and there's nothing wrong with that. whatever we do, it will be something we've done as a postgraduate, and thats super important. dont forget to apply for MFA programs before all the deadlines are over. its never been a better time to pursue postgraduate education.
i hope the new year is good to you. we have so much to look forward to: vaccines, the latest offerings from hbo max, the return of the college campus, a new president, more ways to die, more ways to live, more ways to love, more ways to learn, a kiss in the future, a smile in your dreams, and the will within you - rekindling itself every time you breathe... in... out... in.... out....
Rise.
