University: A Review

When I was 18, my parents moved away. I was determined to be independent and stayed behind. This lead to me not attending university and instead pursuing the capitalist dream of funding my own lavish (aka drunken) lifestyle. A few years ago I realised that to get ahead in my career, I was probably going to need some kind of arbitrary piece of paper that says I can do shit, to prove that I can in fact do shit. So, off I went to find out about university.

Enrolling was easy enough, but once the subjects started the real fun began. There’s text books to buy, literal thousands of dollars to hand over to the provider, weird computer programs to download and online portals to navigate. If you’re disorganised enough to have your subjects facilitated by different universities, then you have to do all of that twice but slightly different each time. Just enough to be really fucking annoying.

Once you figure out how navigate through all the conflicting instructions and message board posts with ambiguous answers, you can presumably actually start studying. Except that your text book hasn’t come in the post yet, and your lecturer doesn’t even really know how to use Skype so you spend most of our time watching him minimise windows and accidentally clicking forward too far into the presentation. If you’re lucky you can hear the audio! I’ve never attended university face to face, so maybe it’s exactly this bad in real life too. Personally, I think it’s disgraceful that I’m handing over thousands of dollars to someone who doesn’t even understand that ‘automatical’ isn’t a word, but anyway.

Studying as a mature aged person is weird too. Humble brag coming up, but I have worked in finance for 12 years now. I have a range of experience across lending, strategy, operations and administration. This makes it incredibly frustrating when three years into my six years of studying (yay), I am being taught how to add to cells together in excel. Or how to structure a sentence. Or how to use Google. Studying through distance education means you also get a weird range of people studying with you, with various levels of experience. I can’t tell you how many group assignments on the topic social media I’ve had to do with 60+ year olds who don’t even know what a whatsapp is.

Don’t even get me started on academic referencing. Why are all the universities using different types? Why even are there so many types? I spent the first two years of my degree perfecting my skills with APA for Griffith and Curtin university, only to start doing subjects through Swinburne that require Harvard. They are just different enough to be really fucking annoying. Who even decided that this was an ok thing? Can we not just have one agreed standard? Because I am SO tired of not getting High Distinctions because I accidentally didn’t put one page number in the in-text reference (like you checked it anyway, tutor).

On the topic of multiple university’s being used to get my degree, whilst I appreciate the flexibility it offers, I’m not sure it’s any advantage. My first subject was with UniSA, which had probably the most condescending lecturer of all time, and what could be described as an adequate online platform. But then my next few were with Griffith, which is pleasantly easy to use, and has lecturers and tutors who seem to know what they are talking about. Same for my next few subjects at Curtin university, one of the best online platforms (and thank god, because they were digital studies subjects) and literally the nicest staff ever.

This has made my last few subjects, the ones that are actually important because they are for my major, at Swinburne painful in comparison. The lecturers don’t know what they’re doing, or what I’m doing, the dates are always wrong, the lectures don’t cover useful content, the assignments don’t have enough instruction. I’ve spent the past 12 months furious that I’m handing over $1,200 a quarter to have my major assignment in a subject be two pages of ambiguous instruction, and the additional references be four hours of lectures of students asking questions because the two pages of instruction don’t make sense. Frustrating AF.

The thing that is MOST frustrating about university though, is that I need it at all. If was doing some kind of special job like being a doctor, or building bridges or whatever, I get that I need some training on that. I taught myself to be good at what I do in the last 12 years though, and so far my degree has not added anything to that at all. Other than impressing my colleagues that I am prepared to give up free time and lots of money to do it. So why do I need it? Why do I have to have a piece of paper that says “Karen can academic” to get promoted, when I’ve managed to get promoted this far without it?

Maybe it’s all an elaborate conspiracy. And yet, I’m determined to get it. And then get my Masters. What’s wrong with me?

So in summary, university is useless but probably necessary. 6/10 would complete arbitrary tasks for my career again.