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Higher Education and the Existential Crisis

The moment of realisation that University is probably a waste of time.

By Hannah DavenportPublished 6 years ago 2 min read
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It's 10:08 AM on a Tuesday morning. I don't yet know if not bringing a jacket was a mistake or not because they're aren't windows in the lecture theatre. I think about how much worse my day will be if I have to not only sit through five hours of drudgery but five hours of drudgery with sopping wet hair.

It's 10:11 AM. The lecture has been in progress for a full six minutes and I'm only now looking at the title of the slides and turning to a clean page in my notebook. I jot down a few words I see on the projector. I don't know what they mean and I don't care to find out. A series of coughs erupt from the back of the lecture hall, it's always flu season on university campuses.

And then it hits me, one single thought, a single thought which has languidly made its way into my head, floats for a second and vanishes, leaving me staring nonplussed at the projector, looking but not seeing.

What am I doing here?

What am I actually doing sitting in a lecture hall on a Tuesday morning supposedly studying literature? Later in the day I would go to a philosophy seminar and talk about the ethics of something and I would round off the day looking at more slides on a screen about the history of the English language.

At the end of the day who will benefit from this? It might sound like a ludicrous thought but in a world like this one where you barely have to look beyond your doorstep for people who need help it just seems... pointless.

I know that at the end of the day the person who benefits from my studies is me; I will feel pleased that I've completed another day studying a competitive subject at a top university.

This does of course sound like, well, whining. By no means am I reaching for pity. It seems as if this is a realisation that meets all of us at on point or another. A realisation coupled with a crippling fear that we are making no real change to the world and are in fact using more resources than we're helping create.

By the time I have finished my degree I will have torn my way through thousands of pounds of student loans. It is hard to imagine that every penny of investment into my arts degree will have been worth it.

There have been calls to cut funding to arts subjects and invest more into STEM subjects. This sat uncomfortably with me as deep down it made sense. We need people with strong critical thinking and writing skills in society, of course we do, this is where we get our politicians and yes our TV producers, authors and comedians but do we need as many as are currently spending years of their lives studying these subjects?

I don't know, I guess I have two or three more years of study to figure it out...

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About the Creator

Hannah Davenport

Starving student.

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