“There will be no safety zone! I can guarantee you the safety zone will be eliminated! Eradicated! You will all be extradited – to the land of no return! It’s a navigation to nowhere! If you think that’s going to be fun – you’ve got another thing coming! And I may be a slime bucket, but, believe me, I know what the hell I’m talking about! I’m not crazy! And don’t say I didn’t warn you! I warned you! I warned all of you!”
Screaming Man (Paris, Texas, 1984)
It’s one of the many unoriginal thoughts that race through a student’s head on a weekly basis, alongside such iconic mainstays as – “I don’t deserve to be here.” and “Why did Oxford reject me?”.
Your parents have warned you. Your parents’ friends have warned you. Your friends’ parents have warned you. Now, in the light of day, here are the facts.
On Wednesday morning it was revealed that your time at university is definitively the peak of your life. After conducting a large-scale investigation, researchers form Durham University’s Department of Critical Life Studies have published their shocking findings – that your life will only go downhill from here on out. This revelation comes as part of wider research conducted by the department into – “the universal realisation as you hit your early twenties that there will be no reveal of a grand meaning to any of this, and instead you underwhelmingly recognise that this is your life going by” – as outlined on their department SharePoint.
In response, several students have mentioned their need to “…make the most of it…” – as if you can quantify happiness anyway. Following this trend, experts are predicting students will rush to do such arbitrary things as – “make core memories” and “attend contact hours”.
When confronted with the news, one particularly forthcoming student simply recited a verse from The Smiths 1986 track ‘Frankly Mr Shankly’ – “Frankly, Mr Shankly I’m a sickening wreck, I’ve got the 21st century breathing down my neck. I must move fast, you understand me? I want to go down in celluloid history” – A student quoting The Smiths? That must be a first.
However, critics of the university’s Department of Critical Life Studies have alleged that their newfound conclusion is nothing more than a transparent marketing ploy. Jess B. Idle, founder of the Anti-#getinvolved league published a statement that reads:
“With Durham University currently far behind schedule for its ‘University Strategy 2017 – 2027’, executive faculty have evidently resorted to cheap publicity stunts to drive up applications. It was the same when they began hosting weddings at St Chad’s, it was the same when they exhausted their slave-labour surplus of bright-eyed freps trying to impress proud parents dropping their own equally naïve children off for freshers, and now it’s this.”
Idle’s statement continues – “The best-case scenario for the university is that they scare their existing students into applying for panic Masters and to follow this up with a panic PhD, locking them into the pyramid scheme that is a career in academia. Durham University will bleed its students dry, profiteering off their own artificially created fear factor.”
Of course, none of this really matters if you end up loving your inevitable post-graduation minimum-wage retail job. Furthermore, maybe those friends of yours who got bricklaying apprenticeships at 16 did have the right idea all along – though I somehow doubt they start their sentences with “furthermore”, so maybe the 80-grand was worth it.
Now don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Anyway, that’s enough about your life. I think mine’s just getting started.
“He not busy being born, is busy dying”
(Bob Dylan, 1965)
Image: McElspeth on Pixabay