None of us Ever Graduates

"None of us ever graduates"

This, I’ll admit, feels slightly ominous as I make my way from the train station up to campus, but am un-deterred reasoning that the ‘us’ the graffiti is referring to, is the ‘us’ that was down in this piss-smelling subway with a spray can rather that studying for that degree, so really, its not much of a surprise that none of this ‘us’ has ever graduated.

"Id like to thank google, wikipedia and copy and paste"

This one is sprayed on the opposite wall next to a fake Banksy of someone juggling bananas but still, I am refusing to judge my place of post graduate study on the local graffiti. The artists are quite simply, misinformed; they've obviously never heard of ‘TURNITIN’- the computer program the large majority of universities now use as part of their essay submission process that goes through your essay with a fine electronic tooth-comb  highlighting your percentage of possible plagiarism. I would have thought generally, professors and teachers would be up for this sort of thing, but one evening later that week down the pub with staff and Phd students from my department, I discover that perhaps this is not the case.

“I don’t mind if my students plagerise.”

          “You don’t?”

          “No, if they get that piece of paper saying they’ve got a degree, how much does it matter how they got it?”

Err, ALOT, I want to answer categorically, but interestingly it was a professor I was having this exchange with, and since everyone was drinking ale in large quantities I paused momentarily, wondering if it was a trick question. I like this professor, in fact it just so happens that this is the exact same fellow who pronounced at the beginning of class that day;

                “Due to circumstances that are utterly out of my control, last night I had to get completely, resolutely and decisively drunk. So, if I get a little shaky, sweating, or even pass out- don’t worry.”

                I did worry. Specifically since I had made the error of sitting in the front row of the lecture theater  if such an instance of shaking or passing out occurred, it was going to be down to me to do something about it, and though there is a card in my purse saying I am a qualified first aider, I’m not all that confident when it comes to hungover philosophy professors.  Also, it’s worth noting that this particular lecture was an undergraduate module I was sitting in on, therefore I was the oldest in the room (apart from the hungover professor), a fact I imagined would count for something in an emergency situation.

Thankfully it was an ironic comment that evening in the pub so I did well to pause, but it led to the question of how you do interpret a piece of paper that says you have a degree? In an economically driven culture, where things are measured in terms of the monetary gain you can squeeze out of things, education, at whatever level, is consequently measured by the pay check you earn post-school/college/university. The lower the paycheck and the bigger the debt, the less value that education had for you. And this is a prevailing path of questioning as university fees rise; What is that degree worth- we ask with our calculators in our hands. What desk does a liberal arts degree belong at? Does a law degree have any value if you don’t actually become a lawyer?

If we are teaching each generation that passes through our current schooling system that learning is only as useful as the wage you earn out of it, it paints a pretty grim picture of the culture being shaped with each passing year group. Is this the aim- young minds trained to pass exam papers, to only be good at things that can pay their monthly gym membership, car finance and the mother of all achievements; a house deposit?

Is it conceivable that it’s the term ‘education’ that is being misunderstood? Education I want to argue, is not a piece of paper with numbers and letters on, government monitored, job center approved- because no one can monitor your true education; the act of opening your mind past what’s going on in front of your nose and letting other substances in. Learning should have no agenda, no feeling of being owed something back for the time spent with a book or an interesting documentary, a trip to an amazing new place. Education is waking yourself up for no other reason but that you want to be awake. Why would you not want to fulfill your capacity? Your capacity to be a well rounded and fulfilled individual, a compassionate person capable of understanding the world from more than just one solitary point of view? But with the tools our culture gives us to measure success and happiness, we often have no idea how to take on such a task.

Is it not odd to ask a 15 year old choosing GCSEs “What do you want to be?”  Most adults have no answer to such a question, in fact I would go as far as to argue it’s the dumbest question you can ever ask a person. Don’t we mind that we are teaching young people that they are only as worthy as the credit rating they have- that Experian are the ones that can tell you how well your doing in life? In trying to think back to GCSE’s, A levels or even university applications, is the standard line of questioning “What do you love doing? What would you love to do more of?” Or is it “what job will this help you get?” “What job do you want to do?” Since the latter is a question that the majority of us struggle to have a clear cut, box-fit answer to, we set ourselves up for anxiety in 6^th form classrooms, in university lecture theaters  at the desks of that first job we’ve taken ‘while we work out what we really want to do.”

There was a girl at my secondary school- fantastic at sports and simply astounding when it came to drama and acting. Everybody knew, teachers and pupils alike that this kid was something special but she felt that as her talents were not counted as traditionally academic, they were not as valuable because everybody knows that few actually ‘make it’ as an actor/ sportsman, it’s not an acceptable answer when the careers officer comes round the classroom. 

            Because this girl was dedicated and hardworking by nature, she pushed herself very hard and achieved fantastic grades in other subjects, went on to do an incredibly academic subject at university, is a very successful individual and as far as I know, perfectly happy. But it wasn’t without sacrifice, and I have never forgotten that girl from those school days because I always felt that somewhere along the way, our culture’s way of measuring achievement, talents and happiness robbed her of something, told her that what she loved doing was not good enough to go out into the world with.

Connor, my house mate, is interesting example of our flawed education system. He is young and very bright, but didn't fit into suitable government targets or desks for long hours as many young boys don’t. With a system that doesn't cater for learning unless it can be regurgitated in an exam paper, he very easily slipped through the net at school and now works at a local supermarket in between having philosophical debates with me and smoking weed.

                “If you could do anything,” I ask him, “anything, what would you do?”

                “Have sex.”

                “Right, well I’m not sure that’s an option here.”

                “Well you didn’t specify. That’s a dumb question because obviously if I could do anything I’d have sex and eat food.”

                I try a different angle. “What did you like back at school?”

                “Maths, I was good at maths- was a bit of an accident though.”

                “You were accidentally good at maths?”

                “Yeah. I heard there was free food at the maths revision classes on Saturday, three hours long they were those sessions, but all the chicken wings you could eat. Never turn down free food.” He says to me seriously before turning back to the play station. “Got an A for maths I did. Liked DT too; once I tried to pierce my mate Warren’s ear with a nail we were supposed to be using to build bird boxes. Wouldn’t go through, got a well thick ear Warren has, had to jam it til it went POP.

                I picture the school workshop splattered with blood and a student with a large hole in his ear lobe.

                “Why didn’t he get it done properly in a shop??”

                “Because Warren’s a tramp and eight pounds was a lot of money back then.”

                “What about English?”

                “Well Shakespeare is shit, obviously.”

                I say nothing, remembering my friend’s interesting take on why he liked the English language the week before-

                “I like saying the word country.”

                “Any particular reason, or you just feeling patriotic today?”

                “No, it’s because you can say the word CUNT really loudly and then add the word tree on the end and you won’t get into trouble. CUNT-tree. Country. See?

               

Ironically he and his buddy Shakespeare have more in common that he thinks when it comes to puns, but I don’t push my luck pointing it out;

                Hamlet: Lady, shall I lye in your lap?

                Ophelia: No my Lord.

                Hamlet: I meane my head upon your lap?

                Ophelia: Ay, my lord.

                Hamlet: Do you thinke I meant country matters?

                Ophelia: I think nothing my Lord.

                Hamlet: That’s a faire thought to lie between maid’s legs.

These examples aren’t to suggest that all our current schooling system is lacking is copious amounts of free fried food and dirty word puns, but if education, fails to inspire, chokes individuality and growth- is more red tape what such a system needs? Does learning have to be linear? Who said it even has to take place in a classroom??

A Day in the Life of a Philosopher

A Day in the Life of a Philosopher.

                “Sorry I’m late!” I drop my bag and bum into a seat, my cup of tea sploshing everywhere.

                “Uh, you’re not late Melody.” the lecturer says helpfully.

                “Oh, I’m not?”

                “No.”

                “Did we start early?”

                “No.”

                There is a pause.             

                “Melody, look around.”

                I do look around, and see, quite suddenly, I don’t recognise any of the faces staring back at me. I’m in the wrong class.

So here I am, philosophy MA student- where I am required to read a lot, have a lot of interesting conversations with some of the most interesting people I’ve ever had the good fortune to come across, whilst living in a house 40 seconds from the beach with very interesting housemates (Interesting in a different way…) I am a very happy philosopher and writer indeed.

I arrived in this new town the way I seemed to arrive in most places- haphazardly. Not a lot of dollar or organisation or any official pieces of paper, but a lot of optimism to make up for it. I had one email from a professor admitting me onto the course and telling me sort out everything when I got here. “Just ask Jaqui” his email had signed off with.

                The night before I am due to leave the vajazzled land of Essex, sleeping next to two suitcases with all my worldly possessions, a thought crosses my mind. Who the fuck is Jaqui?

This is the picture that my friend Sophia and I stared one evening in a Pizza Express of off Regent Street, drinking Pinot Grigio and swapping war stories. Something about this poster did it. This is the picture that gave us our first real-life, smack-you-in-the-face, kick-you-up-the-backside, full blown ephiphany and no, I don’t mean three wise men showed up. I mean we had to quit our city jobs.

We both had good jobs. Job that paid good, looked good on our C.V, jobs that made our Alumni year figures look good, with good tax-paying people in very good London post codes. But in that epiphany, staring at that piece of card on a rainy cold Thursday night, staring at that card in a room full of other harassed-looking people laughing too loud and drinking wine too fast, we learnt something very important. That your life belongs to no one but you. You don’t owe your CV, or your parents, or your boss- you owe yourself. You owe yourself to try and find out what it is that truly makes you tick, what you’re passionate about, what makes your life worth getting up for, what your talents and interests are and then to exercise them, to stretch them out like a rubber band and realise the potential you are more than capable of fulfilling. Nobody else can do this for you.

                It is not selfish to be happy, it is your right. I don’t mean happy as in buy a load of chocolate, gorge on shoes, credit cards or a trip to Vegas to see a scantily clad lady called Candy- that is a brand of happiness that will never quench your thirst. I mean happy, being completely true, where there is no room for pretending or moaning in any aspect of your day. Such a life exists and I refute all those who try to convince me otherwise. If you are not happy, it is no one’s fault, but it is your responsibility to do something about it. 

                 Do the unthinkable; if you skip down a nettled-infested forest path rather than that smooth pavement ready-laid and waiting for you, a few cuts and bruises won’t hurt. In fact, the forest of the unknown is much more fun….

This, as you can imagine, is a short version of the decisions that led my friend Sophia to trek around South-east Asia and me to a philosophy department in Kent, (mine also involved a monk in orange robes in Oxford circus if you would believe it,) but I was tired of being well-acquainted with other people’s arm pitts on the central line, I was uninspired by a city that seem to regurgitate me rather than let me in. Who says you have to live your life in a straight line anyway?

So in looking for happiness (and for Jaqui) and in living the philosophy of doing things that make you happy, this particular forest path has currently led me to a town where Charles Dickens once lived, a place crawling with famous writers (which bodes well methinks) has ice cream parlours that don’t bat an eyelid if you want to eat banana splits everyday of the godamn week, and new housemates in Victorian seaside houses that keep me entertained and kept my pen very busy...

             Connor is full of what could be called straight-up accidental wisdom. Everything is said in a deadpan voice accompanied by a shrug, and his face is so poker straight it’s extremely difficult to read whether or not he’s actually joking when he says things like-

“If I had 24 hours left to live I’d just kill everybody that annoyed me.”

                He tells me that I annoy him, frequently, (something about me talking too much) so I guess I should be grateful that so far, he's free of incurable deadly viruses. It’s thanks to Connor I must mention, that our house is kept running on a constant supply of tea bags and sausage rolls, courtesy of the supermarket giant he work for. All I need to do is lend him my flask he tells me, and milk will be forever free-flowing too. (“It’s not stealing, it’s all from the staff room. I’m staff, ergo- not stealing.”)

Things Connor likes; Call of Duty, Malibu(??!) and spaghetti meatballs. Things Connor doesn’t like; the seaside, crap TV, (“I’m a Celeb is a pile of wank; they barely get out of anywhere. It’s just a shit two week holiday.”) and Simba the elderly albino cat which came with the house and the furniture and is about as old as the house and the furniture. Simba molts white fur, is completely deaf and dribbles; a combination which makes this particular cat Connor’s least favourite bedroom companion, a fact Simba ignores every single night when he sleeps on Connors chest.

The other residents Connor can’t seem to shift from his room are myself and Antony. Anthony lives in a room with a double bed he shares with pizza boxes and cans of ‘Monster’; a more repugnant version of Rebull. A creative music student at university he tells me, though I have to say, I’m not sure I’m convinced considering I haven’t seen him leave the house apart from to go to the conveniently situated off-licence at the top of our road. Since Connor’s room has a sofa and flat screen T.V this is where we are to be found, regardless of whether Connor is actually even in the house. I think Connor likes us warming up his sofa- myself, Simba and Anthony, and I reckon really, Connor enjoys being the host of such gatherings, though he pretends to be annoyed that we’re always in his room, the way he pretended to be annoyed the day I automatically wandered into his room to watch ‘The Big Bang Theory’ and didn’t notice immediately that the poor boy was in his boxers trying to get changed.

Things Ant likes; take away food, lie-ins, making weird music on his Mac. The take away food thing is very handy when looking to save money on your weekly food shop. Ant orders in pizza roughly on average about once a day, but never finishes a whole one, so between Connor and myself, we have fed ourselves on second-hand pepperoni pizza for about two weeks. I like cold pizza, a lot. Therefore I like this unspoken arrangement. There was of course the incident where I came home and automatically ate the remaining two slices of pizza only to discover two new facts; 1. The pizza wasn’t Ants; it was Connor’s. 2. Connor doesn’t share food. But you’ll be pleased to hear I have since learnt from this error of etiquette and am slightly more carefully when it comes to un identified food.

Things Ant doesn’t like: Getting up early, getting up at all, getting out of bed. I, on the other hand don’t mind an early start, and enjoy the odd breakfast on the beach in the old hotel staring at the sea and the curved bay holding little fishing boats. It never get old; no matter how many times I look at it, I’ll never get enough of the ocean. Connor however, is inclined to disagree.

                “I’m sick of the sea to be honest,” he tells me. “Everyone’s always like ‘aahh the sea, the sea is so great.’ The sea is shit mate.”

                This is declared whilst sprawled across my freshly made bed. I had just moved into the best bedroom of the house, my new room having a four poster double bed and an en-suite bathroom that the boys had come to check out.

                “Shotgun having a bath.” Ant says eyeing up my Jacuzzi-shaped tub.

                “You can’t shotgun a bath.”

                “Yes you can.”

                “Ok, let me re-phrase, you can’t shotgun my bath. It’s an en-suite bathroom attached to my bedroom.” I give them my best serious face. “There are going to be no smelly boys in my bedroom.”

In all fairness, they don’t smell. Well, apart from the smell of marijuana that seems to emanate from one of the kitchen cupboards though which cupboard exactly I’m not quite sure. First I thought it was the dishwasher, but having stuck my head in it as well as the surrounding draws, I've concluded it’s definitely the cupboard with all the drinking glasses, and though no source is to be found, I've given the whole thing a scrub with bleach in case the land-lady visits and mistakes me for a pot head.

The other interesting fact about this house is the mystery housemate. Every shared residence always has a mystery housemate; back in halls as an undergraduate it was a bloke called ‘Dave’ who lived in the bedroom nearest the kitchen, and though I often saw the door swing open and shut, I never quite caught a glimpse of this so called ‘Dave’ character. Rumour had it he was a photographer, a good-looking photographer, but no one was ever able to confirm such hearsay. In this house, my invisible housemate is called Oaty. It might be O. T actually, possibly Ottie- but I had been living here a good few weeks with no sign of the man apparently living in our basement and was starting to think that the boys had made him up, an enigma on their Fifa Score board, but low and behold last Friday I heard someone scuttling about looking for the reset button on the wireless router (it crashes about 35 times a day) and so I jumped at the chance to introduce myself.

                “Hi! Are you O.T (Oatie??) I’m Melody, I haven’t met you yet.”

                He shakes my hand whilst at the same time backing away.

                “So, what do you do?” I ask him undeterred by his body language.

                “Business management.” (He speaks!)

                “Great, so how long have you lived here?

                “Uh, a couple of months.” He’s still backing away despite the fact I haven’t let go of his hand. I have a firm and convincing handshake. (You will be friends with me godamnit…)

                “Cool. I've heard you’re a bit of a night owl, that’s probably why I haven’t seen you or bumped into you, that’s funny isn’t it.”

                Oatie it seems, does not think this is funny. There is a pause which I decide is not at all awkward before he adds in a slightly strained tone; “So, do you come round here often?”

                I presume this isn’t a pick up line considering the guy looks pretty desperate to get back to his basement dwelling but all the same, I feel the need to correct him.

                “What? no, I live here. I’m you’re new housemate!” I beam, letting go of his hand, which signals his opportunity to escape and he scuttles back down the stairs into the darkness.

I’m definitely adding him to the list of my new friends.

Having settled in to my home as well as my classes I call my old buddy; the infamous Bulgarian Luka Boy to update him on my new status as an official big thinker and day dreamer. Luka has a CV even more colourful than mine aswell as a background that’s far more lucrative so I’m not immediately alarmed when he calls me back twenty seconds later in whispered and hushed tones.

                “Why are you whispering?

                “I’m in the toilet.”

                “Ok.” I ask the inevitable. “Why are you calling me from a toilet?”

                “I’m on an internship for a management consultancy firm in London, if I get the job I’ll be on big bucks yah!”

                Luka, it has to be said, seems to always be on an internship. He turns thirty this month.

                “What do you know about management consultancy?”

                “Nothing. Listen, when are you coming to London?”

                “I don’t know yet, where are you living?”

                “In the Bulgarian Embassy.”

                “What do you mean?”

                “I mean I am living in the Bulgarian Embassy Mel.”

                “You’re living in it?”

                “Yah! Listen, I have to go, I been in this toilet cubicle too long but Mel-“

                “Yes Luka?”

                “Please send my regards to your Mother.”

I never quite know what to say when he says that.

Perhaps THIS is what we should be teaching the youth...