Do you feel like a puzzle, you can't find your missing piece

Diary of a Mature Student: In the summertime

There are two sentences that pretty much sum up the end of term for me at the moment.

The first I don't have a source for, although I must have read it in fiction a few hundred times;

"Although the smile didn't reach his eyes"

Or variations thereof. Here's the thing; if there's one thing being older than the average student has taught me, it's the simple application of the adage that if you can fake sincerity, you've got it made.

I'm getting sick of faking sincerity.

I have met some amazing, committed people on this course, who I feel lucky to have worked with, and hope to do so again.

Equally, I have met some people on this course who I could quite cheerfully contemplate violence against.

How difficult is it to keep the following command lines in mind:

[if] (I / My parents / My LEA) are paying (X) in Tuition Fees, and
[if] My future depends, in some way, upon how hard I work now
[then] It is in my interest to work hard.

It's not difficult, surely?

I have an email friend who refers to something that might be relevant here, in that in a discussion about aging, he stated that you begin to develop '4-D' senses, in that you begin to see the future, or at least some ideas of possible outcomes, instead of just focussing on the day-to-day.

I get that now in a way I didn't before, because I'm surrounded by people to whom the future is an abstract concept and interpersonal relationships are not in any way important, because you can burn through people now on the understanding that you might never meet them again.

And why would you?

Once the three years are done with, the educated twenty-somethings scatter like dandelion seeds on the wind, with no indication who will land on fertile ground or not.

I should know, because, hey, I've already been a dandelion seed myself. It didn't work out so well, because, shit, here I am again.

...

And yes, this is probably just the end of term burnout talking, but then it's been a longer semester than it had any right to be.

Look at it this way. The average course runs to sixteen weeks - that's fourteen weeks with a two-week break in the middle for Easter, which, as previously discussed, seems all kinds of pointless.

Break down those fourteen weeks.

Week one is induction / introduction. You learn nothing other than how the course is going to work, and it's usually not even a full lecture.

Now, normally weeks 2 - 13 are tuition weeks, followed by a tutorial week for the final essay deadline week.

Not so this semester.

On one course, there was week one, induction. This was followed by weeks two and three, tuition. Week four was a tutorial week for assignment one, i.e. no tuition. Week five was the editing week for assignment one, again, no tuition. Week six was reading week; no tuition. Assignment one gets handed in. Then, thanks to an amazing administration, there was one instance of direct tuition between weeks seven and twelve, as the course finished a fortnight early. This is not to say there wasn't guided study, or individual tutorials, but, crucially, no tuition.

And there is little doubt people will be marked down for not knowing things that hadn't been taught, which is, naturally, a fun paradox.

This was followed on, last Wednesday, with a strange little quasi-lecture following the end-of-term party - and, yes, I'm still a little angry four days on, but it leads us on to the second sentence that sums up what's going on at the moment (although, hey, it's a lyric, rather than a sentence), which runs thus;

"Well, I feel like they're talking in a language I don't speak"

Ten years shouldn't render communication impossible, right? Well, no. It doesn't. But it does affect the assumption of communication.

Case in point; at this party, there were a whole lot of burnt out second years - [raises hand] - a few first years who had been involved as runners - and quite a few third years, all celebratory and whatnot, who were just happy, it seemed, at having survived. One of these third years, now on the cusp of their graduation, decided it would be the best thing ever to give me some advice on our work.

Now, this isn't the bad thing - advice is always appreciated. Nor was their tone condescending, or patronising, or anything like that. No, it's more that their advice consisted of things that anyone in my position already knew, delivered with such an amazing assumption that we wouldn't, that it was all I could do to keep a straight face. Maybe this is just the age talking, so maybe it's that it's difficult to receive what's masquerading as authoritative criticism from a twenty-one year old, but it was just... bizarre.

And the sad thing is that all the points were valid and valuable, just delivered with the assumption that myself and my group couldn't possible have considered them during our production.

It kind of set my teeth on edge, because I remember feeling like I was an authority on various things when I was that age, and my god how annoying that might have been for the people around me.

*

Let's take something positive away from this semester. There are actually a few valuable lessons to consider, believe it or not.

Firstly, the value of humility; no matter how much work you put into something, there's always a chance it won't be enough. If you did everything you could, then that's all you could do.

Secondly, the value of focus; make sure you're always maintaining focus on the right project areas - i.e. the ones you're marked for - because while area (c) may be as pretty as anything, it may also be irrelevant.

Finally, the value of self-interest; don't do anything for anyone who you know can't or - more likely - won't do anything for you in return, whether out of laziness, or spite. This lesson comes from the fact that I spent the last fourteen weeks functionally horse-trading; that is, out of the ten actors involved in our production, only two were involved without any incentive at all. The other 80% only joined in because they got something in return.

I began this semester believing in the value of interpersonal interaction and building working relationships, and ended it as a mixture between administrator, stockbroker, and pimp.

And even now, nearly a week after the final lecture and 'celebratory party', I can't switch off for the summer.