PICKERING, ON ― A scathing new report released today has found that local 52-year-old Linda Pike’s mid-life crisis is every university student’s dream problem, and that they probably won’t notice when they reach theirs because it will be indistinguishable from their quarter-life and third-life crises.
“Man, this woman has a spouse to divorce? Must be sweet to have had your sexual awakening in an era when people actually talked to romantic prospects instead of going online and getting ghosted or blackmailed for years and years,” commented one totally unsympathetic student, pursuing a business degree at Dalhousie University.
1100 students at universities nationwide were provided with a biography of Pike, who was chosen for being a perfect embodiment of the North American middle-class ideal. They subsequently completed a questionnaire, and some were asked to give follow-up interviews.
“I wonder what it would be like to attend university when everyone there was excited by their field of study, instead of just miserably writing labs because that’s what their parents and society writ large told them was necessary, only to end up in an unpaid internship and a job at Starbucks,” mused a second-year chemistry major at UBC. “And she paid off her loans with a part-time job at the same time! I feel like that would be better, maybe?”
Pike has described her finances as “tight” owing to her three kids, mortgage, and inability to take that trip to Paris she’s always dreamed of, but according to the participants, three children is “kind of greedy” since they’ll never be able to afford, financially or environmentally, to have any.
Nevertheless, some attempted to be helpful by suggesting she give up avocados, unnecessary air travel, or complaining, since the $1500 dollars she has saved so far would barely cover a single one of the rent payments that eat up any savings they put aside for a house.
Overwhelmingly, the students indicated that they would gladly take the future depression of realizing how far they’d fallen from their glory days in exchange for having some glory days to fall from.
When asked about their own lives, students described being stuck in a rut, feeling like they had reached their personal ceiling in their careers despite retirement being a long way off, and having a strange urge to sell everything they owned and buy a sports car instead, in the hopes of finally living without roommates.
