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.
Thursday, 18 March 2010
Wednesday, 24 February 2010
I'm the star of Captain Midnite's travelling show
Our Director Writes:
Diary of a Mature Student, Semester Two, Week Five
Of course, there are the days when everything kind of meshes. Kind of.
They're just balanced out by the weeks that don't.
This week gone by, I met Hamilton. Hamilton is an associate student; he studies, on average, a course a year. He does this because he wants it to be this way.
He also does this because Hamilton is sixty-two years old.
And because of this, nobody will sit next to him in the lectures.
This annoys me more than I think I can put into words, or at least words more coherent than 'what the fuck'.
I'm fairly unique, it seems, in my attitude to age. I was lucky; I spent a lot of time with excellent grandparents as a child, and I always loved talking to the other people in the place they lived in, because they were always happy to talk. I thought this was normal at the time.
I was lucky, too, in starting this course, in that I didn't actually let my Mature status - your mileage may vary - actually particularly bother me, and because of that, it seems, it didn't bother anyone else. I just got on with it, and then some; the key, it seems, is enthusiasm, up until the point where people start looking at you with the eyes that say yes, fine, but when do you actually, y'know, stop?, and after that it becomes a matter of generating enough goodwill to go on being enthusiastic without annoying anyone unduly.
So I got talking to Hamilton at the beginning of last week. He's happy enough; his children are at university themselves, and he was coming up to retirement age, so he though what the hey and decided to go back for some learnin' and see what the whole university shebang is about.
So now, he sits at the far right of the auditorium, on the front row - the mature student's row of choice, our hearing isn't so good, you know - and there's another mature student of about fifty or so nearby, but other than that, there's four or five empty seats next to him and one or two behind him, unless latecomers fill them up.
I get the whole perspective-of-youth thing. Mature students remind young students that the future exists, and, yes, you have to grow up some time, and you'll get wrinkles, it'll get colder and things generally slow down. When I began the course, I was worried about being the Spectre at the Feast; "hey, young people, do a degree, it's great! Look at me! I did a degree, and went out and got a successful job - no, wait... I found true love - no, that's not right either... I found my purpose in life - ah, screw it." Now I just tell them, in the politest possible terms, to enjoy being young. I don't mention anything else.
I may have mentioned this before, but in my first year, first time round, I was possibly the worst student I can imagine. Oh, I did lots of reading, and passed some courses, but there's nothing so terrifying as the apparent illusion of freedom (although walling us up into seven-story tower blocks containing sixty to seventy other students isn't exactly freedom) but I sucked like a dyson at the whole academic thing. C'est la vie.
Now, I care. I care with the passion of a convert turned fanatic; it feels like zeal a lot of the time. But I'm also the most manly Cassandra you'll ever meet; I hide my meaning in polite words and avoid making what I say sound like injunctions like the plague, but, as I've said before and I'll still be saying in three years time to the young people of today, do it right right now and it becomes so much easier.
Yeah, it's easy to stay in bed.
Yeah, you can miss two or three lectures and not break a sweat.
Yes, the courses in the first year don't matter to your final grade.
Yes, this is probably because they expect you to fuck up, ever so slightly.
... Where was I?
Anyway, if I can, I'm going to make a point of sitting next to the other mature students next week. Not because we should band together, in some sort of agéd pack of experienced hyenas, watching the rest of the naíve, young crowd piss and moan about having to attend lectures.
Just because if I don't do it, I don't think anybody else will. And that would sadden me more than you could know.
Diary of a Mature Student, Semester Two, Week Five
Of course, there are the days when everything kind of meshes. Kind of.
They're just balanced out by the weeks that don't.
This week gone by, I met Hamilton. Hamilton is an associate student; he studies, on average, a course a year. He does this because he wants it to be this way.
He also does this because Hamilton is sixty-two years old.
And because of this, nobody will sit next to him in the lectures.
This annoys me more than I think I can put into words, or at least words more coherent than 'what the fuck'.
I'm fairly unique, it seems, in my attitude to age. I was lucky; I spent a lot of time with excellent grandparents as a child, and I always loved talking to the other people in the place they lived in, because they were always happy to talk. I thought this was normal at the time.
I was lucky, too, in starting this course, in that I didn't actually let my Mature status - your mileage may vary - actually particularly bother me, and because of that, it seems, it didn't bother anyone else. I just got on with it, and then some; the key, it seems, is enthusiasm, up until the point where people start looking at you with the eyes that say yes, fine, but when do you actually, y'know, stop?, and after that it becomes a matter of generating enough goodwill to go on being enthusiastic without annoying anyone unduly.
So I got talking to Hamilton at the beginning of last week. He's happy enough; his children are at university themselves, and he was coming up to retirement age, so he though what the hey and decided to go back for some learnin' and see what the whole university shebang is about.
So now, he sits at the far right of the auditorium, on the front row - the mature student's row of choice, our hearing isn't so good, you know - and there's another mature student of about fifty or so nearby, but other than that, there's four or five empty seats next to him and one or two behind him, unless latecomers fill them up.
I get the whole perspective-of-youth thing. Mature students remind young students that the future exists, and, yes, you have to grow up some time, and you'll get wrinkles, it'll get colder and things generally slow down. When I began the course, I was worried about being the Spectre at the Feast; "hey, young people, do a degree, it's great! Look at me! I did a degree, and went out and got a successful job - no, wait... I found true love - no, that's not right either... I found my purpose in life - ah, screw it." Now I just tell them, in the politest possible terms, to enjoy being young. I don't mention anything else.
I may have mentioned this before, but in my first year, first time round, I was possibly the worst student I can imagine. Oh, I did lots of reading, and passed some courses, but there's nothing so terrifying as the apparent illusion of freedom (although walling us up into seven-story tower blocks containing sixty to seventy other students isn't exactly freedom) but I sucked like a dyson at the whole academic thing. C'est la vie.
Now, I care. I care with the passion of a convert turned fanatic; it feels like zeal a lot of the time. But I'm also the most manly Cassandra you'll ever meet; I hide my meaning in polite words and avoid making what I say sound like injunctions like the plague, but, as I've said before and I'll still be saying in three years time to the young people of today, do it right right now and it becomes so much easier.
Yeah, it's easy to stay in bed.
Yeah, you can miss two or three lectures and not break a sweat.
Yes, the courses in the first year don't matter to your final grade.
Yes, this is probably because they expect you to fuck up, ever so slightly.
... Where was I?
Anyway, if I can, I'm going to make a point of sitting next to the other mature students next week. Not because we should band together, in some sort of agéd pack of experienced hyenas, watching the rest of the naíve, young crowd piss and moan about having to attend lectures.
Just because if I don't do it, I don't think anybody else will. And that would sadden me more than you could know.
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
And I know that I should let go, but I can't
Our Director Writes:
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 yourtent
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...
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...
Monday, 15 February 2010
Although not the most honest means of travel, it gets me there nonetheless
Our Director writes:
Diary of a Mature Student, Semester Two, Week Four
I've found myself developing some somewhat strange, somewhat comic behaviours over the past few weeks. Nothing too strange, but just different enough to make me wonder what's prompted them.
There's a moment of existential ennui, it would seem, upon returning to the Park and Ride on a daily basis. If you do something four days a week, every week, for fourteen to fifteen weeks in a row, your brain starts - it seems - to give up on remembering exactly where your car is when you return after a hard day's studenting.
So I stand there, for a few seconds, trying to remember which particular space I could find that morning. It doesn't matter, of course, because I have a relatively distinctive car anyway, but it's always a very confusing short space of time.
My car is distinctive for a number of reasons. For one, it's dinky. Of course, size apparently doesn't matter, but on a few occasions people have been slightly shocked when I unfold myself from the front seat. But another reason it's distinctive is that it has a very strange music system. Oh, it was beautiful and up-to-day in, let's say, 2001, but since then, it's been all downhill, baby. The radio, for instance, works out of both speakers - 90% of the time - but the cd player doesn't, something I wouldn't have personally thought possible.
Then again, the CD player only works 30% of the time anyway, so if you find a CD that actually works, hoo boy, that's the goddamn jackpot right there.
[Sidebar: for those keeping score, I do actually like my car. It drives well and it gets me where I'm going. But every car has it's quirks.]
One of the CDs that works, for instance, is the soundtrack to the 2006 version of Casino Royale. I discovered this on one of my first journeys, wherein I tried eight or nine different CDs - getting Error 3 or Error 6 depending on whether it couldn't or wouldn't play them, respectively - before finding that my car likes, for some reason, David Arnold.
This is one of those things that couldn't really be much more inappropriate if it tried. The only time my car would ever be in a Bond movie is if it were being rammed off the road by the villain. Oh, sure, it might fit in in a Bourne movie, but shit, whoever accused them of automobilic taste?
However, I find the disconnect really funny. More funny than I should.
The entrance to the Park and Ride is a side lane, alongside which runs three lanes of traffic, which will either be waiting for the lights or pulling away.
And so, I find it very funny to get into the side lane, and cruise past the traffic with the Bond theme playing at an audible volume. Slinking past succinctly, like a shark, you might say.
Of course, you might not...
Diary of a Mature Student, Semester Two, Week Four
I've found myself developing some somewhat strange, somewhat comic behaviours over the past few weeks. Nothing too strange, but just different enough to make me wonder what's prompted them.
There's a moment of existential ennui, it would seem, upon returning to the Park and Ride on a daily basis. If you do something four days a week, every week, for fourteen to fifteen weeks in a row, your brain starts - it seems - to give up on remembering exactly where your car is when you return after a hard day's studenting.
So I stand there, for a few seconds, trying to remember which particular space I could find that morning. It doesn't matter, of course, because I have a relatively distinctive car anyway, but it's always a very confusing short space of time.
My car is distinctive for a number of reasons. For one, it's dinky. Of course, size apparently doesn't matter, but on a few occasions people have been slightly shocked when I unfold myself from the front seat. But another reason it's distinctive is that it has a very strange music system. Oh, it was beautiful and up-to-day in, let's say, 2001, but since then, it's been all downhill, baby. The radio, for instance, works out of both speakers - 90% of the time - but the cd player doesn't, something I wouldn't have personally thought possible.
Then again, the CD player only works 30% of the time anyway, so if you find a CD that actually works, hoo boy, that's the goddamn jackpot right there.
[Sidebar: for those keeping score, I do actually like my car. It drives well and it gets me where I'm going. But every car has it's quirks.]
One of the CDs that works, for instance, is the soundtrack to the 2006 version of Casino Royale. I discovered this on one of my first journeys, wherein I tried eight or nine different CDs - getting Error 3 or Error 6 depending on whether it couldn't or wouldn't play them, respectively - before finding that my car likes, for some reason, David Arnold.
This is one of those things that couldn't really be much more inappropriate if it tried. The only time my car would ever be in a Bond movie is if it were being rammed off the road by the villain. Oh, sure, it might fit in in a Bourne movie, but shit, whoever accused them of automobilic taste?
However, I find the disconnect really funny. More funny than I should.
The entrance to the Park and Ride is a side lane, alongside which runs three lanes of traffic, which will either be waiting for the lights or pulling away.
And so, I find it very funny to get into the side lane, and cruise past the traffic with the Bond theme playing at an audible volume. Slinking past succinctly, like a shark, you might say.
Of course, you might not...
Sunday, 31 January 2010
What a mess, what a marvel
EDITOR'S NOTE: This was supposed to be published directly after the last entry, but Blogger decided this just wasn't, apparently, the done thing. Anyway...
Our Director Writes;
Diary of a Mature Student: Semester 2, Week 2; Addendum
Of course, the last entry looks incredibly churlish. But hopefully the point gets across.
Because the course I'm doing doesn't quite fill out the course units spectrum, we get plunked into other courses from other fields with relative impunity sometimes. Last year we were left in a course slightly to basic for the field students and slightly too advanced for our course.
This year, they've stuck us in a room with two hundred other students from a very popular course and, well, just left us to get on with it. I say us; I recognised something like ten out of the two hundred as being from my course, so there's either been a prodigious drop-off rate or something odd's going on.
The other thing is that it's a course that my previous degree was in. I don't plan to mention this at any point during the proceedings, because how the hell does that work? "Hi, I'm Eton, and I'm already qualified in this area - I'm just doing this for the laughs."
Kind of funny, kind of... Well... Patronising.
What was kind of funny, however, was being - thanks to a 66% dropout rate in the male student population of my seminar group - the only person of a male persuasion there.
Me.
The lecturer (a lovely lady, for those keeping score.)
Twenty-one eighteen-and-nineteen year old girls.
Hmm.
In all total honesty; what exactly does one do in that situation?
I opted for sitting fairly quietly and letting them all get on with it, because frankly it seemed like the safest option. Besides which, what exactly would I have to offer someone from the generation before me other than a searing insight into a time before downloadable content?
It's one of those tricky social situations. For I am not a particularly manly man's man; I'm a geek, and proud of it. Hell, you have to be a bit of a geek to study Film. They put it in the UCAS requirements and everything. And god knows I don't want to end up some strange Steve Buscemi-a-like character in the class. So contributing occasionally but otherwise sitting quietly seems to be, for me, the way forward.
Our Director Writes;
Diary of a Mature Student: Semester 2, Week 2; Addendum
Of course, the last entry looks incredibly churlish. But hopefully the point gets across.
Because the course I'm doing doesn't quite fill out the course units spectrum, we get plunked into other courses from other fields with relative impunity sometimes. Last year we were left in a course slightly to basic for the field students and slightly too advanced for our course.
This year, they've stuck us in a room with two hundred other students from a very popular course and, well, just left us to get on with it. I say us; I recognised something like ten out of the two hundred as being from my course, so there's either been a prodigious drop-off rate or something odd's going on.
The other thing is that it's a course that my previous degree was in. I don't plan to mention this at any point during the proceedings, because how the hell does that work? "Hi, I'm Eton, and I'm already qualified in this area - I'm just doing this for the laughs."
Kind of funny, kind of... Well... Patronising.
What was kind of funny, however, was being - thanks to a 66% dropout rate in the male student population of my seminar group - the only person of a male persuasion there.
Me.
The lecturer (a lovely lady, for those keeping score.)
Twenty-one eighteen-and-nineteen year old girls.
Hmm.
In all total honesty; what exactly does one do in that situation?
I opted for sitting fairly quietly and letting them all get on with it, because frankly it seemed like the safest option. Besides which, what exactly would I have to offer someone from the generation before me other than a searing insight into a time before downloadable content?
It's one of those tricky social situations. For I am not a particularly manly man's man; I'm a geek, and proud of it. Hell, you have to be a bit of a geek to study Film. They put it in the UCAS requirements and everything. And god knows I don't want to end up some strange Steve Buscemi-a-like character in the class. So contributing occasionally but otherwise sitting quietly seems to be, for me, the way forward.
This is a gift, it comes with a price
Our Director Writes
Diary of a Mature Student, Semester 2, Week 2
There are some things about being a mature student that you just don't talk about, it seems.
Then again, they're more or less the same as any other time in your life. There are some funny moments, too; this week I had to submit proof of the qualifications that got me my place at my university, which meant, basically, submitting a copy of my degree certificate to prove I was eligible to study for my degree.
This is one of the main problems; I can't find part-time work because of an odd kind of situation. The basic conversation runs like this:
"Hi, I'm looking for some part time work while I study."
"Okay, what qualifications do you have?"
"Well, I have my degree insomething not that relevant and my GCSEs and A levels."
"Oh, you already have a degree? Why would you want to work here?"
"Well, I'm just looking for-"
"Sorry, we think you're overqualified."
'Overqualified' hides a multitude of sins. On one hand it's "well, why would you stay here for any length of time with that qualification?"; on another hand, it's "what happened in your life that you can't use these qualifications for something better?"; and on a theoretical third hand, there's always the question of intimidation.
Now, intimidation is just asinine. If you're intimidated by someone with a degree, stop it, stop it right goddamn now, because it's pointless. In all my time since graduation I haven't put the letters after my name once. The only time I've had to use my degree certificate is in submitting for further academic courses; no employer has ever asked to see it. And yet I was treated differently - at least, at first - for being a graduate. It meant nothing other than the occasional higher expectation, because I remained for four or so years consistently the lowest-paid person in the building, but there was something there somehow.
So I can't find work, which means living off what savings I'd put together before being kicked out of my work last year with a cheery goodbye and the promise of a reference. And this is what I mean by the things you don't talk about as a mature student.
It means smiling every time someone asks you how the course is going, and being incredibly enthusiastic about it, because how could you not be? You're doing something you're passionate about! You're doing what you love! Any sign of unhappiness just isn't done, old chap.
[As a sidebar, I am happy. I'm incredibly happy; I border on ecstatic during termtime, because I am doing what I love, so this might sound churlish; but it's not this that's the problem, it's the lack of any possible other answer than every day I wake up I feel blessed. Although, right now, I do. Sorry. This is rambling a little.]
Sometimes I want to speak the truth to people, just a little, to see what they might say.
"You know what being a mature student means? It means living at home with parental units because I can't dream of affording anything else. It means living of charity and benificence because I can't find any work. It means a negotiated kind of independence where most everything I think of doing means clearance by someone. It means not necessarily being able to afford anything new for a long, long time. Clothes? DVDs? Gadgets? Forget it. Make do and mend."
Look at it this way; at least my clothes that aren't retro now will be by the end of the course.
This is just idle complaining, though. Because it's a small price to pay to do something I love. It's a miniscule price, really.
But of course, it needs paying.
Diary of a Mature Student, Semester 2, Week 2
There are some things about being a mature student that you just don't talk about, it seems.
Then again, they're more or less the same as any other time in your life. There are some funny moments, too; this week I had to submit proof of the qualifications that got me my place at my university, which meant, basically, submitting a copy of my degree certificate to prove I was eligible to study for my degree.
This is one of the main problems; I can't find part-time work because of an odd kind of situation. The basic conversation runs like this:
"Hi, I'm looking for some part time work while I study."
"Okay, what qualifications do you have?"
"Well, I have my degree in
"Oh, you already have a degree? Why would you want to work here?"
"Well, I'm just looking for-"
"Sorry, we think you're overqualified."
'Overqualified' hides a multitude of sins. On one hand it's "well, why would you stay here for any length of time with that qualification?"; on another hand, it's "what happened in your life that you can't use these qualifications for something better?"; and on a theoretical third hand, there's always the question of intimidation.
Now, intimidation is just asinine. If you're intimidated by someone with a degree, stop it, stop it right goddamn now, because it's pointless. In all my time since graduation I haven't put the letters after my name once. The only time I've had to use my degree certificate is in submitting for further academic courses; no employer has ever asked to see it. And yet I was treated differently - at least, at first - for being a graduate. It meant nothing other than the occasional higher expectation, because I remained for four or so years consistently the lowest-paid person in the building, but there was something there somehow.
So I can't find work, which means living off what savings I'd put together before being kicked out of my work last year with a cheery goodbye and the promise of a reference. And this is what I mean by the things you don't talk about as a mature student.
It means smiling every time someone asks you how the course is going, and being incredibly enthusiastic about it, because how could you not be? You're doing something you're passionate about! You're doing what you love! Any sign of unhappiness just isn't done, old chap.
[As a sidebar, I am happy. I'm incredibly happy; I border on ecstatic during termtime, because I am doing what I love, so this might sound churlish; but it's not this that's the problem, it's the lack of any possible other answer than every day I wake up I feel blessed. Although, right now, I do. Sorry. This is rambling a little.]
Sometimes I want to speak the truth to people, just a little, to see what they might say.
"You know what being a mature student means? It means living at home with parental units because I can't dream of affording anything else. It means living of charity and benificence because I can't find any work. It means a negotiated kind of independence where most everything I think of doing means clearance by someone. It means not necessarily being able to afford anything new for a long, long time. Clothes? DVDs? Gadgets? Forget it. Make do and mend."
Look at it this way; at least my clothes that aren't retro now will be by the end of the course.
This is just idle complaining, though. Because it's a small price to pay to do something I love. It's a miniscule price, really.
But of course, it needs paying.
Monday, 18 January 2010
From across the great divide
Our Director Writes:
Diary of a Mature Student: the run-up to the new academic year
I've come to the conclusion that life would have been a lot simpler, if, ten years ago, I'd woken up with the burning desire to be an accountant.
Note, from the last entry, that even while slightly drunk, I can still look up the GDP of small island nations. Think of this what you will.
But, seriously, as long as there's money, the world needs accountants. And they do fairly well out of it if they even have a modicum of financial ability; accountancy would have been the way forward, ten years ago.
If I'd chosen that path - if I'd even thought it remotely the right thing to do - things would be very different now, let me tell you. For one, I'd be able to afford better clothes. I'd hopefully have found some lovely, accountancy-tolerating lady and settled down somewhere suburban. Hell, by now I might even have children, and I could be teaching my youngest the heady joy of balancing figures and tax-deductible income.
Instead, something in me decided ten years ago to just freewheel - or, more accurately, free - and go with the flow. Hence, a humanities degree. Humanities degrees, in the fullness of things, are like filmmakers; they benefit no-one. The recipient spends a lifetime justifying just why their degree is useful in any field other than, say, teaching or perhaps, at a push, proofreading. Anyone who comes into contact with a humanities graduate gets this glossy look in their eyes as if to say you spent three years doing what, exactly?
But a humanities degree, I've worked out, is just a useful way of keeping dangerous minds off the streets and inculcating sound principles on their strange little minds. I don't mean dangerous minds in the sense that yeah, daddy-oh, they're going to go out there and change the world, I mean dangerous in the sense that lava is dangerous when it's molten but solid when it's cooled, if that makes any particular sense. All these eighteen-year-olds I see here at the moment are so, so sweet but sometimes I want to sit them down and gently tell them that the world outside the education system is a dark, and often annoying, place.
I didn't enjoy my first go on the degree merry-go-round, in case you hadn't inferred that from this blog so far. The first year was confused - and confusing - and rushed and full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, leaving a lot of people completely unprepared for the seriousness of the second year. The third year was the only time I started to actually appreciate just what the hell was actually going on, and, more importantly, appreciate exactly what the point of study is.
Kind of.
And then the real world, shiny and cuttingly bright, beckoned, and suddenly the student overdraft needs paying and there aren't any jobs that pay enough to live any kind of fully independent life, and it all goes, quite frankly, to... No, that's not quite true. I paid my student overdraft and cultivated an odd little kind of independence from the odd little job I found and ended up staying at for about half a decade.
Now... I'm back, baby, and the undergraduate education system seems strikingly different to the one I left. It's a lot like returning to a workplace you left years ago to find everything changed; natural, but unsettling.
Take the marking system, for instance. Old style was 'pass 75% of your modules per year and you'll get a degree, if not a great one'. New style seems to be 'pass everything but don't worry about the grades in your first year; shit, 41% will do, kid, just so long as you pass. And by the way, we don't actually trust you to do independent study, so there are weekly negative-equity tests to pass - you get sweet F.A. if you do them but we'll dock lots of percentage points from you if you don't...'
It seems like an odd little way of preparing the young people of today for the sudden second-year seriousness of grades that actually matter, but hey, maybe it actually works. I don't know. I've been trying to convince my contemporaries that doing well now is something to be proud of, but I'm not quite sure it's getting through.
I feel a lot like a Cassandra, except for the 'most beautiful' part. (Or, strictly speaking, the 'daughter part. But hey.) I'm not a shining example of the merits of academia - pretty far from it, actually - but I do want at least one person I count as a friend here to take a little notice of my lessons in How Not To Fuck Things Up, from Crow, who has a P.h.D in the subject.
Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe not.
One thing that entertains me; upon applying for this course, I was asked to provide evidence of my most recent qualifications to justify my academic existence. This mean presenting my degree certificate in order to prove I was worthy of attaining a degree certificate.
I'm not proud...
Diary of a Mature Student: the run-up to the new academic year
I've come to the conclusion that life would have been a lot simpler, if, ten years ago, I'd woken up with the burning desire to be an accountant.
Note, from the last entry, that even while slightly drunk, I can still look up the GDP of small island nations. Think of this what you will.
But, seriously, as long as there's money, the world needs accountants. And they do fairly well out of it if they even have a modicum of financial ability; accountancy would have been the way forward, ten years ago.
If I'd chosen that path - if I'd even thought it remotely the right thing to do - things would be very different now, let me tell you. For one, I'd be able to afford better clothes. I'd hopefully have found some lovely, accountancy-tolerating lady and settled down somewhere suburban. Hell, by now I might even have children, and I could be teaching my youngest the heady joy of balancing figures and tax-deductible income.
Instead, something in me decided ten years ago to just freewheel - or, more accurately, free - and go with the flow. Hence, a humanities degree. Humanities degrees, in the fullness of things, are like filmmakers; they benefit no-one. The recipient spends a lifetime justifying just why their degree is useful in any field other than, say, teaching or perhaps, at a push, proofreading. Anyone who comes into contact with a humanities graduate gets this glossy look in their eyes as if to say you spent three years doing what, exactly?
But a humanities degree, I've worked out, is just a useful way of keeping dangerous minds off the streets and inculcating sound principles on their strange little minds. I don't mean dangerous minds in the sense that yeah, daddy-oh, they're going to go out there and change the world, I mean dangerous in the sense that lava is dangerous when it's molten but solid when it's cooled, if that makes any particular sense. All these eighteen-year-olds I see here at the moment are so, so sweet but sometimes I want to sit them down and gently tell them that the world outside the education system is a dark, and often annoying, place.
I didn't enjoy my first go on the degree merry-go-round, in case you hadn't inferred that from this blog so far. The first year was confused - and confusing - and rushed and full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, leaving a lot of people completely unprepared for the seriousness of the second year. The third year was the only time I started to actually appreciate just what the hell was actually going on, and, more importantly, appreciate exactly what the point of study is.
Kind of.
And then the real world, shiny and cuttingly bright, beckoned, and suddenly the student overdraft needs paying and there aren't any jobs that pay enough to live any kind of fully independent life, and it all goes, quite frankly, to... No, that's not quite true. I paid my student overdraft and cultivated an odd little kind of independence from the odd little job I found and ended up staying at for about half a decade.
Now... I'm back, baby, and the undergraduate education system seems strikingly different to the one I left. It's a lot like returning to a workplace you left years ago to find everything changed; natural, but unsettling.
Take the marking system, for instance. Old style was 'pass 75% of your modules per year and you'll get a degree, if not a great one'. New style seems to be 'pass everything but don't worry about the grades in your first year; shit, 41% will do, kid, just so long as you pass. And by the way, we don't actually trust you to do independent study, so there are weekly negative-equity tests to pass - you get sweet F.A. if you do them but we'll dock lots of percentage points from you if you don't...'
It seems like an odd little way of preparing the young people of today for the sudden second-year seriousness of grades that actually matter, but hey, maybe it actually works. I don't know. I've been trying to convince my contemporaries that doing well now is something to be proud of, but I'm not quite sure it's getting through.
I feel a lot like a Cassandra, except for the 'most beautiful' part. (Or, strictly speaking, the 'daughter part. But hey.) I'm not a shining example of the merits of academia - pretty far from it, actually - but I do want at least one person I count as a friend here to take a little notice of my lessons in How Not To Fuck Things Up, from Crow, who has a P.h.D in the subject.
Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe not.
One thing that entertains me; upon applying for this course, I was asked to provide evidence of my most recent qualifications to justify my academic existence. This mean presenting my degree certificate in order to prove I was worthy of attaining a degree certificate.
I'm not proud...
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