The Best Days of your Life?

According to the latest Higher Education Statistics Agency (and there’s always lots of doom for them to monger at A-level results time), almost 35% of university graduates end up in a McJob, which means that most bar staff, factory workers and care home workers are probably far more qualified than the person they’re skivvying for. And for sure, they’re definitely more qualified than me – for I, dear reader, am ‘qualified’ for nothing.

From the moment I realised that, lurking beyond the school gates, there was nothing but bored, uninspired teachers, schoolyard bullies with not an ounce of wit in their sticks and really, really bad food, I was outa there. Literally. Put my entire formal education attendance record together, and there’s probably no more than 100 days on the register. I spent most of
my formative years watching my mum do yoga, my dad paint pictures and our cats give birth. From 11-14 I tried – honestly tried – to settle into any one of the three schools that the local education authority tried to shoehorn me into. And from 14 until the day the government officially sanctioned my free will, I was deemed ‘school phobic’ and given a home tutor who
came and talked esoteric literature with me on three mornings a week, leaving me to fill the rest of my time with some very constructive, entirely practical versions of daydreaming.

Careers advisors said I’d never work beyond a place behind the counter in Sayers the Bakers, child psychologists said I’d never make friends. Both predictions were so drastically wrong, it’s laughable. But nobody warned me that had I (or rather, my perspicacious gem of a mum) given into pressure and conformed to hamster wheel status, I’d never have read (and then voluntarily punctuated) James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ for the pure hell of it, because there’d have been an army of officials telling me it’s a big, scary intellectual challenge of a book that needs 12 degree-level ‘professors’ to guide you through it. I’d never have learned how to cook, because these days, such a pursuit is called ‘Food Technology’ and real recipes and ingredients are hidden behind a maelstrom of ‘critical control points’, ‘standard components’ and ‘profit margins’. I’d never have grasped the inhumanity of war, or had the majesty of global geography presented to me each time I’ve travelled, or cultivated lifelong friendships with people who are genuinely interesting rather than merely in my class, because such philosophies don’t feature on any curriculum (and the people at the front of the classroom have probably never experienced any such
reality anyway). And I’d never have had the self-respect to voluntarily abandon a highly paid, highly pressured, ‘career’ job in order to pursue what I really want to do (which is write), because our education system rates mortgage eligibility far more highly than imagination.

As a result of all this, Being Me is like being a slightly more sophisticated version of Rain Man, or enjoying a sort of elegant form of dyspraxia. Every day is a voyage of voluntary discovery, during which curiosity is piqued by real-time events and
circumstance. Compare and contrast learning about history, maths, biology or politics because you want to, to having it thumped into you by rote; that, folks, constitutes a genuinely worthwhile education.

No matter what the Bad News Bears who marks the A-level paper deems any individual’s efforts to be worth, they’re worth far, far more than that. All everybody needs to know is out here waiting to be discovered anyway – in books, by example, and through sheer life experience, the like of which doesn’t need any paperwork in order to prove its value (and psst: really ‘good’ jobs don’t require a resume, anyway). So my advice to youngsters trying to gain an entry-level foothold on the ladder to a successful, happy life is to leave the swots to do the pint pulling, while you go forth and give real meaning to the phrase that the dullards fling around as an insult when threatened. Go on, kids - Get A Life.