Playing hookie

I found this great site called Urban Dictionary. It defines hookie as:

A day in which liberty is taken upon oneself to exclude themselves from school or work obligations while, most likely, pretending to be sick or having a death in the family. Usually this time is spent with a significant other (i.e. hookie for nookie), a sports activity (i.e. golf or playstation), or just plain sitting on one's ass all day editing & writing definitions for modern slang words over the Internet. Commonly referred to as "playing hookie".

Guess what? Guilty! Okay, I am actually sick with a bad cough and everything. And I'm in dire need of inspiration after days of a sudden obsession with doing nothing useful whatsoever.

Believe me when I say I do not play hookie all the time. In fact, this is the first day I'm bunking this semester. Which should tell you what a complete nerd I am.
I was thinking (which is not a good sign generally, but sometimes I surprise myself) and the only phrase which kept popping into my head was, 'Dude, you need a break.'
So I decided to bunk college and instantly felt better than I had in a long time. It's like Prozac or something, I swear.

And here I am. I just caught a champagne supernova sunrise. You know, like the ones you always see in calenders with a huge beam of sunlight bursting out of a bunch of clouds and making interesting patterns in the sky, then you realise it's a Monday and you feel like ripping the calender. Only it's not and I feel like humming and being annoyingly cheerful.

Taking time off once in a while is great. I'm actually thinking about taking out my textbooks and ignoring them, that's how charged up I am. I love it!

The best parts of a newspaper

My mother has this habit of pointing out articles in the newspaper which will help me survive life, like articles about the evils of networking sites, higher education which I’ll never pursue, divorce, crime, health, crime, tips to pass exams, crime, how to increase my IQ, crime…you get the point.

I actually found a newspaper supplement on how to beat stress during exams on my table a couple of days back. Firstly, I am in college. It’s not the exams which stress me out, it’s everything else. Secondly, mom! You don’t leave stuff like that on my table where anyone can see it! Thank you!

So I dutifully read all the tips for a perfectly boring life because it means a lot to her. She’s a good mom, you know. Protect your daughter from cyber stalkers and feed her healthy stuff even if she refuses to eat it, tell her to clean her room, glare formidably when she acts like a stubborn ass and all that. So the ritual leaving of newspapers on my bed, my table and anywhere where it’s likely to intrude on my line of sight is her way of saying ‘I care’.
Or is it, ‘You better have the sense to not get into a load of trouble’?
Oh wait, it could even be, ‘Obey your mom. The Bible says the consequences will be messy if you’re not going to read that article about education in the US even if we’re never going to send you there.’

I know why she does this. It’s because she has no faith that I would voluntarily read any of this. And she doesn’t think the comic strips or the TV schedule are newsworthy materials. I disagree with her. I think they’re the best parts of a newspaper. She has her own guilty secrets though. She likes celebrity gossip, especially when there’s divorce involved because she can then point it out to me as a life lesson on the evils of…well, divorce.

So my mom and I have this awesome mother-daughter thing going on, as you can see. She just walked out of the room because I refused to let her read this. Ah, motherly love. Nothing like it.

Soft skills and a slow week.

It’s been a long week. Seriously, it feels like the week’s dragged on forever. Boy, am I glad tomorrow’s a Friday. And to make our days longer, we have placement training classes after college hours.
This isn’t as bad as you’d expect it to be. We just sit around and figure out a few aptitude questions except when people come and talk to us about soft skills. Now, this is hilarious.

They always start off with how important communication is. Then they ask us to define communication. You have to remember that there is no right answer to this question. So even the best answer you can think of will earn a ‘Good answer, but what I was looking for was...’ Usually what they are looking for is to look like they know what they’re talking about.



The last person who talked to us actually told us that efficiency is perception-based. As in, you don’t have to do much work. You just have to look like you do it, suck up to the boss and make sure you’re in his good books. Enlightening.

The body language talk is just as bad. I understand that we shouldn’t disgust the interviewer by wearing neon pink to the interview or slouch in our chairs in the hopes that we’ll disappear under the table, but to actually suggest that a little flirting will not go amiss is a little too much. What if my interviewer is a misogynist? Or a woman. Or a half-way decent human being? Didn’t think of that, did you Mr. Girls-have-an-advantage?

The other part of it is the group discussion or GD which apparently assesses how we work in a group. It’s better than the other two, because in this one we get to talk while they have to listen. These people however, have no concept of having a discussion about something which is interesting.

By the way, why is ‘love marriage vs.arranged marriage’ still such a popular topic in group discussions? I swear. There are like, a million other topics to choose from but no…they have to pick lousy stuff like this.
And it’s a big thing, mind you because my college is supposed to be strict and all. So the ‘love’ word is a big form of rebellion apparently. Only it falls totally flat because no one has anything of interest to say about it anyway.

The next one is ‘professionalism vs. family life’. Oh and ‘Do working women make bad mothers.’ Is this really the kind of stuff they’re going to ask us to discuss in an interview? Somehow, I’m very skeptical.

But some of these guys are good. For example, we had one dude come in today and talk to us about soft skills and he was pretty decent. He summed up his presentation with these seven points:

1. Find your passion
2. Dare to be different
3. Practice/ work towards it at every opportunity
4. If you feel like quitting – Don’t!
5. Never give excuses
6. Have fun – everyday
7. Be humble, be kind, be strong

I say, Amen.
This week wasn’t a complete waste of time, after all.