Week One so far.

It has begun! The week I’ve been waiting for since… Um… I guess since around May last year!

O-week! Orientation week at Curtin University. My week has been filled with scenes of bustling, sun-soaked courtyards, teeming with acne-ridden, snapback-rocking students fresh out of high school.

I’m 25.

I hadn’t really given the significance of my age much thought, but these last three days have really driven it home – almost everyone at Curtin is a school leaver in first year.

During our computing orientation session, we were asked through a rather nifty smartphone tool called Socrative in which age group we fell: school leaver, diploma graduate, mature age or international student.

School leavers made up a whopping 76% of the room, which barely contained about 400 students. Us mature age students ate dust at the back with a paltry 8% (diploma graduates comprised about 14%, and international students 2%).

Still, it can hardly be called surprising, but I certainly reflected on the coming months with a degree of sombreness I hadn’t anticipated.  I managed to make a couple of friends, which was made easier due to the fact that I could actually pass for 18 or 19 if I wanted to. Indeed, when I told one student I was 25, his face registered genuine shock. A combination of my youthful looks and his disbelief that a 25 year-old would have the fortune or inclination to be back at first year tertiary study. Go figure.

Anyway, I joined the Computer Science Students Association, and the Curtin Writers Club, making use of two $5 vouchers I  received in the free guild diary. I haven’t got much by way of deep thoughts regarding these first days; I more just wanted to jot down a record of what’s happened so far.

Having said that, there is one thing I want to note.

I was walking towards the guild building, where the majority of student club stalls were congregated in a convenient avenue of half-baked political idealism, when I was struck by a particularly dark thought.

The students passing me almost all seemed to be (myself included I should add) from relatively wealthy backgrounds. They dressed fashionably, sometimes ostentatiously and always frivolously; they spoke with the cocksure, youthful tone of affluent comfort; and they were all there to study complicated, intellectually demanding tertiary degrees.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m well aware if not a little disheartened at the ease and security of my upbringing, and I’ve reflected on how this might affect our attempts to bring our own sense of justice to bear on the world around us. And this is what struck me: It seems highly unlikely to me that any of the social, political and economic causes that will be contributed to by these students (again, still including myself here) have any chance of actually being positively acted upon for the benefit of those affected by the cause.

It seems to me that University is no longer that old ‘Church of Reason’, that exists as a place of worship for the ideals of truth and critical appraisal. It seems to me that today it is more a place about preparing students for a life in the white-collar workforce, where they can earn more money and experience more prestige and responsibility.

If this is the case, then ultimately, it is in the interests of no students to actually challenge the status quo – it is this status quo that will contribute to their success and well-being after university is finished. It is this status quo that will bring the stability and economic prosperity companies need in order to engage in recruitment. This will generate more talent to continue this cycle – but it surely won’t actually cause any students to truly wish to impact the foundations of the society on which these conditions are built.

As I threaded my way through the crowd of giggling students, I passed a bearded young man wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a ‘Marxism ’18’ conference logo, leaning against a wall chatting to a friend. You might adopt an amused smile – the good ol’ omnipresent university Marxist type – but my features soured immediately.

If we look at this individual, and the others inevitably like him all over campuses worldwide, in light of these recent thoughts about students and University today, it comes as no surprise to think that there will always be these students at university, for the foreseeable future. As long as Universities succeed in their current mission, and students succeed in theirs, the causes of these so-called idealistic student activists will continue to be advocated and subsequently abandoned for generations.

As I left the student behind, I became aware that I was wearing a deep scowl on my face that felt somewhat incongruent with the casual joy of those around me, so I dutifully dissolved my features back to a state of vacant placidity.

Good Tim.

Tomorrow, I learn about administrative ‘essentials’, time management, and careers.

Wait can someone tell me what it means to be normal today again? I think I’ve forgotten. Oh well. I guess there’s always things to do in the meantime.