Wowee...

Can your whole life change and spin in the space of a few weeks? Apparently!

Not only am I graduating in five weeks time - four if you count this week as almost over - but when unexpected surprises drop out of the sky a lot can happen!

I can't believe after five years of long hard slog the journey of the university degree is almost complete. Looking back it's really been a unremarkable trip by all accounts - I haven't had amazing grades, but nor have they been that bad. I've had some good laughs (and some good commiserations over assignments!) with class mates, but not that much to tell of. Most of the exciting stuff has happened outside of uni life really, like going overseas and meeting new people and all the fun times and good banter that happens with friends.

But I do think that asides from the obvious usefulness of the A4 square of paper and curly writing which proclaims me to have a BA Degree in Journalism, the way you learn to absorb and sort information; to classify and retain facts; to investigate and research the material in front of you is rather a life-long skill.

It's not so much the actual words from textbooks and lectures that stick in your head (as anyone who asks me about anything I learnt last semester and receives a blank stare will testify to!) but rather the impression of ideas and theories... Shadow memories that shape your world view and how you construct your own thoughts.

It's rather like the exercises of university (assignments, exams and tutorials included) create a conduit for you to pour ideas through, and like a sieve, then sifts out the ones that don't suit.

Not all ideas are helpful, nor are all ideas useful. I think half the problem with uni thinking is that if there is an idea that is widely supported it must be good, if not useful. I don't agree with this, and I think that a lot of the ideas floating around a campus are definitely not good!

University students are taught to question, to be sure, but there is also an attitude that you only question so far, because clearly your lecturers know what that it is right as they have already been through the 'sifting' process and you just take their words for it.

This is another attitude I'm not keen on, but as a general rule I think at least graduates can use their critical thinking. Too bad they don't apply that to everything rather than just the popular ideas that everyone loves to criticize. But woe to the person who dares to stand up and criticize the accepted view....

It's just another subtle version of group thinking. They pride themselves on being individuals and having their own minds, but I wonder if they really have any idea what it means to be different?

Anyways, that's just my little rant on uni life. I can hardly believe it, but truly enough it will soon be another world past to me.


............................ Awesome.


Saynara,

b.