Dot and Mars: You can't stop us, cause we like doing it

Kiki speaks of 'a moment' on davemackman's blog-o he gets when he's got something due. A moment when everything comes together... the procrastinatory urges leave your space, your aura turns bright white, and things happen.

My moment is yet to occur, and the essay was due Friday.

See, my academic career has been... shall we say... somewhat lacking. I went to uni for a while after high school... i lived in Carrum and went to La Trobe Bundoora... so that grand idea kind of fizzled out pretty early in the piece, and i spent that year nocturnally living on the internerd, and boozing it up with my Austudy payments. Complete waste of time, effort and money (a HECS debt that's still hanging around, in fact).

My friends were all chopping and changing their courses, and i thought TAFE might be the path for me. Never one keen to put in more than the minimum effort required, i thought perhaps if the expectations were lower, i would be able to put in even less effort and would feel like a pure genius. But alas, my TAFE career was also short lived when i realised you had to pay for that shit up front.

So i went and gots me a little job and earned $350 a week. I was the richest amongst my friends, their jobs in the supermarkets of Melbourne commanding little more than money for jam. I was rich. I had clothes. I had a car. The future for little Mars was looking bright.

Then i got a boyfriend. A poor student boyfriend. MagnanimousMars, they used to call me. The bastard sucked me dry, and i was happy to let it happen. Things pretty much went down hill for me from there. See, while my poor student boyfriend was hanging around, i was still toying with the idea of further education. I quit my job with no idea what i was going to do with myself... and ended up pretty much living nocturnally on the internerd and boozing it up with my Newstart Allowance.

Things weren't going too well... while life was pretty sweet, my mother wasn't happy with my odorous presence meandering though her house with no apparent purpose. Either go back to school or get a bloody job! the cry echoed through the suburbs of Melbourne. Down and out, i went back to work again and got a job as a desk monkey. The poor student boyfriend was delighted, as not only had he managed to get rid of me following him around all day, but his affluent lifestyle was about to return.

The monotony set in and little Mars wasn't happy about having to get out of bed every morning. Relations with the poor student boyfriend were strained, as his nocturnal boozing lifestyle interfered with her responsible gainfully employed one. The happy couple were set down a path of destruction, so Mars decides there's only one thing to do.

Best leave the hemisphere.

So i've packed in the job, and with a few crocodile tears headed off over-seas. The financial ruin of Mars sets in, but she's too busy boozing it up with borrowed money. Life was pretty good, i had nothing and needed nothing (besides vodka). I drank my own body weight in booze every night, slutted my way over Ireland and then after a year with my head up my arse, it became quite clear that my past was catching up with me. The banks are calling my mother's house wanting money off a M.I.A. Mars. There's trouble a-brewing...

So the cross-continental, international call of the irresponsible daughter goes out... Mum? Dad? Can you send money? I can't get home. So money was sent and home i came dragging my tail between my legs.

I gets back home, and settle back into my old room at my mums. There's a years worth of mail i put off opening for about 2 months. I finally get around to it and realise there's a letter from VTAC... an offer from RMIT. For me! I'd applied to uni before i left, but actually forgot about it for ages, then remembered, but guessed i hadn't been offered anything cause mum hadn't told me anything had come in the mail. Turns out, mum didn't care much for opening my mountainous quantities of mail. An offer, thinks me...freakin' AWESOME. But wait! Fate plays its hand in my life again... i was supposed to have responded to this offer FOUR MONTHS AGO.

So a despondent little Mars resigns herself to a future of intellectually unstimulating, fruitless employment, and gets a job to start paying off some of the debt she's racked up. Years pass, the debt is cleared and i've landed myself a pretty sweet job, doing minimal, getting paid okay. But there's something missing... My friends have long since graduated... and some of them are onto their second degree or post-grad study. What is it that's missing, thinks Mars?

Early this year i get a bit of momentum up... and things start happening. I apply to study by correspondence just doing one subject at a time. And would you believe, i surprise even myself by doing really well. This isn't so hard, is it? So now i'm onto my second subject, which i'm actually really enjoying... but in true to form Mars-style, everything is being left to past the last minute, and i'm self-sabotaging, losing 5% per day that this essay is late.

And there you have it. The financial ruin, and academic struggle of Mars since the dawn of time.