PART TWO
Now onto the lecturers. I can list two who were terrific:
1 - Dr Ian G. Shuttleworth (or as I call him, "the man"). A great mind as far as my subject was concerned. Added to this he was also originally from Barnetby-on-the-Wold so the Lincolnshire connection is in there too.
2 - Dr David Livingsone. The best speaker/lecturer I ever had the pleasure to listen to. A non-secretive Darwinian and evolutionist as well - so maybe I'm being biased.
Some of the rest were OK. Some were terrible. From what I have heard from university friends of mine a lot of lecturers have a major superiority complex which turns them into The All-Knowing All-Seeing Super-Minds. Which in normal English means "Stuck-Up Wankers". Twenty-year-old men being told off as if they're in school for talking while "The Genius" is talking? Give me a break.
The problem with lecturers is that they have spent their entire life reading on a certain subject, so to them, their subject is the be-all and end-all of planet Earth as we know it. It isn't though, and they can't take that, so they take their self-hatred out on some slovenly youth on the front row. Poor helpless sod.
My last point is the extreme sense of depression you get at university. Sitting in Lisburn train station at 9.15 in the morning. You're there for the 9.30 to Bangor, which stops at Botanic. It's announced that it will be a bit late, 5, 6 minutes maybe. The train eventually turns up at 9.55 thanks to a bomb scare in Lurgan (trains never seemed able to get through North Armagh). You're late for your lecture, so you go for coffee. The coffee shop is full of idiots talking about the weekend, lecturers with other lecturers talking about really dull stuff at volume, or poor buggers like me who just..want...some...PEACE AND QUIET!!! So you leave to go to the Library. The book you want has been withdrawn by 7 different people and you won't see it unless you fork out �25 for it yourself. You sit in the library bored to tears until your 1 o'clock lecture. It's been cancelled! You've wasted a day! And a lie in! YOU SHOULD BE EARNING MONEY!! Not dicking about like an idiot. You go home. You cry. You pick up the job pages in the Telegraph.
Then you discover half an hour later that sitting on that cold bench has given you piles.
A month or two later you're in the bookshop, working for more money than some graduates get, especially seeing that they're all paying off that drinking debt. Your girlfriend is also earning, and with your two incomes combined you can think about moving in together. That would really be amazing and really top your life so far. The craic at work is brilliant. You're so much happier. Then, on March the second the following year, you write your online memoirs of University to prove a point to all of the idiot parents out there who think university is the greatest thing in the universe. It's not. Don't delude yourself.
The only good points of university? Well, The Guardian is only 20p in the Union. And I did get a lot of sleep for that part of my life. That's about it.
Now please, for the love of GOD don't ask me again if I regret leaving. Because I'll force you to read this AGAIN. Thank you, and goodnight. See you in a few days.
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