A few days ago I dreamt that I had to go to a class in primary school again, with people from my current university class. As the time there passed by, I got more and more frustrated by the thousand rules there were, even for the most simple things. The teacher went insane because we did things like we do them in university, and I got insane because she tried to control us.

I’ve had a similar dream before, about going back to high school. In that dream I just had the strong feeling that I couldn’t do that anymore. And I’m convinced that that is true. You see, I’ve got a bit of a problem with authority. I overreact to it. There are thousand little rules for everything, and many of them seem completely useless to me. Of course you need rules to keep a world going. Obeying the ones like ‘stop for a red light’ make sense though and therefore they are not hard to cope with. But having to have all your tests signed by your parents, even the smallest ones, is something I can’t get my head around. We had to do this in high school, yes. Back then I didn’t question it. But by the age of 16, something in me started to loathe the system in which we had to nod at what the teachers said. In which we found ourselves surrounded by fences so we couldn’t get out. In which we had classes that were close to ridiculous.

Of course there were reasons for all of this. But that doesn’t mean that I accepted it. As ever I didn’t dare to go full rebel, as the teachers are still the people who have to give you (good!) grades. My rebellion was sighing, shaking my head, looking angry and dressing inappropriately for a catholic school.

I enjoyed that.

At university we have so much more freedom. You can run in late and it’s okay. You don’t even have to attend all classes, though I do. It’s still dangerous to openly disagree with a professor, but there seems to be less abuse of power. Which there kind of was in high school. Some teachers for sure enjoyed their power too much. I remember one time a kid in our class was somewhat ill and coughing all the time. He had a bottle with water and some kind of medicaments. But oh the drama, you cannot drink inside a building, so the teacher said (barked, like we would say in Dutch) that he couldn’t drink.
We spent a long hour with a coughing kid. It was annoying as hell, but of course it was not his fault.

That, in my eyes, is just abuse of power.

In theory we aren’t allowed to drink or eat inside the university buildings, but it’s never a problem. Honestly, I barely survive a two-hour class without water and food. I guess I moved to university right in time! And I surely could never go back to a system that lets someone cough his lungs out while he has a fucking bottle of water with him. Rules are not my thing. Especially unnecessary ones annoy me to death. So I’m happy to be in a place where you can kind of do what you want! And in case you wonder, I did stop being the light rebel who dresses inappropriately. I guess it was just really an effect of the bullshit we had to live by.

To end this on a bright note, here is a sublime video. Repression has never been so funny!