"The Great University Con"

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Can you stop speaking French nobody knows French except woops

It's not very advanced French!

It's the title of Houellebeqckx's book about Lovecraft. "Against the world, against life." Seemed apposite to what you were describing.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
The thing is, when I went to uni i had all these lofty ideas in my head about intellectualism and how I was going to be having passionate debates about virginia woolf or something. And within a week I realised that nobody gave a fuck about literature or intellectualism, they just wanted to get drunk and go to terrible nightclubs and shag each other. (I wanted to shag each other too but I wasn't the type).

I'd say a good 75% of the people on my course were, intellectually speaking, complete non-starters.
 
I didn’t learn anything at university. Waste of time. But I can’t learn from classes and lectures or by instruction. However I’m confident I could get a 2.1 in any degree in a fortnight with the right books. Yes any degree even languages and maths. No you shut up dickhead I’m really smart.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I learned quite a lot but it was mostly self-taught.

The problem: it taught me how to write essays about books, and how to read books to write essays about books.

Thereby ruining reading for me forever.

But also thereby enabling me to persist with apparently boring books that revealed themselves to be brilliant, and enabling me to write an incredibly popular rap reviews column for The Wire.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I didn’t learn anything at university. Waste of time. But I can’t learn from classes and lectures or by instruction. However I’m confident I could get a 2.1 in any degree in a fortnight with the right books. Yes any degree even languages and maths. No you shut up dickhead I’m really smart.
True story: in the third year of my degree, a guy who was well known as a lazy fucker came round my house about a week before exams started and asked if he could borrow my notes for a course he had apparently signed up for, but had never attended a single lecture. I was flattered to be thought of as someone who took good lecture notes, but come on man, seriously? I lent him the notes but I don't think it did him much good, because he had a breakdown in the exam and stormed out, screaming and kicking chairs and stuff.

He may even have been able to wing it, to some extent, if the course in question hadn't been Mathematics for General Relativity!
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
I went back at 30 years old after deciding acid house was far more fun and too good to ignore the first time around. Glad I did because, on the whole, the tutors were superb mentors (barring a few septic cunts). They opened up maps, mythology and sites in a way I don’t think is entirely possible through reading. Dozens of field trips to Ireland. Spent 3months at the Hill of Tara and Dublin wading through academic, literary and poetic interpretations of what the ancients were up to. Bliss.

However, when it came to doctoral research the wheels truly came off. Too many funding jokes, but a genius supervisor (rip JD) meant a conflict of interest ruptured and I had to politely bail. Got into psychology after a life changing event around this rupture. Looking to advance that in 2021 via music therapy. Addiction work during Covid has been too heart breaking to continue and stay sane. Seeing drug reform elsewhere in the world and now in the iron prison of the US, you’d think common sense could prevail in Britain.....except naaah. Just look at the hiv rates in Glasgow and death rates in Scotland, with England not far behind. Scandalous. The unspoken health crisis.
 

luka

Well-known member
That sounds very priggish to me. I think we should be able to strike a balance here. I don't want to encourage wallowing let alone revelling but
 
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