Its All Part Of Growing Up

As I've got older, I've learnt valuable lessons that you have no choice but to go out and find out for yourself. The world of school I was used to for 18 years vanishes into the distance and my 6 months in the world of work has taught me the most valuable lesson of them all. Hard work pays off. And pays well.

I've now worked out that school is a place full of patronising and diluted success taught by people who don't really care about your future and just want their pay cheques at the end of the week, just like anyone else. Ok, they will urge you to complete your coursework for good reason, but if they didn't, they wouldn't be doing their job properly and then that creates problems for them. I'm fairly sure there are very few teachers out there who really do care where their students end up. I've seen a couple since I've left and they couldn't care less where I were. And frankly, I don't blame them. They still get their pay slips. The only thing schools care about are wages and league tables. Students futures? Not their problem.

I'm making it seem as if schools are all corrupt and careless and frankly, I am. No, I joke. But all the nagging and pushing of school puts students under needless pressure where most of the things they learn in that place, they won't need out in the real world anyway. What good is the Pythagoras Theorem when someone wants to buy a house to live in? What good is the periodic table when your manager is berating you for not managing your account properly? What good is school for? What I didn't like was you spent 6 hours at school and then even more hours at home doing 'overtime' and if you didn't do that overtime, all that work at school goes down the drain. Out in the real world, you work your 8 hours and you go home. You have the choice to do extra work, you don't HAVE to do it. The main reason I didn't go to university. Fed up of the hours and hours of work that may or may not be there. At least I know how many hours I work each week now, and I'm all the happier for it.

At the moment, everyone I know who went to university is fed up of it all and under a ridiculous amount of pressure, working hours upon hours to finish off an assignment or revising a particular part of the course that may not even be in their final exam anyway. The weekend just gone has been up in the regions you'd expect in Spain and Down Under yet university students are expected to slave away revising biocodes or whatever codswallop people do there, all for a job that won't be there when they get out. Ok, I'm straying into that debate again. I won't go there.

For me though, I don't know why you would want to put yourself under all that pressure for years and years just to gain a few thousand pounds p/a when you're 40 and fed up of life anyway. Live when you can. Now. Get money now, live well, and do all the stuff that your body will let you. If you get your dream job and the money you always dreamed of when you're 40 years old, you will have "settled down" and most of that money will go to the kids Christmas presents and the mortgage that will be ridiculously expensive given Mr.Osbourne's cuts anyway. All that time spent revising and finishing assignments, all for nothing. Maybe it's because I had and still have no clue of where I'm going. I suppose if people want something enough, then they will do everything they can to get it. And I don't blame them. I don't know what that feels like. So to comment on it, would be hypocritical.

I suppose I'd better delete this whole post then. Because I haven't grown up. I may be 45 years and 360 days away from my free bus pass, but I'm still a kid inside. Settling down? No thanks.