'Higher Education'

Uh... I just wrote this.

He was a fish out of water. Or so it seemed. Walking slightly haggardly along, clutching his green M&S plastic bag – the single, firm burst of colour against his greying hair, his grey-brown fake-leather coat and his grey-black trousers. Even his eyebrows lingered between black and white. He lifted the bag slightly, as if he would shoulder it, the sudden burst of movement threatening his balance and making him undulate – ever so slightly – like Jessica Rabbit. This thought made him laugh out loud suddenly as he sloped along, heading to his room in a hall of residence.

Hall of residence! Nobody called them that now, he had to check himself constantly and remember that in fact, he lived ‘on campus.’ Perhaps the specificity of ‘hall of residence’ was passé and no longer needed; perhaps it was almost like a waste of time, a slight against the intelligence of others to spell it out for them: h-a-l-l o-f r-e-s-i-d-e-n-c-e.

After all, time was what always mattered most, wasn’t it? Going against time. Saving time. ‘Giving’ yourself more time to do more things by doing more things in less time. His head reeled, and he hunched briefly against a bench. All these students, swarming upon this site, living whole lives here in the tiny microcosm of the course-assigned buildings and the Student Village – what did they want from time? Arriving late to lessons dressed as if they would then head to London Fashion Week... the slew of panicking final-years, complaining how the world of work encroached upon them suddenly, of the few months in which to decide the trajectory of their future lives... Then there were the many that seemed to have come for apparently social reasons, for the ‘fresher experience’ and perhaps also to learn some independence...

Were they saving time? Was this channelled progression towards a ‘higher pay scale’, towards the ‘job market’? In spending three – or four, or perhaps even more than that – years of their lives, were they ‘buying back time’? He had worked ever since he was 16 and had saved steadily, only deciding to ‘complete his education’ now, at the age of 39. Even a lot of the lecturers looked younger than him, and at times when he hovered awkwardly outside the doors of seminar rooms, watching fellow students who were 22, but could easily pass for 15 in some cases, he felt singularly wrong. Out of place. This isn’t the joint for you, Grandpa.

Yet he had made enough money to take this break. He was able to be here simply for the reason that he wanted to be and that he could afford to finance himself. What, then, of the others on his Comparative Literature course? Were they ‘saving time’? Nobody was particularly unfriendly, but the huge age difference was obviously something they were not completely able to surmount. Both he, and they, felt it. It also begged a question which seemed to dance repeatedly and infuriatingly in the back of his mind. Whose way is the right way?

They were younger, less ‘formed’ by life, perhaps of a greater mental acuity. Yet, it seemed to him that underlying it all was the knowledge that they were relevant no more. In itself, they could not (or could only rarely) apply the fruits of their labour to the world without translation. No, they would have to be translated into the language of the modern ‘job market’, of ‘transferable skills’ and of ‘selling oneself.’

What of himself, who had traversed all that and taken the inverse route? Perhaps he would be less able to immediately grasp the abstract notions and subtle inter-cultural references. Yet he had had time. It seemed to him that they were as berries, crushed fast and solid against the bottom of a bowl to make one of those smoothies that everybody drank nowadays. Innocent smoothies, weren’t they called? The name made him smile. There was nothing innocent about a lot of these young ‘uns. Even in their dress, they were always looking to make statements, to sell or express themselves... ‘Palestinian’ scarves bought from giant global companies and worn with tight T-shirts that were ‘sweatshop free’.

Yet the question bothered him insistently: were they really saving time? Or had he beaten them at that game? Who was right? He checked his watch and sighed: half an hour lost in simple, mind-twisting reflection. Should he be feeling bad for having let himself go so? He shrugged and peered through the hole in his plastic bag. He would go on with his degree and then maybe find a woman who he could ‘talk books’ with. This made him laugh for a full three minutes. His printing business was there, would always be there. And yet the more insidious question persisted in pecking angrily as if at the very softness of his cerebral membrane. Why was he here? Why were any of them here? What was the point of this ‘higher education’, really?

The wind suddenly mussed his hair, cold cool fingers provoking him to stiffen and yank up his jacket collar. He turned, defiant, looking towards the canal and the road. Something in him felt that he was victorious. Bouncing his shoulders against the sudden frigidity, he set off brisk, up the path to Basle House.