There are two camps of people that graduate from college. There are the ones that tell you, “”For the love of god stay in school, you don’t know how easy you have it now, yadda yadda yadda.”” Then there is another set of people that strongly praise working over school, often referencing the lack of “”bringing work home with you.””

Both of these people are full of shit. I can name a million things better about school than work, and a million things better about work than school. And I can name a billion things better than both.

Here’s what I don’t understand: When you’re in school, if you do absolutely nothing all day, you’re a slacker; but the minute you graduate, you’re a leech on society. Because the pretense of going to school is just so strong that doing nothing while you’re in school does somehow manage to seem important. There were days where I filled up my gas tank, and that was my crowning achievement for the day. A haircut, now that’s just going all-out. Anything that requires two showers in a single day deserves an award.

People have been saying “”You don’t know how easy you have it now”” my entire life. And I can safely say is that it didn’t hold true for a lot of cases. High school? Give me a fucking break — waking up at 7 in the morning, mandatory classes, homework, busy work, public transportation, SAT review classes, the Department of Motor Vehicles, progress reports, parent-teacher conferences and a lot of jerking off somewhere in the middle of all that.

How in the hell was high school supposed to be easier than college? Unless you’re one of those overachievers, in which case you’d better switch over to the Wall Street Journal — I hear they have a good column on how to more effectively kiss President Bush’s ass.

I wrote a few things about high school when I was in high school, and every now and then I’ll get a high school senior sending me a message or e-mailing me asking for advice about high school, which is damn funny to me. Considering if you knew me in high school, I’d be the last person you’d be asking for advice about it.

But the general message I try to pass along to them is this: “”You don’t know how hard you have it now.”” In less than four years, you’ll be in college, and none of this will matter. Really, none of it. Even the people you really hate with every fiber of your body, you’ll probably meet them someday and have the kind of conversation you have with people that you went to high school with, which usually ends with, “”I’ll give you a call sometime.”” And there is absolutely no exchange of phone numbers.

But if you think college is easy, work, in some cases, is easier. Work is kind of a let-down. You know how up until college you were working toward going to college? Like everything you did, every test you studied for and every paper you stayed up until 5 a.m. for, were all collectively contributing to where and whether you went to college. But in college, it seems that everything you’re working for is to graduate and not necessarily toward a job. I mean, you’re theoretically working toward becoming unemployed.

I think the secret to work is going to the bathroom a lot. Every time I get bored, I just go to the bathroom and read design magazines for about a half-hour at a time. I figure my co-workers just think I have a bowel problem.

Design magazines are an interesting substitute for porn. Every couple pages you get some artsy nude for absolutely no reason whatsoever. I think psuedo-porn enthusiasts are a significant majority of their subscribers. And the other half are people that just don’t know they’re psuedo-porn enthusiasts. They say to themselves, “”Self, I really like this design magazine, but I don’t know why. It must be the inventive and original way they take the pictures.””

Here is the tradeoff — you get up about five hours earlier, but you never have to study. You get a paycheck every two weeks, but your parents aren’t giving you any money. You have no homework, but you’re too tired to do anything anyway. Your weekends are completely guilt-free, but they pretty much always were.

Weekends have some sort of new importance. It’s almost like 5 p.m. every Monday through Thursday are these little mirages, and Friday night is the oasis. And while it’s true that there are no finals once you’re in the workforce, there’s not the feeling of relief after finishing all your finals either. It’s not better and it’s not worse: It’s just different.

Want to tell Bertrand to stop that? E-mail him at [email protected].