So there I am, fresh out of high school. The move to the big city was looming, excitement filled my loins and I left ma and pa in our dinky little 1 cop town to move to the big city, Auckland.
OK there was actually 3 cops, but still. They knew all us kids by name, as did the local fish and chip shop owner who was an old friend of my dads and was a bit of a perv, and the local video shop owner… etc. You get the point.
When I moved to auckland I had one clear goal in mind- To earn my psych degree, and to get a totally hot uni girlfriend. Well, I found the totally hot uni girlfriend- for about 2 weeks, then she dropped me like a stone right before exams. I failed every paper in my first semester, decided I hated psych, and stopped studying to work in a toyota caryard as the runner boy until the start of the next uni year. At this time i was living in a run down shitbox of a flat with 5 other people. The only plus I had was that I lived down the road from the balmoral lee gar gym, the gym that has produced fighters like Ray Sefo, Shane Cameron and Choppa Chapman. I had 2 fights under their flag, first was an overwhelming victory, second was a draw against someone that I was meant to be a stepping stone for.
I fucking hated that job. I suffered through working with a bunch of total fucking halfwits, most of whom were foreign and had a tenuous grasp of english at best. uni couldn’t start early enough.
When it did, I enrolled in Sport and exercise science. The first semester I passed everything easily, excelled in exercise prescription and sports sociology. I could pick up an exercise, know what it did and why in a biomechanical sense, and think of 5 other exercises to target the same muscle groups and motions without even having to think- I had found my calling. Second semester we focused more on anatomy, and it was fucking hard. I knew what everything did but remembering names was not my forte. Still, I scraped through, and spent that summer back at home lifting weights, tanning on the beach, and fucking smalltown girls who were in awe of my educashun. Life was good.
Second year of uni started and the shit hit the fan. Physics? what the fuck? medsci papers? Vectors, triangulations… I was completely screwed. When it comes to hands on, applicable things, or pretty much anything pertaining to sports and exercise I can pick it up in a flash- But I failed 6th form physics and when I say fail I mean i did not pass ANYTHING. not even a fucking pop quiz. at the same time, a girl I had recently started dating who was a smoking hottie, cute and smart, dropped me like a sack of shit and left me curled up in the foetus position. That was around when I started drinking a lot.
Exam time approached and while I had once again excelled in the fitness training methods paper, I knew I was going to bomb in physics, the medsci bullshit and one “outside” paper I was forced to take (the most fucking retarded idea in the world, in NZ you have to take a paper unrelated to your studies in second year. why? so they can fuck you with more fees for shit you dont care about. My shit was anthropology) The booze and mild depression at this stage as failure loomed didn’t help. It was around this time I met a girl named after an american state. she was clever like a brick, but she had great tits and was a goddamn fuck machine. We had a very short “dating” relationship and I dumped her after about 4 days- it then turned into a 2 month sportfucking relationship. Between banging her and training I did pretty much no study until finally it came- I failed 3 out of my 4 papers, and the uni said I could only do 3 papers the next semester. if you only do 3 papers you are not a full time student, and if you aren’t that the govt won’t pay you a student loan. I was proper fucked.
I booted the girl, sighed, and started working at a volvo dealership as a caryard bitch. This was probably the lowest point in my life, earning 13.50 an hour washing cars and being talked down to by assholes. However soon after working there I found an ad for the NZ college of fitness, which offered an 8 week 9-5 course which would leave me with a PT qualification. it hit me like a ton of bricks- I had always been the one my coach would give the new guys to. My other coach had started a sparring class and specifially asked me to help him teach it, and i fucking loved it. If i could get paid to do that… so i signed up. I needed a deposit and money to live on for 8 weeks. So I saved like a motherfucker and gritted my teeth through an absolutely hellishly SHIT job. The only support I got was from one certain friend and my family- everyone else had shown their true colours and written me off.
Around about this time, I met the other pirate in my avatar. From the second I saw her I knew she was different. apart from sucking me into her eyes before i even knew her name she was smart (she knows 7 different languages) extremely hot, absolutely nuts, and didn’t take ANY shit. I had found my dream girl. the only problem was that she was dating a friend of mine from high school. Needless to say, that didn’t last, and two weeks later she was mine (that is not as bad as it sounds- the guy was an absolute cunt. i was surprised she put up with his shit for the whole 2 weeks they dated). We celebrated our 1 year anniversary 2 months ago and I still can’t get enough of her.
The college of fitness was a life changing experience for me. It transformed me from a somewhat shy but passionate person into a motherfucking steamtrain. I went from hardly being able to give a report to 20 people to doing a haka and singing in front of hundreds of people with no preplanning and not a butterfly in my stomach. I became that guy who people chase up for beers and invite to parties even if i have nothing to do with them. Soon after I landed a job working in an upperclass gym in a rich area and quickly got payrises, praise from my boss, and finally, he agreed to let me become a PT in his gym, despite his reluctance to lose me as a fitness instructor. The reason I rose faster than anyone else? Hard motherfucking work. I took the shifts, covered the hours, did the jobs that others wouldn’t do, and I did them well, and I never once complained because I knew how fucking SHIT some jobs are in comparison. cycling to work in the pissing rain and cold at 5am beats working in a goddamn mechanic yard.
The last 3 weeks I have been at work or working at home 10+ hours a day. Today I had my business cards and promotional posters printed, my website finished, and i fell within my budget for training gear. I am the youngest personal trainer at one of the most renowned gyms in the biggest city in New Zealand, and I earn in a day what would take me a week to earn working in that caryard. I have a gorgeous girl, a nice apartment, and by early next year I will be debt free at 22 years old.
Whats the moral of this story? Fuck the way uni is sold as some kind of higher education. They spit people out into low rent jobs where they can be tossed at any minute as they scrabble to pay back huge student loans and spend their early 20s as fucking bums. Fuck assholes who complain about how tough their 9-5 is. if your job sucks get a new one, if you cant do that then shut up.
And finally, if a dumbshit like me can get a job charging 50 bucks for 45 minutes work, then what the fuck is wrong with the rest of my generation? Actually I know the answer to that, they didn’t grow up in govt housing getting washed in a fucking fishbucket on their back lawn and have a dad who didnt complain, didnt take shit, he just worked hard and did a better job than the next guy. That’s why he now gets flown between NZ and aussie first class to oversee development in mines and onshore oilrigs, working 2 weeks at a time before being flown back to NZ and his family for 2 weeks.
Booyah!