The Importance of Being Cynical

Some of my recent posts have attracted quite a bit of attention. Thank you to all of you who’ve read the posts and left comments. They are much appreciated.

Amongst the various feedbacks was the comment that I’m a cynic. That accusation, which I can assure you pierced my malevolent soul to its core, provoked a furious burst of cognitive activity in my cranium (which is, as some have so eloquently pointed out, rather lacking in the hair department. My most profound thanks for letting me know as I'd not noticed the follically challenged state of my scalp until those comments were made.)

So, is being a cynic a bad thing? Is a willingness to ask awkward questions or hold contrarian opinions detrimental to the greater good? Basically, is being an awkward cuss of any use to anyone? (I ask this because I get the teensiest smidgen of a vague feeling that some might answer that question with a resounding : “No!”)

I’d like to advance the revolutionary idea that our society needs the gadfly, the awkward cuss, the person who doesn’t care whether they are popular or not. Why? Because they are often the only ones ready to challenge the power of orthodoxy. They are the shakers of the foundations of the status quo. Never willing to accept an answer just because it's the easy option to do so. Not accepting the words of those in power just because they hold a position of authority. (Good journalists, in my opinion, have to be cynics.)

The cynic listens to the words that spill from the mouths of our leaders; political, business or even spiritual, and doubts every syllable. The cynic distrusts the media as he, or she, knows that the media exists to make money not to tell the truth. (Dare I say it? Yes, I will.) The cynic listens to the academics of this world and wonders how much they can be trusted. How biased are their opinions? The cynic is the enemy of the religionists. Daring to publicly doubt the odd and, frankly, insane tenets of any and all religious belief systems. (I must admit to the hobby of religionist baiting – it's great fun – but for some incomprehensible reason they now avoid my front door.)

The cynic is the person who asked about MPs' expenses, demanded to know where Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction actually were and queried the odd correlation between child abuse cases and a certain religious organisation.

Enough. I feel I've proved my point.

I'll end by saying that the cynic doubts everything, questions everything and doesn't hesitate to voice their opinions. If that upsets some people, or even the entire world population, then the true cynic doesn't care. For on the heart of the cynic is inscribed the word: “Why?”

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Please Note: I felt it best, Gentle Readers, to reassure you that the comments that implied I was the victim of sexual abuse as a child are completely baseless. Whilst my childhood was far from perfect it never involved incestuous, or any other type, of sexual abuse. I assume the comments were meant to be pejorative in nature but I think it's more likely to be a case of imagination failure in the insult department. I'd suggest those responsible consult such works as the Blackadder scripts and the written works of Spike Milligan (sadly missed but never forgotten).

Sports Management? Who Needs It?

Today I had a team meeting and I asked the usual question about what courses the team members were doing. To my surprise the answers I got back were all prefixed with the word SPORT. Sport management and sports marketing being the two prevalent courses.

It struck me as odd. Why should someone work for three years on a course that is predicated on just one industry? In this case it's sport but it could have been retail, catering or even dung collection. It smacks of putting all your eggs in one basket. A very small basket at that.

Is this really an issue?

Well, to me it is. The world of work changes all the time. A degree that prepares you to work in a number of fields is going to be more valuable than a degree that prepares you just for one. Lets face it, the sports industry could go into a steep decline and leave you flat on your arse. Also, job hunting is currently a very difficult process. It's a buyer's market out there and the recruiters will be looking for any reason to reject your CV at the earliest stage. Applying for a job outside of the sports industry with a degree that puts sport at the heart of three years academic slog isn't going to be very easy. Nor, in my opinion, is it necessary.

Why should anyone want to do a degree in Sports Management? Wouldn't a management degree, perhaps with some sports modules, be far more attractive to a potential employer? It would be the equivalent of a journalism degree that prepares you only to write about David Beckham or currency trading. It's too specific and too narrow.

Those who are taking such degrees might argue that their course contents are much wider than the title of their degree implies. But that isn't going to help when it comes to selling themselves on the job market. Employers aren't going to ask themselves if Mr K, with his Sports Marketing degree, is going to be any use in a trainee position in a firm that specialises in marketing agricultural products. No, the employer will just turn to the next CV. The employer doesn't have to dig into the contents of your course nor bother themselves with how a sports orientated course could be made to adapt to a non-sport based business. I can assure you that they won't.

Perhaps the perceived glamour of sport is behind such narrow degrees? I don't know. If anyone asked for my advice I'd recommend a degree course that could be flexibly applied in many fields because there's one universal factor in the business world and it's “Change.” It happens all the time and if you don't move with it then it will run you over like a steamroller. In a world that can change almost overnight a degree that even hints at you being inflexible and rigid will be as much use as a dose of syphilis.

The Loneliness of the long distance Mature Student

My first seminar this morning was a fantastic example of what life can be like at university for a mature student.

I arrived early, as usual, and settled myself down for the traditional long wait for anyone else to turn up. (Do not fear for me Gentle Reader, I didn’t waste the time as I feel constitutionally unwilling to piss my life away) An 09:00 start being a bit too much for most of the regular students. Poor little dears. I wonder what they’ll think of actually working a full day if/when they graduate and manage to get a job?

 

So by about ten minutes to the hour one other student had arrived. The rest of those who could be bothered trickled in over the course of about fifteen minutes. The fact that some were tardy is not exactly rare and hardly worthy of comment. But what is worth comment is what they did once they came into the room and espied the evil countenance of the being known as Mike the Terror of Student Kind.

 

Yes, I was sat down on one side of the room and was easily visible to the approaching students. One look at my frightening visage was enough to drive them away. Hiding their faces from my glowing red eyes, freshly polished horns and steaming anus. As each of the quivering creatures entered my realm they scuttled like fleeing crabs and took a seat as far from me as they could.

 

I found this most amusing and not at all surprising. Wasn’t it Alison Cheeseman, she of the exquisite Scottish accent and piercing wit, who christened me “The Lone Ranger” in my first year? (That was because I have this habit of sitting at the front in lectures and answering questions. I like doing that but it has earned me the response “Shut up you, I know you know the answer” a fair few times).

 

I am left wondering what would happen if I turned up late and tried to sit amongst the student throng? Perhaps they’d all get up and pointedly move to other seats? Maybe they’d pelt me with rotting fruit and the gizzards of freshly slaughtered first years? Or, just maybe, they’d throw themselves to the floor like craven dogs. Fearful of the Wrath of Mike the Mighty Mature Student.

 

Probably not.

3rd Year, First Day

First proper day back at University. The first day of my Third Year and it's a biggie. This year is our last chance to shine, to work hard and earn that coveted First, or a 2:1 at the very least. Anything less and you've really screwed the pooch and wasted three years of your life.

Well, that's my attitude.

Others appear to be totally unconcerned. Three of my fellow students turned up to my first lecture without pen, pencil or paper. I could see two of them, and another to my side, and they just sat there apparently uninterested in what was going on around them. Perhaps it's just too uncool to appear keen to learn? Maybe they all possess fantastic powers of recall and never write anything down? Or, more likely, they just couldn't give a toss.

The thing is that we are the lucky ones. We don't pay £9k a year. We pay around £3.6k while you, the taxpayer, pay about £6k a year on our behalf. Yes, your lovely hard earned cash goes towards paying for my education and that of the deadbeats. Now I like to think that you're getting your money's worth out of me but there are some who are just pissing every penny of your cash down the nearest drain. I don’t think that's fair, do you?

Students Beware!

Well the new academic year beckons. I know that because my third year induction letter, yes a physical letter (are we living in some sort of time warp here?), landed on my door mat the other day with a particularly doom laden thud.

The letter sparked off a couple of thoughts.

The first thought was whether I'd be dumped on by the University Admin department again. My first two years were characterised by a timetable apparently created by a baboon suffering a case of cerebral termites. Or by someone who thought it was fun to make a mature student commute into Lincoln five days a week, three of those days for just a single session. That's about three hours of travelling for, at times, 29 minutes of education. And no, I didn't like it either as it wasted both my precious time and my limited travel budget.

My second thought was that as the new academic year begins there is only one certainty. That the students flowing into the University of Lincoln, and all the other universities that litter the UK like bloated leeches, are seen as little more than cash cows.

Students as cash cows? Yes. You are a source of income for the universities and the businesses that cluster around them like parasites. The bars, the shops, cafeterias, takeaways and nightclubs all see you as walking cash machines. All of them desperate to split you away from your cash. Depending on your gullibility to line their pockets at your expense.

As long as you've got an inexhaustible supply of cash, and I envy you if you have, then this state of affairs shouldn't cause you any sleepless nights. For the rest of you, I've got some advice that’s worth heeding.

1. If coffee is your thing then make your own up every morning and bring it into uni in a thermos flask. Enjoy your favourite coffee hit for pennies instead of pounds.

2. Avoid buying meals from cafeterias and takeaways. Reacquaint yourself with the good old lunch box. Bring in your own food. From my experience the food will not just be better tasting but also a fraction of the price.

3. Avoid the tech temptations. Yes, a new laptop looks the dog's cojones. Yes, it's nice to swan around with the latest smartphone or tablet computer but do you actually need it? Or if you do need that gadget can you get something cheaper? A top tip for tech temptations is to look at last year's offerings. They're usually just as good and a fraction of the price being charged for the latest gadget. You pay a premium for being a first adopter, or should that be gullible sucker?

4. Don't print anything unless you really have to. Paper and printing cost money so find alternatives. Why not PDF instead? There are plenty of free opensource applications that can be used to create PDFs straight from most applications. Store the information, don't print it! (Just remember to back up everything, as I expect you do all the time).

5. Don't let peer pressure influence you into doing anything, or buying anything, you don't need or want. Remember, it's not what you've got but what you can do with it that counts. This world is full of tackle tarts. People who are fixated on things instead of results. Follow their lead and you're guaranteed to waste your precious funds on pointless tat.

6. If possible, get a job. It might not pay you a fortune but it will bring in an income. It will also give you some experience of the world of work. A place that is totally alien to the academic world. You get something on your CV to prove that you can actually handle a job and you’ll learn the value of money. Money earned through your own efforts, sweat and tears. A lesson that is beyond price.

To survive student life with the smallest pile of debt possible you need to adopt a miserly attitude to money. Don't waste it. Don't say “keep the change” when buying a sausage roll from the local baker (and they do that up here in sleepy Epworth). No, hoard your cash instead. Guard against those who want to live off you. Sucking the very life out of you and the money out of your pockets.

GCSE Results - Not A Cause For Celebration

Last week saw the release of the GCSE results with many scenes of young people jubilantly celebrating. Just a shade over 69% of them got a grade A – C. A hearty well-done to you all, I don’t think.

Some might say: "Mike, why are you so down on all these immensely talented, intelligent young people? Aren’t you just being a crusty old curmudgeon? Lighten up and recognise the genius of Britain’s youth."

To which I reply: “The GCSE is pretty much a defunct and educationally bankrupt measure of academic achievement. It is my considered opinion that the courses involved, the way they are marked and course content is not fit for purpose. The young people of this nation have been betrayed by years of educational inflation that has left them holding, in my opinion, a worthless piece of paper.”

There will be plenty of people out there who don’t want to hear this. The young people who’ve just received their exam results and their parents. Politicians, who always seem eager to climb onto the back of news stories about ever climbing educational achievements. Teachers, who won’t want to hear criticism of their profession and the damage it inflicts on the tender young minds consigned to its care. The exam authorities, who ferociously defend any accusation that today’s examinations are not as tough as they once were. My opponents are legion but their vast numbers do not change the fact that the GCSE is pretty much worthless.

Of course, gentle reader, you’re entitled to know how I arrived at this conclusion. Here’s why I think GCSEs are a pile of mouldering whale turd that lies at the bottom of the ocean.

1. Anecdotal evidence that I’ve gleaned from my first two years at university. Listening to my peers recount what they learnt at school and my realisation that they’d learnt very little. Holders of highly marked GCSEs in ICT knowing nothing about computers, the Internet or even basic technology. The ICT course appears to be based on how to use various software packages without any solid grounding in even the most basic concepts.

2.Comments from educational professionals. My favourite being: “Over the last ten years I’ve seen a steady, year on year, decay in the quality of students attending university.” If those young people reaching university are meant to be the best what state are the cast offs in? That scares me.

3.My own research, directed towards my dissertation subject, has been most revealing. I downloaded a recent GCSE maths paper and thought it a joke. It begins with a page of formulas so the little kiddies don't have to remember them! Why the Hell not? We were required to do exactly that for our GCE "O" level exams. A question concerning basic arithmetic, not mathematics, even gave the hint that one litre equals one thousand millilitres. Can I assume that our educational system thinks that our children are unable to understand the metric system?

4.My experiences as the father of a teenage son. My wife and I attended my son's annual parents' evening and were left shocked by what we heard. My wife, being keen on foreign languages, questioned our son's French teacher over his apparent lack of progress, especially his ignorance of verb conjugations. We were informed that as the pupils at my son's school don't learn about verbs and grammar in English then it's impossible to teach them about it in French! Now I attended a pretty bog standard secondary modern school in North London. I clearly remember being drilled in verb conjugation. I also remember being drilled in grammar in English as well. Old Mrs Wells, my English teacher and adversary (she of the CND viewpoint), would be spinning in her grave if she'd heard this. If we were able to learn it why not the children of today? They have the same potential and access to resources we couldn't have dreamed of. Homework is another issue. My son rarely gets homework and when he does it's pathetic. Not exactly stretching or challenging. The whole ethos of the state educational systems appears to be summed up as following: "Do just enough to pass the exam."

For me it's obvious that these young people have been betrayed. They are, potentially, just as good as any other generation of students. Who knows? They might be much better. But they have not been stretched academically. They have not been forced to push themselves beyond their “safe” limits. Our educational system has failed to drive them far beyond their own meagre boundaries and has left them educationally stunted. They are capable of so much but have not been encouraged, pushed or even forced to learn. They have also been duped. Tricked into thinking that their academic achievements are of value when, I'm sorry to say, they are not.

I pity these young people and I pity this nation that looks to them to drive the economy forward into the 21st Century.

What Will 2012 Hold For Us?

I stand upon the threshold of my third year at the centre of the academic universe (okay, the University of Lincoln) and contemplate the state of the world outside the brick and concrete walls of academia.

Why bother? I hear some of you ask. Well it’s quite simple really. The state of the economy of this fair nation (the UK) is going to have a direct bearing on our (and I really mean my) ability to find work after we finish our courses. From where I’m sitting the future doesn’t look at all rosy.

Why?

1. The UK government is mired in debt. Successive governments have maxed out the state credit card and we suddenly find ourselves with the national equivalent of a nasty looking pair of guys at the front door looking to take away anything remotely valuable. It’s like a scene out of The Full Monty, except I don’t think the whole nation standing up in its collective underwear is going to scare them away.
2. We, as a nation, have very limited means of making money. We don’t really make much, our services sector is heavily dependent on banking (which is not exactly doing that well), we have few natural resources to exploit and we’re pretty limited when it comes to tourism.
3. Our educational system is a nightmare. The value of many of the academic awards appears to be bogus. My own experiences of dealing with university students doesn’t engender in me any respect for “A” Levels or GCSEs. My son’s current education, at a state secondary school (sorry, academy with a focus on the performing arts), fills me with dread. Especially when I look at the syllabuses for various GCSE courses.
4. Our costs, both as a nation and as individuals, are rising like rockets. Electricity, gas, petrol and diesel have all reached a price point where they have become real weights around our collective necks. I now dread the arrival of power bills and I’m sure that I’m not alone. If the cost of energy is so high here then that puts our nation’s ability to compete in the global markets in peril. It also puts off potential investors in the UK. Remember, business isn’t about sentimentality it’s about making money. 
5. The UK has become addicted to state interventions. Both in monetary terms and in social terms as well. If anything goes wrong then people seem to be obsessed with “what’s the government going to do about it?” Self-reliance seems to be as rare as rocking horse poo. That’s led us to a welfare state we cannot afford, hence the huge government borrowing, and a people who expect to be spoon fed from the cradle to the grave.

So what can we do? Unfortunately, not a lot. My considered opinion is that the UK is in the toilet and will remain there for some time. My advice is to start looking elsewhere. Beyond the rather stinky and turd laden shores of good old Blight. Look for those countries where they’re making money. China, Canada and Australia seem to be doing well at the moment. Africa could be the rising star of the 21^st Century. Perhaps Eastern Europe? You need to look into the options available to you and start thinking of not just what you want to do when you leave university but where you want to do it. I’m certain of only one thing at this time. The UK is going to be in intensive care for a long time to come. Can you afford to wait around?

I'm Back - First Year Students Beware...

After a prolonged period away I can announce that I'm back and full of vitriol. So what to begin with? How about Mike's Advice for first year university students?

Here it is....

1. Turn up to lectures and keep mouth shut and eyes and ears open. If your mates want to play around and make a nuisance of themselves then dump them.

2. Turn up to seminars and do the set tasks. Why bother even being at uni if you cannot be bothered to do the work? If you're only going for the lifestyle and the socialising then you're wasting your time.

(I'm about to start my 3rd year at Lincoln and can tell you that many students weren't exactly bothering to do either 1 or 2 for the first two years.)

3. Don't fall for the bull crap that your first year's marks don't count to your degree. They don't and they do. Why the paradox? Simples. The tutors are looking out for those who work hard and show a real interest in the subject. Spend the first year of your course tossing it off and guess what kind of impression it makes on the people who count (tutors/lecturers etc)? Come on, it doesn't take a genius to understand that.

4. Marks? Aim for a First in everything. Aim to be top dog at every subject. Why? Well in the words of one of my tutors:  "Anyone with less than a 2:1 has wasted the last three years." Guess what? He was right. You're going into a fantastically competitive world and you cannot have too high a mark in any subject. If that means abandoning friends, being focused and selfish with your own resources etc then you've just realised what the REAL world is like. Once you graduate everyone around you will be competing for the same kind of work. They're not your friends and peers, they are your competitors and they won't shed a tear for you when you end up serving Big Macs at the local Maccy D's.

5. Watch out for group work. While your Uni will tell you that there are mechanisms to deal with the freeloaders that group work nearly ALWAYS attracts those mechanisms aren't very effective. There are plenty of students who will let you do all the work while they reap the benefits of a good mark earned by you.

6. Watch out for the Mature Students (I'm one so be warned!). Why? Well it's quite simple. We are often more motivated, better focused and not obsessed with getting into everyone else's underwear. Yes, we are boring. Yes, we are older and probably appear to be ancient when compared to you. Yes, we care about our marks and how well we can translate them into career enhancing opportunities. But we also make damn good team managers for group work, usually have a better understanding of the tutors/lecturers and can draw on life experiences that you can only dream off. You can learn from the mature students. Watch them. Even get acquainted if you like. But also remember that a mature student, if they're remotely like me, will be looking to beat you. To get higher marks and to succeed in the job market. That means they won't tell you everything. They won't spoon feed you answers and make your life easier.

7. I wrote some material for our student newspaper (The Linc - check it out) and in one piece I compared the majority of my fellow students to pig swill. I still stand by that statement. I also compared a very few students to pearls. My advice to you is to be a pearl. A hard working, dedicated, focused individual. If that's not your attitude then I'd recommend you withdraw from university asap and save yourself a whole pile of cash and a wasted three years of your life.