Regular visitors might have noticed I've kept pretty schtum throughout 2012 so far. The short answer is I've been quite busy. I co-directed a play. I edited a newspaper. I wrote a play meself, which is *SHAMELESS PLUG* being put on this May*. And during the bits in-between I was so bloated by my own arty smugness I could only sit breathing in the guff of my own farts and demanding sexual favours off my more star-struck acquaintances. But that's beside the point. In the eyes of my mother, and of society, all of this amounts to precisely nothing, because I should have spent the time applying for internships.
It was with surprise that, a few months ago, I first heard of the concept of the internship - heard it discussed, no less, not as some foreign novelty but as something that's been familiar to us since birth, like water or gravity. It took me a while to work out what an ‘internship’ was. I though it was the sort of thing you sent off empty Coco-Pops packets for. By the time I finally figured it out people were already mourning the application period’s passing - pining after the halcyon days when you could experiment with the font of your CV at your leisure. Then I went on my careers service website, found out that applying meant filling in a form, and abandoned all hope. It clearly wasn't meant to be.
It’s only now that I’m beginning realise what a grievous career error this has been. Actually, I didn’t realise I even had a career. As it turns out, I’ve had one for the last nineteen years - since I was born, in fact. And you have as well. Every moment up until this one should have been a calculated move toward furthering my professional life for the better, and having been temporarily distracted by prancing and scribbling, I’ve just taken a massive detour down fuck-up alley.
Now, I’ll have a pause at this moment and acknowledge it – yes, I’m speaking from the viewpoint of a tosspot English student, a student who’s never had to earn a penny in his life, who’s off gallivanting around with books and acting and crumpets at the taxpayer’s expense. I know all that. And a large degree of my issues with fixation upon job applications and CV’s is because I Don’t Know How To Be A Grown-up And Don’t Really Want To Try. A good kick up the arse and a ticking off by society is probably just what the doctor ordered for me.
But part of me resents this utter obsession, on all sides, upon the career, upon making money. This isn’t a particularly new viewpoint, but I think it’s gaining more traction during the recession.
The recession is teaching us to be obsessed by money. We’re in a time of Economic Hardship, says society. Look at the failing banks, look at the failing businesses. We need to counter that. We need to scrimp and save. We need to count every penny.
In one way this mindset is good, because it teaches us all to be more practical about money, which is a lesson we could all (and especially tosspot English students) do with. But it starts becoming poisonous at the point at which it pervades every discussion or debate about the way society is run.
When the government was arguing its case for collectively fucking over every academically promising teenager in the country through the raising of university tuition fees, the two main points offered up where these; one, one, no graduate would have to pay a penny of this before they were earning over £20,000, and two, the economic advantage in terms of earning power graduates gained outweighed the cost. Both of these arguments portrayed university as little more than an investment, a small purchase you made for the promise of a larger overall return in the future. 'Feeling the pinch? Fancy a few extra coppers to line your pockets? Try University®, the time-tested cash-generating solution, for only £9000 a year! Sit back and watch your savings groooooooooow!'
Which is a terrible way to view education – education, a concept which, surprisingly, doesn’t intrinsically involve money at all. If I’m honest with myself, I know the reason I and most other people went to University was this prospect of higher earning – but in my more sentimental moments, I like to think I’m here for other reasons too. You know, reasons like gaining knowledge, or having the opportunity to do things like edit a newspaper and put on a play, or working out what I want to spend the rest of my life doing. And I’m naive enough to believe that university can provide these things, and should do.
Raising a nation of young people fixated upon money and the process of earning it can be a dangerous thing. It might teach us all to be more pragmatic, yes, but what does the breeding of an obsession lead to? On the only hand, you’ll have among the toward the lower end of the economic spectrum a generation convinced that they don’t have any chance at improving their lot in life because they didn’t have a public school/posh university education, becoming resentful and apathetic as a result; whilst at the higher end a generation who see society as nothing but a system of monetary gains and losses that needs to be exploited at the expense of others. How anyone expects people to be happy and good under such a model is beyond me.
Now, I don’t really know what I want to do as a career. To be honest, I’d quite like to carry on for a bit with the prancing and scribbling and see where it takes me, but suggesting as such to my parents is like telling them I’m going to spent my life rubbing my cock-end against a radiator and hope people pay me for it, so I’m a little wary of saying so. But nevertheless, I think this desire is something that should always be okay to say, and something that society should allow for. Prancing idiot I might be, but I’d rather live in a nation of prancing idiots than ‘aspiring investment bankers’ any day.
P.S. In the event that I ever do cave and send off my application to Goldman Sachs this blog will have to be deleted. And in which case you never heard of me. So shush.
*15th to the 19th of May, at the Burton Taylor Studio in Oxford, in case you were wondering
