For as long as the post-secondary education system has existed, there’s been an ongoing competition between university students claiming that their school was in fact, the definitive party school. We used to say things like, “I’m applying to Western on OUAC because I heard that was the place to party,” or “The only thing to do at Queens is drink, bang engineers and terrorize the locals,” or “Yo, McGill had this sick fisting workshop; they must be an insane party school!”
We were obviously talking some big game, because a new study has revealed that we’re all full of shit and are in fact, embodiments of every Canadian stereotype in the book. According to a report by the Toronto Star, Canada’s students are not drinking (or even bothering with “drunkorexia”), smoking, riding bikes without helmets, driving without seatbelts or being slutty. In fact, we’re just sitting at home crying into our textbooks wishing it would all end and that we could all eat a cake made of happiness, rainbows and no-pants parties.
“According to the survey, 89 per cent of students said they were overwhelmed by all they had to do; nearly 54 per cent reported being hopeless and 64 per cent lonely sometime in the past 12 months; 86.9 per cent said they were exhausted, 56 per cent felt overwhelming anxiety and nearly 10 per cent had seriously considered suicide.”
That really sucks man, but that couldn’t be my friends, right? I mean, I’m overwhelmed and hopeless and lonely and exhausted and anxious after Facebook’s hashtag integration, but I’m an outlier, right?
“Students thought 80 per cent had used marijuana in the last month compared to the 16 per cent that actually did. They believed about 80 per cent had at least one cigarette in that time period, a figure that was actually 11.6 per cent. And they thought 95 per cent of their peers had at least one drink in the last 30 days when just over 70 per cent did.”
Conclusion: Everyone’s sad! Happy Monday!
[via Toronto Star]
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Vidal Wu is an intern at Toronto Standard. You can follow him on Twitter at @vidalwuu.
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