Degree or experience?

Do the upcoming generation of Briton’s study hard? Do they stare intently at their tutor every lesson, archiving every word they say to a notepad? Do they slave over essays for hours?  Do we hand work in with trembling fingers in the hopes of achieving that ever elusive 1st (or as it is slowly becoming *shudders* an A*)? Of course we don’t.

There are the odd ones that do, putting all the blood, sweat and tears they can muster into every piece of work, and there are those prodigious people who seem to be able to scribble out an amazing piece of work within the space of an hour that brings their tutor to tears. But the rest of us, well, we all have lives.

That’s not to say we don’t study at all. I’m a third year studying media at Lancaster university, and going through the writing up stage of my dissertation, so not studying at all would be academic suicide. Alright, yes, say what you want about media, but my course is actually pretty tough. I bet a lot of you out there would find it hard. God knows I certainly do.

 But there’s so much other stuff I have going on here. I’m in a band, I’m a member of the boxing society, and above all, I drink and socialise. There’s a lot to learn in this world outside of academia, and this is when we really start on that. As cheesy as it sounds, we’re only going to be this young one time around. I can’t imagine when I’m 40 something I will be able to go out two nights in a row whilst dragging my hung over self to work every day. There’s so much more to do than studying and constantly worrying about my degree. Of course I appreciate the chance I have for an education, and I’m going to make the most of it, but ask yourselves; do you workers in the ‘real’ world not go for a drink every so often? Do you not wish you could go back to 4 hour working days so you could play golf or whatever old people sport you play now, and still be doing something really worth while that’s going to contribute to the rest of your life? Or if you’re a stay at home parent, wouldn’t it be nice if you could have a bit more of a break from the kids every now and then? I know I’ll be wishing that, so I’m doing all my partying now.

Having said all that, I actually wish that I had spent more time doing extra curricular stuff rather than worrying about my degree. It's all employers look for now. My aim is to be a journalist of some form (hopefully a respectable one), and it's all very well getting a 2:1 at uni, but the next question the interviewer asks "what experience do you have in the field?" Um...er...I wrote an article for the college magazine once? Sorry, that's just not going to cut it. Sad but true. When I finish uni, I'm going to have a hell of a lot of catching up to do work experience wise. While I've been slaving over my degree, other candidates have spread out their time more sensibly. A friend of mine who also wants to be a journalist, nods sagely at me as I read this to her. She drops her concrete slab sized portfolio down on the table and says "To be honest these days it seems like experience is even more important than a degree. Everyone has degrees now."

Well she's almost right. Not everyone has a degree, and I would think the amount of people that do is set to go down (thank you Conservative Party), but she is right. I need experience. 

Do we work hard enough? Maybe not, but did you when you were in our shoes? Thought not. Right, I’m off for a pint.