The College/University thread

[TheGodlessUtopian]

How was your college experience, how has it changed from when you first entered higher education, how did you overcome problems and (if applicable) expand your horizons; did you become engaged in activism and converting people to a revolutionary ideology or did you focus on studying? General talk about your experience: amusing, serious, or off-topic welcomed.

Use this thread for general conversation regarding college and university life. I will have my fair share to comment with later next month.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I loved uni. First year was difficult to adjust. But once I managed to balance the student life, having a good group of friends and also making some time to sit down either by myself to read and work, or with friends to discuss the issues of the day, it was great. The last 2 years were really wonderful. And I loved the university I went to. Kinda miss it.

[The Feral Underclass]

All of them were/are pretty good.

[Ace High]

I am starting classes this month. Luckily my school has student led leftist groups. :D

[Ele'ill]

hate school

[Art Vandelay]

Yeah Mari3l hit the nail on the head. University is shit. Its fun for the social aspect of it, but I'd usually just sit in my dorm room reading Marx and Lenin, as opposed to going to my political science classes.

[Landsharks eat metal]

It sucked. I made a bunch of friends but was always too insecure to actually feel like I was accepted as part of the group, was terrified of parties and spent most of my evenings hiding in my dorm room alone, had a roommate who didn't care if I lived or died, had a serious suicide plan in place, ended up in the hospital, never got caught up on my classes after being discharged, went home before finishing my first semester, ended up at a community college for a few semesters, actually attempted suicide but ended up finishing 2 semesters successfully. So yeah.

My experience in my vocational/technical school was better in some ways, but more because I'd finally actually figured out what I wanted to do and who I am, even though my classmates were mostly assholes.

sorry for tmi, I guess

[OHumanista]

I absolutely hated any sort of school experience before I went to university.
Now it is a whole different thing and I like it quite a bit. Some teachers can be real asses at times but aside from that I am studying what I always wanted to, made new friends and I have had no serious problems so far.

[Hermes]

Going to be heading for my first year very soon.

I don't really have a lot of hope for it.

[Quail]

I studied maths at university and really liked it. I guess my experience of uni will be slightly different to other people's because I had my son when I was 19 and had some personal issues as well so it wasn't always easy and I didn't really socialise that much until my last year when I moved in with my partner and joined the Judo club. I'm actually hoping to go back to uni and study more. I imagine mathematics is really different from a subject like politics or sociology though. A maths lecturer's opinions don't really make any difference to their teaching (unless I suppose they're teaching something they're not really interested in, but I don't think that really happens).

[Igor]

i loved the social aspect but really hated the actual university part, was kicked out after a term because of less than faithful attendance

all in all thinking back ever going to uni was a massive waste of time and money for me personally but hey, most people i know disagree. learning a trade has so far been a lot better for me and it's also something i don't think a lot of people even think of as an alternative nowadays especially if they come from more middle class backgrounds

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Going to be heading for my first year very soon.

I don't really have a lot of hope for it.

Why not?

I am looking forward to my first year in part because I have been stifling while home so much. I have taken college level classes before at a nearby community college and excelled at them. While I agree with others that the balancing of the socializing and classes and discussion will be one of my hardest challenges I believe I will be able to persevere.

Concerned about the amount of work and social setting?

[SonofRage]

I can't wait to be done with graduate school so I can get back to my education.

I'm two classes away from finishing a masters degree and you know what I've realized? School is a big game. It's all bullshit. Unfortunately, it's a game you have to know how to play or life under capitalism is generally more difficult. There are some great professors out there though so there's some hope as far getting something personally enriching. Don't take it for granted either way.

My advice is for people to do their best to power through it and get the most you can out of it.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 4

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

I fucking love it. The social side is ok, can get a bit tiresome (please, tell me about that time where you drunkenly humiliated yourself again) but I'm really passionate about my degree and I'm hopefully on-course for a first (I do History)

[Hermes]

Why not?

I am looking forward to my first year in part because I have been stifling while home so much. I have taken college level classes before at a nearby community college and excelled at them. While I agree with others that the balancing of the socializing and classes and discussion will be one of my hardest challenges I believe I will be able to persevere.

Concerned about the amount of work and social setting?

I don't really do well to begin with in social settings, but I find the endless amounts of norms/unwritten rules that seem to appear in academic settings (though this might be only high school, I don't know) make me really anxious all the time. Best case scenario I probably get through college without interacting with anyone (technically best case scenario would be losing my anxiety completely, but I find that too much to hope for).

Other than that, though, it's mostly being paid for by my parents who want me to get a good college education so I can do better than them in life, and I know that, regardless of how well I do, that's never going to happen.

Apologies for whining.

[bcbm]

i went for a few years to a community college, did well in the classes i took and met some interesting people. i ended up dropping out cuz moving to a new city and living in a punk house with my anarchy friends and getting drunk all the time seemed like an appealing alternative when the only job i needed was washing dishes.

some years later i have discovered that the lack of a university education or skill in any trade except washing dishes and working in call centers has somewhat limited my upward mobility, which isn't something that would bother me were it not for the near constant stress of barely getting by, on the weeks i am lucky.

so i will probably be going back to school in the spring. i expect it will be mostly just studying and little socialization this time though, since i will be nearly a decade older than many of the other students.

[G4b3n]

I start classes at UNF in two weeks.
I am hoping to become well acquainted with the leftist scene, and if there isn't one (only liberals) then I will try to create one :marx:

[Jimmie Higgins]

I wasn't pressured or told to go to college by my family and I had no real idea what I was doing with college and so I took things based on what I liked and thought was interesting as much as I could get away with. I learned about neoliberalism in some classes... but not to the extent that I realized I wasn't using college in the ways required in neoliberalism... I was naive enough to think I was trying to learn things, not network for a career.

But I enjoyed the four year college I went to for the classes (probably because I was taking shit out of interest) and I enjoyed the social aspects of it a lot. I also enjoyed the community college classes I took here in Oakland even though they were a little more thread-bare. In either situation you could get more or less out of it depending on the extra effort put in (so I just floated-by in required bullshit, but would read extra on my own for things I liked).

I wasn't politically active in college and wasn't a radical. I wish I had been - not for the organizing possibilities (because I don't really like organizing on campuses personally, though I think it's an important place to engage in radical politics if you can) but because there were things argued by profs and instructors that at the time I knew was bullshit, but I didn't have any coherent way to counter their shitty ideological assumptions. Specifically some malthusian anti-immigration, anti-population arguments.

Tuition has doubled since I went and the job market is worse even though I graduated in a recession - so as much as I enjoyed college, I can only guess that it's gotten much shittier since then. I still have some debts to help me remember it though!:tt1:

[Ele'ill]

some years later i have discovered that the lack of a university education or skill in any trade except washing dishes and working in call centers has somewhat limited my upward mobility, which isn't something that would bother me were it not for the near constant stress of barely getting by, on the weeks i am lucky.

this is where i've been forever (i am a minimum wage vampire)and I figure i might as well continue to do this but while going to school, I say this until I start to fill out fafsa stuff




so i will probably be going back to school in the spring. i expect it will be mostly just studying and little socialization this time though, since i will be nearly a decade older than many of the other students.

What do you plan to study? What are your goals?

[nizan]

Modern capitalism and its spectacle allot everyone a specific role in a general passivity. The student is no exception to the rule. He has a provisional part to play, a rehearsal for his final role as an element in market society as conservative as the rest. Being a student is a form of initiation. An initiation which echoes the rites of more primitive societies with bizarre precision. It goes on outside of history, cut off from social reality. The student leads a double life, poised between his present status and his future role. The two are absolutely separate, and the journey from one to the other is a mechanical event "in the future." Meanwhile, he basks in a schizophrenic consciousness, withdrawing into his initiation group to hide from that future. Protected from history, the present is a mystic trance.

The student is a stoic slave: the more chains authority heaps upon him, the freer he is in phantasy. He shares with his new family, the University, a belief in a curious kind of autonomy. Real independence, apparently, lies in a direct subservience to the two most powerful systems of social control: the family and the State. He is their well-behaved and grateful child, and like the submissive child he is overeager to please. He celebrates all the values and mystifications of the system, devouring them with all the anxiety of the infant at the breast. Once, the old illusions had to be imposed on an aristocracy of labour; the petits cadres-to-be ingest them willingly under the guise of culture.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I started school in 2004/2005 - the year of the largest student strike to ever take place in Quebec . . . until 2011/2012. Anyway, I went on strike and have been on strike since. I learned way more in the streets than in the classroom.

I am, literally, the person who uttered the words that inspired this image (though I have by no means looked like this much of a dirtbag punk for at least several years).
http://guelphpeak.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/studentstrike-2-587x1024.jpg

[Jimmie Higgins]

"Modern capitalism and its spectacle allot everyone a specific role in a general passivity. The student is no exception to the rule. He has a provisional part to play, a rehearsal for his final role as an element in market society as conservative as the rest. Being a student is a form of initiation. An initiation which echoes the rites of more primitive societies with bizarre precision. It goes on outside of history, cut off from social reality. The student leads a double life, poised between his present status and his future role. The two are absolutely separate, and the journey from one to the other is a mechanical event "in the future." Meanwhile, he basks in a schizophrenic consciousness, withdrawing into his initiation group to hide from that future. Protected from history, the present is a mystic trance.

The student is a stoic slave: the more chains authority heaps upon him, the freer he is in phantasy. He shares with his new family, the University, a belief in a curious kind of autonomy. Real independence, apparently, lies in a direct subservience to the two most powerful systems of social control: the family and the State. He is their well-behaved and grateful child, and like the submissive child he is overeager to please. He celebrates all the values and mystifications of the system, devouring them with all the anxiety of the infant at the breast. Once, the old illusions had to be imposed on an aristocracy of labour; the petits cadres-to-be ingest them willingly under the guise of culture."

...so you enjoyed grad school? :D

[bcbm]

this is where i've been forever (i am a minimum wage vampire)and I figure i might as well continue to do this but while going to school, I say this until I start to fill out fafsa stuff

i make more than minimum wage now but as my expenses seem to be continually going up, it is actually harder to make ends meet now than when i was working for minimum wage and working fewer hours.



What do you plan to study?

well despite my extra seven years to think about i am still not really sure. everything i am interested in will likely land me where i am at now but with a lot more debt, so i need to find something mind numbing that has potential.


What are your goals?

get degree, transition to comfortable middle class life

[Anti-White]

loved it. Fucked alotta white girls, took alotta dope and scared the shit outta the white boys all on some other mutherfucker's dime.

[Bardo]

I'm just about wrapped up with my associates. For the last two semesters I've been taking online classes as I've been in Australia and in Florida, but I hope to enroll into the University of Michigan for the winter semester. It's going to be difficult, I may not make it in, but they have a killer sociology program.

[human strike]

I think my favourite moment was probably when we barricaded ourselves into a campus admin building on the day of a lecturers' strike, effectively closing the campus. We took down the uni flag from the flagpole on the roof and replaced it with a red flag. Spent most of my time at uni fucking about like this or lazing around smoking weed doing just enough work to pass with a 2:1. Gonna miss it (though I'm still gonna do some organising on campus). First year was hell, mind.

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

I guess I work pretty hard at uni, I very narrowly missed a 1st last year because of a few dodgy presentations (I'm really not very good at that) so I'm hoping to score in the mid-seventies this year to get a first. It's not necessary to have a first going into research, but it probably helps. I'm wanting to do a masters and phd in the future

[Rugged Collectivist]

I'll be starting in a few weeks. I'm scared.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

First day of orientation went well with only the minimal amount of nonsensical dramatics involving long-winded speeches and events. The hardest part was just moving in and getting the room all arranged to both my roommate's and I's liking. Didn't meet anyone terribly interesting but did see a few acquaintances from the summer program. However, I still need $125 for textbooks. Parents said they would help out so I just hope they come through.

(My real favorite thing?... having a 24 hour internet connection!)

[cyu]

Was only starting to get politically active, in between bouts of video gaming. Enjoyed it socially more than high school since there was more of a chance to pick who you were with (or didn't want to be with).

Didn't realize it then, but a university is just part of the establishment. It wouldn't be allowed to exist if it weren't. When the establishment trains you to become part of itself, that's indoctrination. A true education would teach you how to overthrow the establishment if you must - no established university will teach you that.

[Skyhilist]

I could use some help from anyone with experience with Isla Vista, CA and or UCSB. I want to go here, but is it plausible to do so if I don't like partying that much? Also are there any prominent radical communities in this area?

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

It turns out I have to write my dissertation on something to do with the british empire between 1580 and 1689, specifically in the european/north atlantic sphere :/ I thought I was going to have more options than that but oh well. I guess I can make it reasonably enjoyable by doing a question about the civil war and "glorious revolution" (and how it relates to the rise of the bourgeoise, of course)

[Tolstoy]

Trying to radicalize my community college. This is a difficult goal but I remain hopeful, im trying to get a Socialist Alternative organizer to come speak

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

enrolled on my teacher training course today. Fun times.

Joined 3 unions, too.

[Consistent.Surprise]

It turns out I have to write my dissertation on something to do with the british empire between 1580 and 1689, specifically in the european/north atlantic sphere :/ I thought I was going to have more options than that but oh well. I guess I can make it reasonably enjoyable by doing a question about the civil war and "glorious revolution" (and how it relates to the rise of the bourgeoise, of course)

What is your field of study? That seems fairly narrow topic

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

over 100 years of history seems pretty broad, tbf. there's a lot to write about. I imagine the english civil war and revolution would be particularly interesting! and yes, he could preface any study of the english revolution with a brief history of the decline of feudalism/rise of capitalism and the bourgeoisie, which is an incredibly under-studied period of British History by Marxist scholars.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

That's not a bad period to write about at all. Hooray for wacky communist heresies!

Anyway, on the theme of university, there's a storm brewing on the student left in Canada . . . (http://www.revleft.com/vb/cfs-and-student-t183221/index.html?t=183221)

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

What is your field of study? That seems fairly narrow topic
I'm doing a BA in history at the moment (with eyes on doing an MA then a PhD later) the dissertation module I'm doing deals with that period of history in particular. I study other stuff too, and to be honest I would have preferred to look at non-european/pre-colonial history instead BUT there are like 2 modules about that and they both have lousy lecturers. I am doing modules that cover other periods - of particular local interest to me is a History/Archaeology crossover module about the Parisi tribe - which is almost as specific as you can get since they only lived in Yorkshire! I'm doing a pretty broad module too tho - "War in European History 1500 - 1815". I'm usually not too fussed on military history but i have reasonable hopes for this module, plus it ties in with my dissertation.


over 100 years of history seems pretty broad, tbf. there's a lot to write about. I imagine the english civil war and revolution would be particularly interesting! and yes, he could preface any study of the english revolution with a brief history of the decline of feudalism/rise of capitalism and the bourgeoisie, which is an incredibly under-studied period of British History by Marxist scholars.

Yeah, it's pretty amazing what you can fit into 100 years :> I also think you're right about that period not getting enough attention tbh and it's not just true of the historians of the left. Too often i think that the period is portrayed as an inconvenient blip in the comfortable narrative of Britain the nice liberal industrial power. In any case i'm actually quite looking forward to it.

[human strike]

I'd have loved to have had the chance to have studied that bit of history at uni - I did at A level but that obviously didn't include much of a Marxist analysis. The emergence of radical religious groups during that period is especially fascinating (see Christopher Hill's awesome work for stuff on that). Was pretty bored of 20th Century Europe by the end of my degree. Still, I got to write my dissertation of the Spanish Revolution, so wasn't all bad.

I'm thinking of applying for a Masters course starting next year; Gender and International Relations. Seems great except the International Relations bit.... The problem, as always, is money - how do I pay for this course and survive at the same time? How do I avoid a lifetime of servitude and paying off student debt? Oh, how I loved never having to really worry about money whilst I was a student. I already know how degrading the benefits office and job centre are and I've put off signing-on for too long already. Where is my Engels? £6k a year shouldn't be that much to ask - I'm just a poor working class boy with simple tastes yearning for a simple life. Won't somebody please be my Engels?

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

Yeah, I'm worried about how I'm going to fund doing a masters and (hopefully) phd. I think I get a bursary for the former if I get a first-class degree so I expect it'll be nose to the grind-stone for most of next year.

[cyu]

How do I avoid a lifetime of servitude and paying off student debt? Won't somebody please be my Engels?

The working class will ever be the prostitutes of the wealthy, be they wealthy right-wingers or wealthy left-wingers.

...until the means of production are taken =]

[motion denied]

hate my degree, hate the teachers, uni is shit.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

hate my degree, hate the teachers, uni is shit.

Buddy, wait 'til you try working full time. ;)
That's not a defense of university per se. - but, I mean, it's potentially a pretty great scam to avoid work for four years, and there's so much money, and so many resources floating around.

As far as I'm concerned, the opportunities in university have little to do with classes, degrees, or profs. (though having someone who's paid to read and critique your ideas is a nice frill, or, in the case of a practical degree, well, the benfit is obvs.), and everything to do with a gathering of young people in close quarters with lots of poorly guarded buildings, photocopiers, and grants with incredibly vague requirements.

[Sea]

First day of orientation went well with only the minimal amount of nonsensical dramatics involving long-winded speeches and events. The hardest part was just moving in and getting the room all arranged to both my roommate's and I's liking. Didn't meet anyone terribly interesting but did see a few acquaintances from the summer program. However, I still need $125 for textbooks. Parents said they would help out so I just hope they come through.

(My real favorite thing?... having a 24 hour internet connection!)Used textbooks from Amazon.. that's what saved my ass from paying so much...

[human strike]

Used textbooks from Amazon.. that's what saved my ass from paying so much...

Not buying textbooks saved me loads of money.

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

I've never bought or used textbooks at university, I seem to have got along well enough using the library and second hand bookshops/amazon. To be honest, even though it's time consuming I find reading around much more rewarding than using a textbook.

[Le Socialiste]

Being at university has had its ups and downs. I've seen and done more here than I would have otherwise, but it all seems to have come at a cost. The flip side to college life and organizing has been moments or periods of depression, anxiety, and the steady realization that after this, I'm more or less fucked. I mean, teaching isn't exactly known for being a stress-free environment. Don't get me wrong, I want to teach, but given the state of education in this country it can be daunting.

That said, I'll have plenty of stories under my belt by the time I graduate (that, and debt). Yay, college!

[F9]

Not buying textbooks saved me loads of money.

Most unis libraries have more than enough copies for the 1-2 times max that you will need them(in an average level degree and uni, if you aim higher, buy the books and live with it :) )

Going for 4th year as a student now, only bought books in first year...Most of them i regret it now

[human strike]

Most unis libraries have more than enough copies for the 1-2 times max that you will need them(in an average level degree and uni, if you aim higher, buy the books and live with it :) )

Going for 4th year as a student now, only bought books in first year...Most of them i regret it now

I finished my fourth year this year. I only bought books in my first year too. If you don't mind reading off screens too much it's amazing how much you can read without even using the library.

[Klaatu]

It is a lot of hard work to attend classes, studying, tests, etc. But I have worked as a student tutor, helping others with math, sciences, statistics, etc. I never realized how much I love physics before I had that job! (people think I am crazy that I love doing all of those calculations... but I live for it... no kidding! :grin:)

[Quail]

I've bought a couple of textbooks. Last year I bought a couple of books I needed for my dissertation so I didn't have to worry about borrowing them from the library. This year I've bought a book that will be useful for a directed reading module I'm doing and most likely my dissertation.