(no subject)
Hello all. Been a while since I posted last and a little bit has changed in my life. I've since graduated from university and found myself a job back home. Currently, I work evenings (17:30 - 20:30) in a call-center, cold-calling for a local window firm: i.e. I ring up random strangers and try to convince them they want to become a show property for our latest range of products. Tomorrow, I have an interview with a local supermarket in the hopes I can get some work with them too.
This is of course hugely motivated by my need to start making some money. I'm scraping the very end of my overdraft and effectively have no money to my name - at least, not until Tuesday, which is pay-day for my telemarketing job. Should I get work at the supermarket, I'll be able to speed up the rate at which I earn and hopefully get out of this overdraft quicker. Once I'm comfortably back in the black, I'm going to start thinking about taking driving lessons, getting my own place etc. Living at home is fair enough as my dad charges practically sod-all rent (which includes food and utilities - very cushty!), but I miss the independence that came with having my own home. Essentially, I want to take that sense of independence I had while living in my own house in Swansea, and then marrying that to the economic independence I've gained through getting my own job.
To be brutally honest, neither job is one I'd really wish to work. I had a huge sense of self-confidence and drive once I'd got my degree, but now that seems to be ebbing away thanks to ennui and a complete feeling of not moving forward. Once I've worked these jobs for long enough, I'm really going to have to consider heading back down to Swansea and doing an MA (a "definite maybe") or getting some journalistic work. In any case, I'll have to move away - there's only a few local papers around here and none of them will hire me; despite my previous experience with student journalism, despite an excellent reference from my previous editor and despite a first-class honours degree. A lot of them seem to want courses approved by the Press Association.
To be honest, had someone informed me in advance that the Eng. Lit course wasn't much of a selling point, I definitely would have considered it. Now don't get me wrong; I'm perfectly happy with what I learnt on the course. It helped me expand my intellectual capabilities far beyond the plateau which they'd struck after I left school. My knowledge of English Literature, though hardly exhaustive, has been broadened by the course; and consequently I have also seen a change in views concerning such matters as art, culture, society and politics. Plus, my time in Swansea was very much enjoyable and the people I met down there were nothing short of saints. However, I do feel as if I've been shot in the back by the education system in this country.
Take my school life for one example. During that period which many people (quite wrongly, if you ask me) describe as "the best days of your life", I was hectored into such retrospectively meaningless exams as the SATs and the GCSEs. I know that these things are part of a gradual process and that, say, had I not performed well at my SATs, I'd have ended up in a lower set in the GCSE classes, which would have hampered the possibility of my returning for sixth form etc. However, once I took each step, the previous one would descend in to redundancy and irrelevancy. In the meantime, I was stuck in a school filled with largely closed-minded and annoying teachers. At their worst, they were infuriating and ineffective, seemingly concerned only with some kind of classroom warfare. There were definitely a few shining examples who taught me to think outside the box (I owe a debt to my string of English teachers here), but otherwise I can't really say I enjoyed school. People often argue that one of school's better sides is that you get to spend the day with your friends - but heck, my friends and I could have hung out with one another without the interference of school.
The fact I got a D in Graphic Design doesn't keep me awake at nights. In fact, whenever I do find myself awake at night, I'm often nocturnally delighting in the knowledge that my school life is quite firmly behind me. Never again will I be called upon to pointlessly run around a field, or sit and sand the edges of some shoddily-made plastic desk tidy. I won't have to submit to the rude barks of idiots telling me to take my coat off or some other completely inconsequential act of rule-breaking.
Y'know, this takes me back to a post I wrote many moons ago (19th June 2004 - find it, if you like!), concerning an irked parent who'd reprimanded me for speaking English (I went to a Welsh-language secondary school), prompting her to ask the question "You're not advertising the school very well, are you?". Back then it was simply an irritating statement, spawned by that quaint Welsh characteristic of fearing for the language, and out of the mouth of a woman who (despite being annoying) was ultimately irrelevant in my day-to-day existence. But these days, it's bullshit like that which really pisses me off. Given a greater degree of assertiveness, righteous indignation, confidence and conversational flair - essentially all the stuff I have now, so this is a great example of what the French dub le spirit d'escalier - I probably would have torn the silly bitch apart for her ill-thought statement. Disregarding the fact that she completely seemed to have forgotten what schools are meant to do, this was nothing short of offensive. I should have realised then that people should be free to discuss things in whatever language they desire, and that any attempt to limit me to one alone was an assault on my free-mindedness.
Thing is, it's that spirit of self-righteous nationalism which oiled the cogs of that school. Don't get me wrong - I have nothing but love for the Welsh language and find it to be one of the most expressive, most poetic languages on planet earth. If they put any kind of vote up to help it along, I'd vote for it. I'm quite happy to consider myself a Welshman, but only to a point. Had the school had their way, I'd be stuck in some kind of cultural loop and I doubt I would have broadened my horizons. That school was in a rapidly progressing society in which young people could contact people on the other ends of the earth on a daily basis.
I think it's the falsehood of the vast majority of it that bothers me. All that effort gone to such little outcome. When I think of all the times I was reprimanded for not performing well in GCSE classes, and then note that I don't even bother to put my GCSEs on my CV...well, it's bloody annoying. Once you understand that all the grind you went through was just for an educational league table, some kind of cynicism takes over. Like all the effort you put into the system was part of a big joke, and it's taken you nearly nine years to hit the punchline. I worked hard at school in order to get where I am today - and where I am today (with eleven GCSEs, three A-Levels and one first-class honours degree from a reputable university) is sat in front of a list of names with an automatic dialler and a headset, being hissed at by people who think just because I'm trying to sell them windows that I am a two-bit, self-satisfied conman. In the meantime, the people who arsed around in school, had a whale of a time and left early in order to start working have made more money than I have - not to mention the fact that having not gone to university, they've accrued less debts.
This might sound snobbish, but hey - shouldn't something be done about that? I'm a card-carrying listener to Radio 4. I read newspapers that don't have to fill themselves with breasts and horoscopes in order to make up sales. I think sitting and listening to Under Milk Wood is fun. I've visited book launches. I read Philip K. Dick, Allen Ginsberg and Arthur Conan Doyle. To me, Big Brother means more than just some head-rotting experiment in televised social Darwinism. I like poorly-dubbed kung fu films and heady regional ales. I enjoy aimlessly wandering through the detritus of urban, suburban and rural societies, taking myself on the psycho-geographical derive of the French situationists. I appreciate intelligent graffiti. I revel in the grand, golden schemes of subversion and satire. I can discuss the origins of political Islamism, the plays of Shakespeare or the brilliant spirit at the heart of Monty Python. I keep an eye on world events and can tell the difference between Gordon Brown and the Sugar Puff Monster.
And yet....and yet....
And yet I'm made to feel culturally subordinate to poorly-dressed slobs whose conversation stretches no further than football, tits and aggression. Though I have made my achievements, I'm stuffed back on to the bottom rung of the ladder with everyone else. Because I made the heresy of putting my faith in academia during a time in which anti-intellectualism is rampant. That's not to say I believe that there has ever been a time in which we so-called "ivory tower intellectuals" have not seen some kind of prejudice acted against us in some form or another, but hell; it's still depressing.
Ultimately, I think that the past few days/weeks/months have shown me that as things stand at the moment, things are never really going to cater to an individual such as myself. In complete defiance of the god-knows how many years I've had to slog my sorry guts in studying and examinations (and hey - not to keep bringing this up, but I succeeded at them!), I'm going to have to keep slogging in largely uninspiring career positions and face grievances at the hands of people I thought I'd never have to deal with.
After all's said and done (and by the looks of it, I've said and done a lot during this post) this isn't the light at the end of the tunnel which I expected it to be. Granted, I don't doubt that after a few more hard runs down the tunnel I'll reach some kind of satisfactory illumination. But as I've been discovering over the previous weeks, this isn't it. Light's still a long way off.
This is of course hugely motivated by my need to start making some money. I'm scraping the very end of my overdraft and effectively have no money to my name - at least, not until Tuesday, which is pay-day for my telemarketing job. Should I get work at the supermarket, I'll be able to speed up the rate at which I earn and hopefully get out of this overdraft quicker. Once I'm comfortably back in the black, I'm going to start thinking about taking driving lessons, getting my own place etc. Living at home is fair enough as my dad charges practically sod-all rent (which includes food and utilities - very cushty!), but I miss the independence that came with having my own home. Essentially, I want to take that sense of independence I had while living in my own house in Swansea, and then marrying that to the economic independence I've gained through getting my own job.
To be brutally honest, neither job is one I'd really wish to work. I had a huge sense of self-confidence and drive once I'd got my degree, but now that seems to be ebbing away thanks to ennui and a complete feeling of not moving forward. Once I've worked these jobs for long enough, I'm really going to have to consider heading back down to Swansea and doing an MA (a "definite maybe") or getting some journalistic work. In any case, I'll have to move away - there's only a few local papers around here and none of them will hire me; despite my previous experience with student journalism, despite an excellent reference from my previous editor and despite a first-class honours degree. A lot of them seem to want courses approved by the Press Association.
To be honest, had someone informed me in advance that the Eng. Lit course wasn't much of a selling point, I definitely would have considered it. Now don't get me wrong; I'm perfectly happy with what I learnt on the course. It helped me expand my intellectual capabilities far beyond the plateau which they'd struck after I left school. My knowledge of English Literature, though hardly exhaustive, has been broadened by the course; and consequently I have also seen a change in views concerning such matters as art, culture, society and politics. Plus, my time in Swansea was very much enjoyable and the people I met down there were nothing short of saints. However, I do feel as if I've been shot in the back by the education system in this country.
Take my school life for one example. During that period which many people (quite wrongly, if you ask me) describe as "the best days of your life", I was hectored into such retrospectively meaningless exams as the SATs and the GCSEs. I know that these things are part of a gradual process and that, say, had I not performed well at my SATs, I'd have ended up in a lower set in the GCSE classes, which would have hampered the possibility of my returning for sixth form etc. However, once I took each step, the previous one would descend in to redundancy and irrelevancy. In the meantime, I was stuck in a school filled with largely closed-minded and annoying teachers. At their worst, they were infuriating and ineffective, seemingly concerned only with some kind of classroom warfare. There were definitely a few shining examples who taught me to think outside the box (I owe a debt to my string of English teachers here), but otherwise I can't really say I enjoyed school. People often argue that one of school's better sides is that you get to spend the day with your friends - but heck, my friends and I could have hung out with one another without the interference of school.
The fact I got a D in Graphic Design doesn't keep me awake at nights. In fact, whenever I do find myself awake at night, I'm often nocturnally delighting in the knowledge that my school life is quite firmly behind me. Never again will I be called upon to pointlessly run around a field, or sit and sand the edges of some shoddily-made plastic desk tidy. I won't have to submit to the rude barks of idiots telling me to take my coat off or some other completely inconsequential act of rule-breaking.
Y'know, this takes me back to a post I wrote many moons ago (19th June 2004 - find it, if you like!), concerning an irked parent who'd reprimanded me for speaking English (I went to a Welsh-language secondary school), prompting her to ask the question "You're not advertising the school very well, are you?". Back then it was simply an irritating statement, spawned by that quaint Welsh characteristic of fearing for the language, and out of the mouth of a woman who (despite being annoying) was ultimately irrelevant in my day-to-day existence. But these days, it's bullshit like that which really pisses me off. Given a greater degree of assertiveness, righteous indignation, confidence and conversational flair - essentially all the stuff I have now, so this is a great example of what the French dub le spirit d'escalier - I probably would have torn the silly bitch apart for her ill-thought statement. Disregarding the fact that she completely seemed to have forgotten what schools are meant to do, this was nothing short of offensive. I should have realised then that people should be free to discuss things in whatever language they desire, and that any attempt to limit me to one alone was an assault on my free-mindedness.
Thing is, it's that spirit of self-righteous nationalism which oiled the cogs of that school. Don't get me wrong - I have nothing but love for the Welsh language and find it to be one of the most expressive, most poetic languages on planet earth. If they put any kind of vote up to help it along, I'd vote for it. I'm quite happy to consider myself a Welshman, but only to a point. Had the school had their way, I'd be stuck in some kind of cultural loop and I doubt I would have broadened my horizons. That school was in a rapidly progressing society in which young people could contact people on the other ends of the earth on a daily basis.
I think it's the falsehood of the vast majority of it that bothers me. All that effort gone to such little outcome. When I think of all the times I was reprimanded for not performing well in GCSE classes, and then note that I don't even bother to put my GCSEs on my CV...well, it's bloody annoying. Once you understand that all the grind you went through was just for an educational league table, some kind of cynicism takes over. Like all the effort you put into the system was part of a big joke, and it's taken you nearly nine years to hit the punchline. I worked hard at school in order to get where I am today - and where I am today (with eleven GCSEs, three A-Levels and one first-class honours degree from a reputable university) is sat in front of a list of names with an automatic dialler and a headset, being hissed at by people who think just because I'm trying to sell them windows that I am a two-bit, self-satisfied conman. In the meantime, the people who arsed around in school, had a whale of a time and left early in order to start working have made more money than I have - not to mention the fact that having not gone to university, they've accrued less debts.
This might sound snobbish, but hey - shouldn't something be done about that? I'm a card-carrying listener to Radio 4. I read newspapers that don't have to fill themselves with breasts and horoscopes in order to make up sales. I think sitting and listening to Under Milk Wood is fun. I've visited book launches. I read Philip K. Dick, Allen Ginsberg and Arthur Conan Doyle. To me, Big Brother means more than just some head-rotting experiment in televised social Darwinism. I like poorly-dubbed kung fu films and heady regional ales. I enjoy aimlessly wandering through the detritus of urban, suburban and rural societies, taking myself on the psycho-geographical derive of the French situationists. I appreciate intelligent graffiti. I revel in the grand, golden schemes of subversion and satire. I can discuss the origins of political Islamism, the plays of Shakespeare or the brilliant spirit at the heart of Monty Python. I keep an eye on world events and can tell the difference between Gordon Brown and the Sugar Puff Monster.
And yet....and yet....
And yet I'm made to feel culturally subordinate to poorly-dressed slobs whose conversation stretches no further than football, tits and aggression. Though I have made my achievements, I'm stuffed back on to the bottom rung of the ladder with everyone else. Because I made the heresy of putting my faith in academia during a time in which anti-intellectualism is rampant. That's not to say I believe that there has ever been a time in which we so-called "ivory tower intellectuals" have not seen some kind of prejudice acted against us in some form or another, but hell; it's still depressing.
Ultimately, I think that the past few days/weeks/months have shown me that as things stand at the moment, things are never really going to cater to an individual such as myself. In complete defiance of the god-knows how many years I've had to slog my sorry guts in studying and examinations (and hey - not to keep bringing this up, but I succeeded at them!), I'm going to have to keep slogging in largely uninspiring career positions and face grievances at the hands of people I thought I'd never have to deal with.
After all's said and done (and by the looks of it, I've said and done a lot during this post) this isn't the light at the end of the tunnel which I expected it to be. Granted, I don't doubt that after a few more hard runs down the tunnel I'll reach some kind of satisfactory illumination. But as I've been discovering over the previous weeks, this isn't it. Light's still a long way off.