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Career-learning
Café
the magazine
www.hihohiho.com
REAL
LIVES - insights
what students say about learning
do they speak for you - or not?
needing
"If it were not for the short stories my father wrote, I would
have known almost nothing about the general life of our Indian community.
Those stories gave me more than knowledge. They gave me a kind of solidity.
They gave me something to stand on. I cannot imagine what my mental
picture would have been without those stories"
V
S Naipaul
‘By intuition alone’
Prospect, February, 2002
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"I
am not academically minded and was a mediocre school pupil. I rarely
read books and my attention span is short. Nor do I imagine that university
will advance my career; in fact, I know it will lose me a considerable
amount of money... . But some dumb instinct tells me that this secret
of life - the secret that someday will be revealed to me – lies,
not lodged in the world itself, but in the way I make sense of it all...
And there is something else. Perhaps on some level I feel that there
is something in Kate that disdains me. I feel sure that she loves me,
but, sometimes (like) when I we are drinking with my loud friends in
a loud bar... I see something in her eyes... University it must be,
if I am to be properly reinvented."
Tim Lott (at the time
a Fanzine publisher), The Scent of Dried Roses, London:
Penguin Books, 1997
making
it happen
"I
rushed to join the queue and found myself in the office of the head
of arts admissions. 'I would like to apply to do English, French and
History-of-Art at A level' I said. He
shook his head sorrowfully as he read my application form... 'I’m
afraid', he said, 'that English and History of Art are both full up.
If you had come the first day of enrolment...' The first day of enrolment
had been the day of my sentencing. 'I must tell you this', I said, more
urgency and power in my voice than had ever been there before. 'If you
admit me to those courses I will get A grades in each subject...' He
looked at me with is blue eyes. I looked back. My entire destiny was
in the hands of this man... His unreadable eyes just twinkled back...
'I must be mad' he said, scribbling his signature on my form with a
sigh.
Stephen Fry
Moab is My Washpot
London:
Arrow Books, 1998
making
it not happen
Ashley
had the brains to be anything he chose. But he put aside his potential
for a life on the street... What leads young men like Ashley to opt
for ‘ghetto love'. is the recognition they get from it... They
should be told, and shown, and then told again that they are not less
black if they educate themselves, or less of a man because they refuse
to settle an argument with a bullet.
Lennie
James
(speaking of Ashley Walters aka ‘Asher D’ of the Garage band
‘So Solid Crew’)
'Not so solid’
Prospect,
April, 2002
moving
on
"But
it was time to move on, to fulfil my academic and romantic potential,
to leave football... My childhood was dying, cleanly and. decently,
and if you can't mourn a loss of that resonance properly, then what
can you mourn? At eighteen, I had at last grown up. Adulthood could
not accommodate the kind of obsession I had been living with, and if
I had to sacrifice Terry Mancini and Peter Simpson so that I could understand
Camus properly and sleep with lots of nervy, neurotic and rapacious
art students, then so be it. Life
was about to begin, so Arsenal had to go."
Nick
Hornby
Fever Pitch
London: Indigo, 1996
coming
through
"There’s
a lot of pressure to concentrate on employment and do impressive extra-curricular
stuff, with your career in mind. Stuff that isn’t political."
Carrie Sharman (student)
quoted by Kirsty Scott
'Students shun stop-the-war movement'
The Guardian, 18th October 2001
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Katie,
a 21-year-old biology student, says that she is 'totally paranoid' about
money: 'I'm so scared to spend and l don't shop for clothes, ever’ .
Katie adds that the experience, not surprisingly, has made her plans
for future employment more money-motivated: 'I just want a job that
will pay well and not necessarily one that I like! Students commonly
describe the situation as one of being 'thrown into a black hole of
debt’.
Rachel
Shabi
‘In the Red’
The Guardian Weekend. 9th March, 2002
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"Both
my academic adviser and Dr Sterling, along with several friends, have
suggested that I just take 'incompletes' in my courses and make up the
work some other time; but, for some reason, I just can’t. It would
be too demoralising. If I can't write my papers I keep telling myself...
the last bit of what I have to hold on to will be gone. Other kids with
emotional troubles take time off from school; but they have families,
they have a sense of a place in this world that can absorb them in all
their pain.... I must do my work.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
Prozac Nation – Young and Depressed in America: A Memoir
London: Quartet Books, 1995
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