The buzz of half-coherent chatter, the incessant tapping of abused keyboards and the crisp sound of a Red Bull you just cracked open as the clock strikes twelve in the Student Centre. Sound familiar?
In these moments, it seems that higher education is nothing but a hierarchical institution producing neatly packaged performance statistics from the stolen serotonin of its students.
While many believe this to be true, I firmly disagree. The suffocating waves of pessimism and desperation you experience, as you face the demons of sleep, have little to do with the superficial public relations strategies of any university and much more to do with memory. After years of ruthless criticism and high expectations, we’ve forgotten what education truly offers us: freedom.
I grew up in a family of lawyers, professors and doctors, which, on the outside, may seem like the perfect recipe for an overachieving perfectionist. While I cannot deny that I am both of those things, one phrase that my mother repeated to me throughout my entire academic career stuck with me more than the countless academic stress-induced breakdowns I had: “Knowledge is something that nobody can ever take away from you.” With years of repetition, this phrase transformed from a meaningless platitude scribbled on the walls of a high school philosophy classroom to the gasoline fueling my passion for learning. This simple sentiment gave me the power to turn every assignment into a source of power, filling up my intellectual passion.
Admittedly, by the time I stepped through UCL’s doors, I had sacrificed much of this sentiment at the altar of today’s endlessly competitive education system, in which knowledge is reduced to nothing but a number. Grades transformed from a measure of my progress to a representation of my value as a person. It did not matter how much I had learned during that assignment; if the number was not high enough, I had failed. It took UCL’s bizarre grading system, where achieving anything above an 80% on an essay is impossible, to make me realise just how much I was attached to this arbitrary number.
The true value of education is not found in grades and honours, nor is it found at the bottom of your sixth coffee cup of the day. It is only discovered once, months after submission, you re-read that convoluted essay you wrote in a haze of sleep-deprived delusion and realise that you now understand a subject that just a few months ago you didn’t even know existed. You can not only contribute to one more discussion — whether that be at the pub with a beer in your hand or at a company cocktail party ten years down the line — but also free yourself from believing one less lie.
University education has much more to offer than vague promises of career opportunities and financial stability. Even if all job markets cease to exist before the menacing clock on your assignment runs out, it is still worth finishing.
This is the true power of education, the power philosophers speak of and that feminists fought for: freedom. Freedom from the dichotomous and extremist ideologies in which our society seems to thrive. Freedom to create and express your own perspective on any given topic, getting just a little closer to the truth with every new fact you learn.
I do not promise you immediate relief from the torments of that menacing deadline countdown, nor that of the suffocating pressure of the horse race that is higher education. I merely offer you a perspective that might make your lukewarm Red Bull taste a little bit sweeter and the Student Centre seem slightly less lonely as you hand in your assignment a handful of minutes before the clock runs out.
This article appeared in CG92
