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07/15/2001 Archived Entry: "Always good"

There's something which has been bothering me for a while about university. It's that university is supposed to be 'the best time of your life.'

People tend to use this phrase in any number of contexts. I hear it by older people who wistfully look back on their past japes, or in particular by some of my friends at university who tell me that 'you shouldn't waste your time doing x because university is the best time of your life.'

I think this is patently silly. Disregarding the usual get-out pomo clause, I would probably agree that many people did enjoy their time at university. Unfortunately, because of the way the mind works in suppressing bad experiences and highlighting good ones, the vast majority of people view university as some kind of responsibility-free, no-work, all-fun heaven. I can certainly say my memory works in that way, considering that for some terrible reason I seem to think that my time in Combined Cadet Force was actually fun, when objectively I know that it was an utterly miserable, soul-eating and time-wasting experience.

Okay, perhaps things are different in universities other than Oxbridge. Scratch that - I know they are. But that makes little difference if any. I don't intend, once I finish university, to think 'Well, it all goes downhill from here, I'm never going to have as fun a time I did back then.' University may well be a fun experience, but I want my entire life to be a fun experience. It's not as if we're only allowed three years of it, you know.

So if I hear someone at university telling me that I shouldn't watch television because 'we should be out having fun,' I sigh to myself and patiently explain that I actually enjoy watching certain television programmes with my friends and that they shouldn't be so damn snobbish, especially considering that in roughly 30 weeks of being at university, I've only watched 30 minutes of television.

Moral of the story: Yes, university is fun, but that doesn't stop you from having fun the rest of your life.