Chicago Shady Dealer

Five Tips for Avoiding Existential Dread in College

By Nik Varley
Aug. 10, 2016

Congratulations, your childhood is over! Your carefree days of youth and innocence are now gone forever, and you’ve taken your first step into the festering quagmire of adulthood. O-Week is just the beginning of a long, steady http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dGQkaKpu_rEmarch towards your inevitable death away from the halcyon pleasures of your early years towards inevitable death. If the realization that the beauty of childhood can never be recaptured is making you panic, don’t worry! Your friends at the Shady Dealer have compiled a list of fiveseven ways to help you cope with your losslost innocence and inevitable slide into oblivion.

1. Denial and repression: Many cope with the inherent tragedy of aging by simply denying that it exists. Replace your thoughts of demise and sorrow with uplifting fallacies; popular ones include “Everything is fine”, “I’m as happy now as I was then” and “I’m never going to die”. This can be augmented by drowning out unpleasant realities with thoughts of other things, such as sports, television, or a demanding course load that, while not fulfilling you, occupies most to all of your time. The single-minded pursuit of money is another popular choice.

2. Heavy drinking: Tried and true, drinking to excess is one of the most common methods of coping with life’s painful realities. The implementation is simple: ; drink whatever you can whenever you can until your life is a blurry haze of vodka, vomiting and liver disease. This method has the added benefit of preventing the formation of memories, so, with practice, your conscious experience can be almost completely eliminated. If it worked for your parents, it can probably work for you!.

3. “Art”: This is probably the toughest strategy on the list. While we at the Dealer have never tried it personally, many report that ‘artistic expression’ (whatever that means) can alleviate existential angst. Be warned, though: ; some users of this method lapse into an even deeper depression when no one wants to read their absurdist screenplay.

4. Never leave home: You can effectively avoid the emotional malaise of starting college by simply choosing not to attend. Staying in your hometown, never moving out of your old house, and living essentially the same life that you led before graduatingyou graduated high school is definitely going to postpone the messier truths you will eventually come to realize as you move through college. A word of caution: these results, while pleasant, are temporary. As your old friends move away and your parents start to look at you differently, you’ll have to confront change in a completely different way.

5. Descend into insanity: This is really the only method that is 100% effective. By surrendering completely to the violent absurdity of life, you can subvert your perception of reality, rendering coherent thought completely impossible. In your new life as a gibbering insane person, you will have no concept of loss, pain, time, space, or even personal identity. Sounds good to me!