Diary of a Mature Student, Semester Two, Week Four Point Two
Quantum Mechanics.
I subscribe to the Many-worlds interpretation. I just do. It doesn't mean I have to like it.
For instance; there are a few parallel universes out there where I didn't push away the people that mattered to me. In those worlds, the toast is always buttered, and I go to a regular job, surrounded by regular people, and I come home to a regular life. Don't laugh, it's possible; such is the nature of causality.
Hell, in some parallel universes I own my car, and maybe even my own house! I mean, let's not go crazy, but in an infinitely possible universe everything is possible, even a lottery win.
And at night, those other me's lay their heads down onto a fluffy pillow next to a loving wife, and sometimes they dream. They dream of a world where they get up before it's light to commute to a job, but not any ordinary job; this one they have to pay to do, instead of being paid for their work. And they do; they work their little hearts out and, at the end of the day, go back in a car they don't own, to a house they don't own.
If this sounds unnecessarily negative, perhaps it is; no, of course it is. Because it's incredibly easy to while away innocent hours with 'what if' questions about a past you can't change. It doesn't make the present any easier, and at the end of the day, it's still the night. We always find innovative ways to fuck things up; it's part of what makes us so delightfully human. I can count on four hands - you don't mind if I borrow yours, do you? - the interpersonal relationships, both friendship and the sticky kind of friendship that we call love - that I've frittered away, given up on, or actively screwed up, leading my life to the odd little crossroads it's at now; but instead of offering me a price for my soul, the Devil - at the crossroads, remember? - just gives me a quizzical look.
Being a mature student is a difficult balancing act. One one hand, you have this boundless opportunity to do something that actually matters to you, but on the other hand you pay for this every day by making no progress towards a real life (tm). And yes, perhaps a real life (tm) isn't all that great, but... This does, for whatever sins are available at a discount, matter to me. Just being here matters to me. The price is the price, but the goods are good.
God, I'm complaining again. Floridly. This seems to be happening more and more regularly, recently.
Here's the thing. Student life - the first time around on this particular merry-go-round - was messy, irritating and complicated. Drinking too much, a complete lack of financial awareness - hell, a complete lack of personal hygiene awareness, in some cases - stress, discontent, friendships made and broken, and essay deadlines, all boiling away in some jambalaya of the heart and soul. I actively hated parts of my first experience of student life; mainly finding out just how long the leash was on this supposéd taste of freedom before working life beckons.
Back in the day - when men were men, lecturers were (96%, anyway) utter bastards, a degree was something that demanded nothing less than total concentration. Some parts of the course were a lot like how I imagine purgatory to be; lots of work for no discernible reward, or long spaces with absolutely nothing to do punctuated by a frenzy of work that defined, apparently, the rest of your life's course. Put it this way; there were, on average, four lectures a week at, on average, two hours a lecture. This meant - and I'm glad you're keeping up with the maths here - eight hours of 'work' per week, leaving the other one hundred and sixty hours at your disposal.
Give a man a fish, and he enjoys a fish supper for a night. Give a teenager 160 hours a week to do some sort of nebulous 'study', and you can kind of guess what's going to happen.
It's - kind of - different, now, it seems. Oh yes. For instance, we have a shocking eleven hours of lectures a week instead of eight. How these young people cope with such an amazing amount of work is a source of constant mystery to me, it's wonders to behold.
But here's where the kicker of being a mature student comes in; socialising? Who he? Outside of lectures, normal life - as much as it ever existed - rests it's clawéd hand upon my shoulder, reminding me, cruelly, that the real world existeth and that it cannot be déníéd.
Anyway, enough with the accents. But I hope you see my point; the benefits and detriments columns of being a student are completely upended once you add the prefix 'mature'. I don't have to worry about socialising, about how much I can drink before I pass out, about whether girl (x) likes me...
... Well, I still worry about that a little...
... but I do have to devote myself, heart, soul and occasionally other things, to being a 'proper' student, which is just as nebulous as anything else mentioned herein.
My grades must be high.
My work must be good.
One comport oneself with dignity, efficacy and grace at all times.
Oh, you know what I mean, I suspect. Because for an 18-year-old to flunk a course or two isn't just acceptable, it's even expected; our lecturers banally announce that by the end of the first year, 10% of the students on the course will have dropped out. For this course, that's something like eighteen to twenty students. I find this amazing, because it means that 10% of the people on this course are too stupid to ask for help. I can say this because I was too stupid, back in the day, to ask for anything. Been there, done that, got the free Budweiser t-shirt. But for 10% of the class not to think "hold on, I'm paying these tuition fees, I have an advisory, I have tutors, I have friends, why don't I try to arrest this backslide into mediocrity?" is kind of alarming. And yes, statistically, of these 10%, some will suffer a personal tragedy, while others will simply run out of lawyers, drugs or - most importantly - money. Such is this bastard thing we call life. But still, a 10% dropout rate is just heinous, somehow.
Of course, in the same breath, they tell us that we don't need to worry about marks - we only have to pass; and that our negative-equity assignments don't matter as long as we do them, but if we do them, we win... Nothing.
A caveat; I love this course. With my heart and what passes for, yes, my soul. I as much of it as I can, which seems to be more than a lot of people; I work harder and longer than some of my confederates, but not as hard or long as, I suspect, the true devotees, of which shadowy sect I have yet to meet one. I like to believe in their existence, however, because the prospect of being one of the hardest workers on this course is, instead of happy-making, kind of terrifying.
So anyway, there's a whole chunk of confused young people there, especially when you consider that you have to pass every module to be admitted to the next year. So if you shoot for a pass and fuck up, well, damn, boy, it's resit time for you. The changes between course assessments and styles don't help, either; one course hands out no notes or handouts, so you attend and take notes or you're fuckéd. Other courses, by comparison, lull you into a false sense of security with copious handouts and lecture notes and - get this - useful seminars. Some insist on group work while others leave you to your own devices. So where do you pitch your
Where indeed? There's a whole lot of space between 'just pass' and 'do well'.
And - as I keep trying to get across to my confederates - because of this, you have to shoot high, gods damn it, because if you shoot low and miss, shit. But if you shoot high and miss, you've still got the chance of leaving someone with an unexpected centre parting...
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