You're one in a million 'cause you got that shotgun smile

Our Director Writes: Note that this was supposed to be published a week and a half ago. Make of that exactly what you will.



Diary of a Mature Student, Week Eleven Point Two




It was when my alarm went off at 5p.m. today and I awoke wondering what the hell was going on that I realised I probably needed to slow down and smell the metaphorical roses a bit.

I was rising up with the skylark at 5p.m. because I'd got home from my lectures so physically tired that I fell asleep at 3:30p.m., but not without setting my alarm, because who wants to miss those beautiful sunsets?

It's very strange to think of a university degree - especially in it's first year - as actually, physically, tiring. Yes, it's information storage - and loading and overloading the brain with lots of information basically fatigues people anyway - but there's no heavy lifting, or strenuous physical work, and the most tiring part of my day is, specifically, the commute.

The actual lectures? Someone talking at you for an hour expecting you to take notes but not expecting you to actually listen, because, hell, the notes are on the virtual site anyway so... The essays? First year undergraduate essays? See this? Dismissive hand wave. Yes indeed, a wave of the hand that's dismissive. Not only are they short, but expectations are so low and accordingly the importance afforded to them is as well that nobody, it seems, actually worries about them.

The problem is is that sometimes I forget I'm not a boundless optimist -

- i.e. a moron -

- and I start to actually believe in people and concepts that I already know aren't true. It's a strange fallacy, but it does seem to happen.

Here's the thing. In my job before I came here, it was repeatedly demonstrated that people can be venal, and corrupt, and will put their own economic gain before the welfare of other people.

I know, shocker, right?

But the degree to which people would place economic gain above the rights and dignity of others left me with a fatalistic streak, a very dark sense of humour, and the overriding feeling that people, as a whole, suck.

All that seemed to magically disappear when I was thrust out into the cold, shadowy world after a stint as one of the Gainfully Employed. I suddenly stopped thinking that people suck and started believing in Boundless Human Potential, as you would. Because universities are all about potential; isolating those with the possibility to become something 'good', and quarantining them for the benefit of humanity, whilst giving all the others a baseline education so that they don't fall over while tying their shoelaces more than they already do.

If that seems harsh, it's because it is, but I have come to a realisation over the last couple of weeks; I'm not here for the academia. It's nice, and it has a lulling siren's song effect, the idea that I might be recognised for my essay-writing skills and - heavens to betsy - even go on to do some research - but it's just a sham inside a fallacy within a falsehood, because let's be fair now, it's not smart to be smart.

This is something we all learn via the law of the playground. If you're smart, you end up picked on or ostracised for being 'different'. The truly smart learn how to disguise their intelligence so that no-one realises they're different, and they're the dangerous ones.

I'm not that intelligent. If I were, I wouldn't be doing a second undergraduate course; I'd be out somewhere working away, making a mark, with the eventual aim of snorting blow off of a hooker on a yacht in the south of France, or some other marker of success in the modern world. I'd be holding down a job, providing for a family, yadda yadda yah - see the previous posts about parallel universes for more of the same. But it's true; the smart ones are the people who can survive in the modern world, and those who can't have to find a different way of coping.

Like, for instance, academia. Where better to go if you're relatively smart and need to sort out your life?

Wrong, because it's not smart to be smart here, either. Or at least, conspicuously smart.

This may sound like a contradiction in terms, but let me explain, oh captain, my captain.

Intelligence is fine, but untrammelled intelligence only gets you in trouble. For instance, you can write the most searing indictment of the modern whatever, but unless you format it correctly with the correct referencing style and the correct bibliography and everything is just so, you're not going to get The Good, High Marks that you want. It's a swings and roundabouts argument; having to format your argument just so strips your work of any individuality, but it makes it academically acceptable. Now bear in mind that your lecturer has between forty and a hundred essays to mark for that course alone, and it becomes more evident why these criteria matter so much.

And here's another thing; you're supposed to conditionally accept everything you're told. Not unconditionally - you can raise issues if you like - but the balance of Righteous Knowledge versus Youthful Questioning isn't, well, balanced. The only times people have ever questioned things in our lectures so far it's been in such an asinine way that the lecturer is immediately put on the defensive, which makes them, quite frankly, like sulky teenagers - mixed with a how-dare-you-defy-me-I-run-this-course feeling that sticks to you for days afterwards.

Intellectual debate is, it would seem, not what the first year is about. And rightly so, perhaps, because you're just a first year, what would you know? Why are you asking questions? Why are you contradicting your lecturer? Why are we here? What's the meaning of life? How can I get a cup of tea around here?

First year students are not a precious commodity. On average, our class size this semester has run between seventy and one hundred and sixty, of which 10%, on average, will turn up, tune out and drop out. Of the remaining 90%, the average lecturer will only have to deal with a small proportion in their second year classes because of streaming and specialisation.

However, here's another thing; it doesn't feel like our lecturers actually want us to be smart, or intelligent, or capable, at least in our first year, because this would apparently be an affront to all that is good and pure. The average first year student is supposed to be a tabula rasa, barely prepared by the A level system and grateful for everything they learn. And why wouldn't they be?

Is there a point to all this? Well, technically, yes. It's that no-one wants smart people. They make the other people feel bad, and they worry the lecturers because nobody wants to be lecturing someone smarter than them.

Being smart is a very dangerous thing to do at university.

I count myself lucky, therefore, that I'm not that smart...

We're all the same but no-one thinks so

Our Director Writes:

Diary of a Mature Student, Week 10

So it would be easy to assume, from the last few posts, that I have kind of a downer going on about the whole experience at the moment, which would be kind of sad.

I mean, I do, some days, because my outlook on student life is so different to my fellow students that I may as well be on the moon. Seriously; I treat it like a mixture of a job and a calling, because it's a way of doing something I love in order to continue to be able to do something I love in the future.

There are these little moments, though, when things coalesce into cool, when sometimes the abject lack of motivation or social skills of some of my coursemates fade away, and I can actually feel like things are right, somehow. Like sipping too-hot miso soup at a screening this week, or meeting with friends and discussing a short film idea, or doing something nice for someone who needed some footage a-s-a-p...

... Sometimes it ain't so bad. Oh, the attendance keeps dropping along with, seemingly, people's motivation - including, annoyingly, some of our lecturers, who appear to have checked out somewhat and are mentally buying themselves easter eggs and looking forward to the holidays - but the world is, as I've said before and will, no doubt, say again, exactly what you make it and quite possibly nothing more.

And then, occasionally something comes along which is pure happy, so that helps...

And at the count of three I pull back the duvet

Of course, the one thing I keep forgetting about is the Grand Adventure.

Look at it this way; life is a path. Throughout your childhood, the path is small, and your parents help you walk it. At school, your teachers take over some of the shifts from your parents so they can go back to some semblance of normal life.

At university, you're expected to walk this path on your own for the first time. The path is wide, well-lit and well maintained, and there are lots of other people walking it at the same time as you - not necessarily with you, but there, nonetheless. At the start, the path seems easy to walk because, well, you don't know what you should be worrying about.

Over time, the path narrows, and the people with you start to drift away down their own tributaries, and the lights dim a little and everything gets that little bit more foreboding, piece by piece, until you reach the gate to The Real World(tm) and you're expected to push that gate open with some sort of misguided confidence that the world won't just slam it in your face, laughing.

Then, once you're out into the real world, there is no path except that which you make your own self, and if you don't have a map, well, good luck!

I love it here, but it isn't a grand adventure. It's a job, and one I'm lucky and glad to have, but a job nonetheless. I commute with all the other commuters, I put in eight to twelve hours a day (including, last week, a seventeen hour day, always fun), then I go home and do all the things a normal person would do. But it's not a grand adventure. Of course, I'm not sure my first time around on the university merry-go-round was a particularly grand adventure either, but...

... Yes, this is one of those things I struggle not to mention to The Young People Of Today. And it is a struggle, because while some of them are intelligent and well-to-do, some of them are so fucking dumb it makes me want to channel Spider Jerusalem and slap them over the head.

I know, I know, you're saying, they have to learn for themselves. And maybe they will. Maybe I'm sitting in a class of future directors, presidents and all round good guys who just need a little seasoning before the real world swallows them whole. And you're probably also saying why are you judging them? You're a workshy postgraduate who couldn't hack it in the real world!

And you're not wrong. I'm in no position to judge, whatsoever. But consider this; on an average week, I can note the following;

- Students using the films illegally downloaded from filesharing or torrenting sites as evidence of all sorts of things, from release date to quality, as if it's fact

- Lecturers mentioning the same thing at least once a week and, most recently, across lectures - i.e. the same material pops up in two completely separate lectures for no apparent reason

- Students actively arguing with lecturers in the middle of a lecture - not in an appropriate environment, i.e. a seminar, although god knows that happens too, but interrupting a lecture to make a point that, crucially, didn't need to be made

- Because of this, other students simply give up; the motivated ones leave halfway through a given lecture whilst the others barely turn up at all

- And at the end of the course, it's still likely they'll get a passing grade because of standardised testing, meaning both the argumentative and the lazy ones will pass into next year, no worries, mate.

I have a simple view. It runs thus: the world is what you make it, baby. So I go to the lectures that, thanks to burgeoning tuition fees (up approximately 250% in six years, thanks Labour!) cost between £15 and £20 an hour, even when they're interrupted or unattended. I use the library, even though my course isn't traditionally a reading one.

And I care. And this may be my downfall. Because apparently nobody - or at least, almost nobody - else seems to, anymore.

The end of the semester is four academic weeks away, then the students of today float away on the summer winds for the three and a half months that the university simply doesn't want to deal with them. I'll miss some of them.

Some of them, I really won't.