Monday, November 28, 2005

Your Comments on University. Did you agree with Stephen Fry?

Is University (In particular Oxford or Cambridge) full of people who believe they are better than people in lesser life? Should young people be encouraged to believe university is a ticket to something better? Were your university days your glory days? If you didn't go to university are you a failure? If you did are you glad you did and has it changed your life? Here's what a few of you have said already. Thankyou for your views....

Richard Whig said...
Spot on!!! I couldn't agree more with Stephen Fry. I had a choice to go to university to do music and turned it down. I regard myself as being more succesfull than most of the Oxbridge people I know. The head boy in my year at school read medicine at Cambridge and I passed him the other day. He was driving a 10 year old fiesta and looked as geeky as ever! People who have degrees from these places think that is enough and don't need to work hard while the rest of us have spent that time discovering that the only way to be successful is through hard work so we are a step ahead.

Freddy said...
I never attended university. Neither did my parents. Neither did any of my immediate family before me. It wasn't an experience any of us had had. We were a family of business - of earning money as soon as you could in order to sustain yourself. At the age where I should have been thinking about university, my father was just about getting himself into some sort of financial equilibrium. He was not focused on our education, and nor was my mother. They had no personal experience (at that stage) of University and therefore it was not high up on their agenda for me or Katrina.

Most importantly it was not on mine.

I was sick to the back teeth of education and all I wanted to do was get away from everything I knew. My school was a rotten experience, the main "form teacher" of my school frightened the bejesus out of me, I avoided him and anyone in authority like the plague and as a consequence couldn't wait to get away. I dropped out of study and my A-levels were a mediocre nothing. Frankly I could not be bothered because all I could see at that time was getting away. I was lazy and self indulgent and maybe I regret it sometimes but not enough to even contemplate taking up a course in something for old times sake.

That's why my sister will never know how proud I was that she did go to university and not only that but has done extra courses and postgrads galore. She would I am sure forgive me for saying that throughout her life she faced people forever rattling on about how "talented" I was, both in terms of music but also probably in terms of ability. And yet she was the one who showed everyone and I'm so glad she did, genuinely, because it was not only good to see her succeed but also good to see her be able to stick her fingers up at anyone who said that I was the brainbox.

Empty vessels make the most sound, and while I was singing my way round Northern Ireland and claiming all the adulation, Katrina was quietly succeeding and gaining tangible results. Applause dies away.

Anyway my point is that I regret not going to university.

HOWEVER!!!!

I will not tolerate anyone who PLUMPS themselves up on their UNI days and yaks on about punting up the cam or getting "uproariously drunk with Tootles" as if it's the only lifestyle there is when you are in your early twenties.

Newsflash - you can as much fun and meet as many long term friends by NOT going to university - I know I did!!

When I was 18 I started working and had enough money for a place to live AND a pint or two at night. I had to go to work every day sure, but that taught me more than any course - I'M SURE OF IT!!! Now I am used to responsibility and duty and getting up in the morning early every day without having to make a whole scene about it. I don't have to "mentally prepare" myself for a day's work like so many of my peers did when they finished university and then started their 9 to 5's.

All I'm saying is that going to university should not simply be seen as a mark of quality and elitism and superiority as the article adequately states. It is a mark of further study and nothing more. I didn't do it - and I would have probably enjoyed it - but it makes no difference to my quality of life and I'm sick of being told it would have.


Freddy said...
Richard I couldn't agree more. You are actually living proof that by choosing a "weird alternative" to going to university you have succeeded OK. You have enough money to live on and a nice life.

I know I'm going to get a load of stick for my comments but maybe it will jolt people into thinking about how we "non university" people feel....


Smithy said...
I went to University. They weren't, however, the best days of my life. Neither were my school days. The best days of my life are right now; I'm living them.

I wanted and needed to go to University; I deliberately avoided Oxbridge - I was probably daunted at the prospect of meeting so many people with superiority complexes. But I met loads of them at UCL, ignored them (as they did me), and gravitated towards a small group of 'normal', like-minded souls. We had such a laugh and they helped make me into the person I am today, far more than any degree. One of the main functions of my university career was its civilizing factor; it kept me off the streets and out of mainstream society until I was ready to join it. BUT University was no more a seminal period of my life than any other time. People influence and shape me all the time.

I now neither seek nor avoid university graduates; if a conversation were leading in that direction I might ask someone if they went to university in the same way that I might ask them if they went to Fuengirola on holiday last year. But it's really not that important anymore.

However I still see the value of elitism in tertiary education. Recent governments seem to have been doing their best to erradicate that and have been encouraging more and more people into more and more universities to do degrees in monkey tennis and Boyzoneology, getting themselves into huge amounts of debt in the process.

Laura Spence was, I imagine, one of hundreds of students with predicted straight As interviewed at Oxford that year for a limited number of places. I imagine she 'shone' marginally less than girl or boy B who was interviewed just before or after her. That's tough. Life's like that. For more on Laura, see HERE

Jonny @ Diagio said...
I spent 4 years at University and loved every minute. I worked hard to get there and worked harder when I was there. I met a range of wonderful people and wankers- very representative of life, really. The fact that I went makes me neither better nor worse than anybody else.

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posted by Freddy @ Monday, November 28, 2005 Comments: 7

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