A Party in the UK – Eh?
**It goes without saying that we all came here wanting to get a good degree. However, what is underestimated is the determination of students to make the most of university and have as much fun as possible, and as the abundance of fresher’s events and student’s nights can certainly attest. In fact, partying whilst at University is perhaps a symbol of a culture which encourages personal development, alongside learning. **
Yet, the rapid growth of foreign students in the last few years has shown how different students have quite different expectations of university life, and it perhaps suggests that UK students work less hard.
Most of the people I live with this year are international students and they claim that they have come here just to study. Some of them find UK student’s so-called ‘obsession’ with going out and socialising quite bizarre. And it seems that many other EU and International students across the UK feel this way.
A Dutch student recently wrote to the _Independent_, arguing that UK students party far too much and that they are generally less hard working and less passionate about their degree than EU and International Students.
{{quote The phrase work hard, play hard has not come about for nothing }}
To those who rejoice at any chance to give students bad press, these criticisms of the party culture in our universities only confirm the stereotype of the lazy student. Hearing people say that all students do is party is, after all, quite demeaning.
Any student can tell you, we all work very hard on our degrees. Although some students embrace the challenge of trying to make every 9am lecture hungover more enthusiastically than their International counterparts, this does not necessarily mean they are less hard working.
There seems to be an assumption that partying equals laziness. However, it is possible to gain a good degree while also allowing yourself a little time to have fun. Many of our parents had a great time at university, while also coming out with excellent degrees. Even Mr Prime Minister himself, David Cameron, put aside his economics textbooks to go boozing with the notorious Bullingdon Club. Balancing a degree and fun is possible if you are good at time management. If some students are going out a lot, it does not mean they are not doing work, they may have been productive and are giving themselves a break. They don’t call it ‘work hard, play hard’ for nothing.
Of course, it is true that a few people may just want to party – but it is unhelpful to assume that every student is like this. Everyone is different and some work quicker than others. I am the first person to admit that I am terrible at organising my time and get easily distracted, and would like to go out more than I usually do.
There are different cultures at different universities around the world, and in the UK students do tend to party a bit more, but they definitely are not lazier. Instead of judging students from different countries on how much they study at university, we should just appreciate that people have different ideas of what university life should be like. On the one hand, socialising to the extent to which it affects your performance may not be the wisest move but, at the end of the day, studying constantly without giving yourself time off to relax will not necessarily make you more successful.
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