The University of Life

I mentioned a fairly interesting document I found amongst my "Other Stuff". If I've written about this before, I apologise.

First, a little background...

I studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) and Mansfield College, Oxford. It turned out ok in the end, but I didn't get off to the best of starts.

I don't really know why I chose that subject. I think it was because I enjoyed doing Politics at sixth-form. The trouble was, I only enjoyed it because every lesson just involved chatting to people and copying verbatim the things that the teacher wrote on the board. It was quite fun, but didn't exactly equip me with much political knowledge. This deficit was most evident when I arrived at university, where people seemed to have "opinions" on "current affairs". I was out of my depth.

My first year was a bit of a disaster. I wasn't really prepared. I didn't have much experience researching titles on the reading list or writing essays. I always managed to struggle to the bare minimum (ie one page), basically using one (A Level) textbook as the basis for all my arguments. I wasn't exactly a shining light.

One of my proudest (and most appalling) achievements was in never once using a book from any of the fabulously equipped Oxford University libraries, except for my small college one. In three years of study.

Highlights of that first year include our teacher talking to us about our "dismal, and in some cases abysmal, exam results", and being identified as one of the three students who were dragging the rest of our year down.

To get through the first year, we needed to pass the first year exams (Prelims). 40%. No problem.

And indeed, it proved to be no problem at all. I managed to stroll to a 46% in Economics and a 48% in Politics. I was the king of the scrapes.

I don't want to seem like I relished my underachievement - it's just that I wasn't convinced that I wanted to be there, and didn't really care about the consequences of failure. The worst case scenario would be being chucked out of Uni (or 'sent down', in the parlance of our behind-the-times), which then seemed like it would be a blessing.

But I made it to the second year. This was a glorious year, full of very little work, late nights watching American Football, repeated viewings of Back to the Future II, and the consumption of many microvaved burgers.

But the beginning of the year was sullied by the news that we were being forced to complete an IT project. It was using some statistics programme. I think the project is now compulsory for first-years, but ours was the first year for which it was introduced.

At the time, I was outraged. It was only for PPEists. The project was supposed to be really useful for our future careers, but I resented being told what my future career would be. I hated economics, and liked philosophy. I was never going to get a job in the big city. I felt like I was being discriminated against. Why did we have to do it, when the English students didn't?! I fully intend that my degree should be as vague, poncey and useless as theirs! None of this preparing for the world bullshit!

Looking back, I'm sure that laziness played a big part in it. (That last sentence could be applied to any anecdote I ever tell)

I suppose it was annoying to have to do it, but I probably over-reacted. It's true that I felt it was irrelevant to my interests (and if you can't specify your interests at university, when can you?), but it wouldn't have taken long to do it. I probably should have just got on with it.

Oh, one important part of this IT project was that failure to complete it would result in losing 1% off your final degree mark.

The stakes were high. But not high enough.

Initially, I thought I wouldn't bother doing it. But then I found out that, whilst if you fail to hand anything in you automatically lose 1%, if you hand in a project that failed the requirements, you'd get another chance to complete it. And that sounded ok to me: let Future Paul deal with it.

I just needed to hand in something for now. It didn't matter what. So I did:

(The text and pics are copied below these images of the document)

I've added these as pictures, because: a) there's some embarrassing stuff on there that shouldn't be written, and b) it's useful to see this as it was presented in all its stupid glory, and c) I want to make it clear that I actually did do this - it's not a stupid blog thing. (I mean, it is stupid, and is on my blog, but nevertheless...)

Here is my PPE IT project:

***

PPE IT PROJECT 2003

(0r: Why this is a bad idea)

Introduction

The irrelevancy and irritation of this project, involving no possible benefit to my choice of course, options, or future degree, necessitates an analysis of why this is a bad idea.

HYPOTHESIS:

This is a bad idea

WHY?

It is a waste of time that would be better spent:

a) improving on course-related projects

b) lengthening and solidifying essays
c) washing my hair
d) counting the amount of pigeons in a designated area (I thought I’d done it, but how do I know that I didn’t count the same one more than once?!)
e) reading useful sources, books, articles, etc. which would help me both with my term-time work and my finals
f) staring mindlessly into space

It has nothing to do with my course interests, thus completely contradicting the benefits of any choice we are given at this university.

Given my personal preference for philosophy and theory based options, it seems that you may as well get all philosophy students to complete this project also and, let’s say, mathematicians to write an essay on the Cartesian circle.

HUH?

This can effectively be proved by reference to immutable and incontrovertible statistical analysis. As I will never use SPSS in my life, I feel that a more suitable method of description and proof should be used.


Part 1

Clearly my reaction to having to complete this project was one of anger and shock from the beginning. This is evident from the following statistical analysis:

By widening the field of research, we can trace the development of this anger throughout Trinity term of this year using the ‘Anger-Monkey’ chart (or AMC).

As we can see, the height of the anger monkey peaks in week 1 and in week 8. This reflects the shock at the outset, and the terrible realisation towards the end of term. The relatively pacified monkey results in weeks 2 to 7 could be evidence of acceptance of the task, although more likely is the possibility that the project was simply forgotten about.

Part 2

Now, whilst the importance of monkey-based statistics should not be forgotten, the study of a single individual is not adequate in proving that this IT project is a bad idea. Having collated information from various PPE students, I have tabulated the very telling results.

Method of producing Report Percentage of students

Copying from colleague/friend/past project 46

Cramming late the night before it is due 65

Creating unfunny parody of a report 0.33

Working hard, honestly, with plenty of breathing room 2

This damning evidence shows that over 111% of students have little respect/consideration for this project. This data can be demonstrated by a pie chart:

Given these indisputable results, it remains only to ask whether this project does indeed have any merit whatsoever.

***

So, that's what I produced. Looking back, I sound like an absolute idiot. Arrogant and disprespectful. (The Anger Monkey Chart was good though)

If I was a prudent anecdotalist, I'd claim that's all I did. Sadly, that would be true. And I'm nothing if not scrupulously honest.

You see, we were told that the report needed to be a minimum of 10 pages. I ridiculously thought the number of pages would make some difference (even after the preceding nonsense).

So, to extend the report from four pages to ten... (I cringe when I think of it)... I filled up six pages with nothing but "blah blah blah blah etc", and then tacked on an impassioned conclusion where I got all serious about the project.

*Shudder*

I won't reproduce that here, to save on the pain.

If I've have done ten pages of 'satire', that would have been some tiny accomplishment. But I couldn't even manage that (though I think I did this all the day before it had to be handed in).

There was never any doubt that I would go through with it. As I said before, the worst case scenario didn't seem too bad. So I went along to the Politics Faculty, and stood in line with all the other people who had worked hard, and dropped it in the tray.

A few weeks passed. I didn't really regret it. I still don't - at least it's something to tell people about.

When we received our marks for the project, I just got a note which said something to the effect of: "As the candidate has failed to produce a report, and instead handed in some offensive pages, we recommend that 1% of his final mark be docked".

And it was, I suppose. I never really noticed. By the time I got to my finals, I was desperately reaching towards a 2:1, so 1% might have made a difference. I still didn't regret handing this is. I always prioritise humour (even if, in this case, it turned out to be immature and not that funny).

I managed to get a 2:1, so I suppose I had the last laugh (the triumphant laugh of modest success).

Maybe my incendiary rebellion shook the foundations of Oxford University to its very core! Maybe I almost smashed the system!

At the very least, I hope someone at the Politics Faculty got a laugh out of it. Or a smile, at least. I mean, there can't have been many students whose projects included a portrait of Monkey.

So, that was me as an undergraduate. I suppose I'm equal parts proud and ashamed. I was really arrogant, but at least I was rebellious. For someone as shy as me, even a tiny rebellion is valuable.

I don't think there are any conclusions to draw from this. But I thought I'd document it, as interesting events are thin on the ground of my life.