Changing culture, one gamerscore at a time.

Looking back, as my graduation ceremony rapidly approaches, I think about the ridiculous amounts of work there is to do, the long nights and longer essays, and how things are only getting worse. Let me share a few personal opinions with you, and say you’re all fucking soldiers for doing the following:

• Putting up with teachers who mark you down when you disagree with an opinion.
• Reading and writing more in a year than the people who’re telling you to do so and failing to set the example.
• Managing to finish your degree, and if not, even the year, to get qualifications that, due to career overcrowding and university entrance requirements getting consistently lower, no longer matter as much as they did five years ago.
• Putting a brave face on and paying attention in lectures when you’ve been in and out of them for eight hours, with no lunch.
• Paying fees that have risen by almost 25% in the last three years.
• Making the most of accommodation that, for the most part, encourages depression, isolation and financial hardship due to outrageous rental charges.
• Managing to read even one out of the four 500-page novels you’re given every week with little regard for your health or spare time.
• (This goes double for subjective topics) Putting up with parents who don’t understand why 75 out of a possible 100 is an excellent grade and should be celebrated.
• Making the most out of a university system that fails to encourage anyone to aim high due to the failure to use the top 20% of the grade table.
• Shelling out for public transport when it’s free for those who are having an easier time, academically, than you are.
• Even considering paying back a student loan that you should have never had to take out in the first place (Scotland? Free uni, and they’re not bankrupt yet).
• (To those who do, I understand and identify if not) Working part-time jobs to pay for books and equipment that had been provided for free earlier in life because education to that level is made to feel far more valued.
• Not complaining when a teacher cancels a lesson after a three-hour commute, knowing full well that not rescheduling prior to the following lesson has just cost you several hundred pounds.
• And finally (lots more, but I’ve got to cap it somewhere), starting university in the first place, full of hope and deliberately ignoring all the moaning and doubts of those of us who’ve seen the dark side to the experience.

Everyone who goes to university, be it for three days or three years, should be damn proud of themselves. The system in England is horrendous and completely unforgiving, and encourages a country crippled by debt to become even more so. I hope you all get the grades you deserve, and to those who are upset that this hasn’t been the case (hell, I started off getting firsts), bear in mind that your peers will one day be at the top of the food chain, like yourselves, and you’ll be able to give graduates a better chance than they have at present.

Keep reading, keep writing, keep pushing forwards. From economics to physics, biochemistry to art history; we are the future, and the supporting structure of the next fifty years of human civilised evolution. Nothing can take away your achievement, of making it through eighteen years of complete academic bullshit and coming out sane the other side.

This is by no means a subtle reference to myself, as I’ve experienced most of the problems listed, but not all. I simply wish someone had said all of this to me when I was a freshman, as it would have made all those 59′s and 69′s, late nights and punishing exams that little bit easier. The best of luck to you all.