Editor’s Letter: ‘The university distraction’

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]ometimes university feels like a form of procrastination. It’s a sentiment distinctly at odds with how I feel most of the time, when life is a rush of seminars, societies, and so on, and I’m cursing myself for dawdling after dinner by watching 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown.

And it’s somewhat at odds with what you might expect university-as-procrastination to entail; that uni is a way of extending the teenage era of dawdling between childhood and adulthood.

Sometimes university feels like a form of procrastination because I find myself using it as an excuse to avoid issues that perhaps should occupy more of my time. I find myself skipping over articles on the general election TV debates, on racial violence increasing in the US, on any number of things, because I’m on my way to a group for one of my modules to discuss the nuances of ‘Beachy Head,’ or overhearing someone in the corridor saying they won’t go to a demonstration in London because they have an essay deadline the next day.

Students can make their way through their degree ticking all the boxes for their preliminary adult years. Society execs to join, sports clubs to participate in, volunteer schemes abroad, placements at home, internships, essay deadlines, references, maintaining family ties and friendships…

I’ve caught myself justifying my shallow knowledge of political and social issue with the excuse that I have so much on already, and in the long run this will put me in a better place to understand the world around me.

How long does that mentality go on, though? Once university is finished, the hunt for a job begins, which is what the past three years have fundamentally, surely, been dedicated to. And it’s not as if you have more free time in full-time employment than student living. Indeed, free time becomes dedicated to preparing you for going back to work, evenings and weekends a time to recharge for the inevitable weekday drain.

Maybe I’ll be one of the ones who gets a job working in human rights, or politics, or… something. But we can’t all be professional activists. And I don’t know how to resolve this procrastination problem that feels like it’s following me around.

Where does my world of seminars and theory stop, and the real world begin? For that matter, where does anyone’s?