In praise of thought

I was reading University challenge by Jonathan Derbyshire.

It brought me back to a question that had long exercised me in the past (he makes some very eloquent points).

How do we look at the value of a University education?

 It is often couched in monetary terms.

And increasingly when I look at how long it has taken me to pay back my loan, and I'm still not quite there yet, I find it hard not to look at it in these terms also.

 The promised 'graduate' pay packet hasn't exactly materialised, or at least my expectation of what this would give me in material terms is quite negligible and fleeting.

Epiphany

But over this last year I have realised something else.

Despite time spent protesting I have never thrown any rocks, though the rage building up inside is significant.

 I have not burnt any books or magazines, despite inwardly and occasionally outwardly crying at some of their content (and I do mean that).

I have not plundered shops.

I do not feel that I am a paragon of Ghandi like peace either, or much of a saint.

I feel sometimes less educated now than I was before I started.  

Do you want what I've got?

But somewhere along the way, at school, at university I built up a value system and the capacity for reasoned and independent thought.

And by and large that independent thought has led me in some positive directions, not always, but often.

I try to, though I don't always succeed, measure my opinions of a person more slowly.

And I feel that prejudice will always be with us and in some ways I'm not entirely sure that is a bad thing.

If people didn't keep calling me English, when I identify as British (my family stretch around the British isles) it wouldn't have given me a pride in the elements of my culture that derive from welsh lilts and Scottish poetry.

If I wasn't assured that girls couldn't do this, that or the other I wouldn't have been so keen to prove them wrong.

Hell if I hadn't been overlooked and marked as stupid so many times...

Would I have ever tried this damn hard to impress you all?  

Hidden blood

Admittedly then I might have let up a bit and not worked myself into exhaustion time and time over.

But all those pieces of paper with high marks and those precious two degrees with a 2.1 and a merit.

I earned those and hopefully I earned something so much more than money along the way.

I earned respect.

I may have lost some too, it happens.

But I've finally got enough self respect to say.

P*** off if you don't value me.

I value me.

I'm not killing my soul anymore unless you give me a DAMN GOOD REASON.  

Unfortunately, my opinion

By the way, this blog earns me no profit, I'm not using the ad sense thing.

Hence why I reckon it's pants, I'm not getting paid diddly squat for it.

And that there readers is an unedited rant.

Something you'll be getting a lot more of if you don't pay for content.

I'm tired, I should have gone to bed ages ago, so I guess there's that blood again.

Do you want to value me or just put me to sleep again?

THE LAW CANNOT CHANGE MENS HEARTS IT CAN ONLY RESTRAIN THE HEARTLESS.

I know who said that, therefore, he still lives.

Isn't that precious?

Oh well.

LOVE BOOKS.

2012 bibliography in order of preference (aside from papers, magazines, job adverts(!) etc):

Persepolis so tender, so true

The Help inspirational, beautifully woven and elucidating

The Princess Bride there are so many reasons why this book is lovely

Small Island (near the end, not there yet)

Some Sartre, surprisingly like Husserl hence it being lower and me not reading all of it

The Alchemist so sweet, but too sweet

Just started Pure looks like it's going to upset me, so I'm only three chapters in

One about life in New York, honestly it was upsetting me so much I've misplaced it and forgotten the title.

(I'll get back to it, I'm stubborn like that)