The 'Future Graduate Job' is our Opiate

It was at that moment that I wondered why I hadn’t worked in my first year, and a little bit harder over summer, to stop myself from falling into the decaying pit of debt that is an overdraft. In comparison, a £1,000 or so overdraft isn’t debt at all compared to the £18,000 I will be paying back after graduation. It simply serves as a reminder of the gaping hole I will be filling later, and like a sufferer of OCD, I want to get control over the little bit of debt I could potentially handle.

Like many second and third years, I have a part-time job to ease the funds a little. A very little. If you do work, and don't find the time it takes to clear the mould off your bedroom walls, you may agree with me in saying, “Why, oh why, can I not be a student in 1960’s Paris?!” How can we possibly live the real student stereotype of discussing Sartre, Beckett, and Capitalism, when we have become trapped by the Capitalist machine simply in order to be here? Or, if this doesn’t particularly worry you, I’M PAYING £68 A WEEK TO HAVE MOULD IN MY BEDROOM.

The student stereotype of living in a bacteria infested inner-city hovel, scraping coins together to buy the weekly ration of ‘tinned something’ and cheap wine, is much more detestable when you’re paying so much for the privilege. When my brother had to patch up a hole in his roof with cardboard at university, he didn’t mind. Why would he? He wasn’t paying the landlord (along with his housemates) a grand total of £17,000 a year. A hole in the roof went hand-in-hand with paying fairly little and being able to sleep under a dripping roof because there was more money to spend on alcohol.

I know this may sound like I simply can’t cope with juggling too many things at once, or living in the same room as the common cold, but I am growing resentful. I resent the government for charging me so much of my money to study that I will probably struggle to pay it off even if I get a graduate job (which is the reward for paying so much for an education). I resent my landlord for not using the money that I am throwing at him. And, most significantly, I resent the generations of university goers that could discuss a Marxist revolution without adding in whispers after every speech (and I support the abolition of tuition fees... or, I will after I graduate).

After all, any real stand against tuition fees would involve refusing to pay them; otherwise the government has no reason to change. If they want 50% of the population to have attended university, and get about £9,000 from each, what would convince them to stop charging the people that are apparently making up the next generation of leaders, other than 0% of the population being willing to pay the fees? “Vote for me – I have a B in A-level politics” would probably scare all the political parties into opposing tuition fees. However, that will not happen. We must continue to gather up out debt like ammunition: if we face difficulty in finding a job when graduating, our debt will spur us on. We will seek jobs in the newspapers; we will seek jobs online; and when push comes to shove, will prostitute ourselves and be seen as heroines because we’re actually well-educated.

We are trapped in the cyclical nature of Capitalism already: paying money in order to receive a bit more money later. We are already consumers – an identity reserved for those that work full-time and so have no choice in buying into ‘the machine’. We are buying a product, that is also supposed to benefit society, and may never get that graduate job to make it all worthwhile. We cannot really have an active Marxist or socialist group on campus because of the sheer hypocrisy. You cannot complain of a consumer society when you have the time to talk of such things because you are paying to be here. It’s simply uninspiring in its absurdity.

On the other hand, I didn’t even have Marxist tendencies before term started. Maybe we could cast off our chains... the only thing to lose is our degrees.

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