Fresher Fumes

It’s very easy to get into smoking at University. One minute you’re a fresh faced healthy hearted being and the next you’re a sallow skinned, coughing, subhuman creature.

I’ve always prided myself on being a non-smoker and the best smelling person I know as a result. I had a friend at sixth form who used to come to English lessons at 9AM bringing a stench with her that would suggest an ashtray had vomited all over her. In fact, I stated this once and I suppose you could say that we’re no longer friends.

At any rate, I digress.

The point is that smoking is smelly, likely to induce heart attacks and cancer and financially beyond the means of any normal student...yet somehow, like so many others, I have allowed myself to get addicted to cigarettes at university. ‘Why is this?’ I hear myself ask. Well, before the smoking ban kicked in, we smokers and non-smokers socialised together in utter harmony.

However, slowly but surely over the last couple of years, a very definite segregation has taken place and one day last year, I realised that I’d been left all on my lonesome in a pub. I searched high and low for my friends and eventually found them at a normal height, huddling outside in the cold and breathing in the sweet fumes of carbon monoxide. I certainly felt left out so I too lit up and became what many call a ‘social smoker’.

The only problem with that is that at the beginning of university, one is pretty much socialising all the time and smoking has the advantages of being both a conversation starter (‘Can I borrow a light?’) and a means of finding oneself in a situation where conversation is possible and uninterrupted by loud music. Imagine it: “hell-ella-o-ella-I’m-ella

-Tom-ay-what course-ay-are -under- you-my-on?-umbrella”. This is the common situation in any union bar.

So, you can see how the enticing trap that the social benefits of smoking might draw an undiscerning student like me into. Not only do I smoke cigarettes...but now I’ve started on cigars, which are far more decadent I think but no less unhealthy.

Last week, I felt all uppity and on-edge all day long and the reason why only occurred to me whilst I was browsing the spirits in Essentials and a green and white coloured box caught my eye. The realisation spread like mould over me - I needed a fag. My situation is now dire and I’ve got a spot on my nose. What would I say to others? It’s probably best not to smoke at university, but it might help you make friends - but then again, so might joining a society and that probably won’t give you a look of permanent grubbiness and a putrid smell.

University Grading Changes

Universities across Britain are trying out new grade-cards in the hope that they can replace the 200-year old 'class' system with something fairer for students and more useful to employees. The system will focus more on extra-curricular activities, giving students credit for running and taking part in societies.

It's good that the universities involved, including - among others - Manchester and Newcastle Universities, are attempting to recognise the achievements of their students outside of the classroom. But basing a student's university degree on their extra curricular activities is utterly misguided and misses the main problem.

Employers have always looked for activities outside of the classroom. It is no use having a 2.1 in Business Management if you've never actually managed anything, or handled a business. These are skills that can't be picked up in the classroom, but can be picked up running a student society.

Whether it's a Neighbours Society, or the Theatre Society, if you are involved in them you will exhibit skills employers want. There is more skill in organising a successful bar crawl than there is in getting a 2.1 in an essay.

But rewarding un-academic activities with an academic grade will not solve anything – all it would do is corrupt the value of a degree.

You are at university to learn stuff. Generally stuff that you will never need to know again, but that's not the point. Students go to university to stretch their brains, to think and to develop academically.

If you're thinking of going to university for the 'life experience', don't. Go and have a life instead. Go travelling. Read something you actually want to, rather than something you're told to. Get a job. Get some useful skills. Do something, rather than pontificate and procrastinate.

The problem of university grading lurks instead in the cramped grade boundaries. Any dumb-ass can get a third. With not much effort at all you can get a 2.2. Put in a bit more and you get a 2.1.

But here's the kicker. Take me, for example. I'll probably end up with a 2.1. If I work fantastically hard, I'll get a first. Probably something in the low 70s (almost certainly no higher as I'm an arts student, and a first at around 72.5% is regarded as 'stratospheric'). But the difference in effort between my getting a 68% and a 72% is massively more than 4%.

Likewise, the effort of me getting a 68% compared to a 62% is way more than 6%. Both are 2.1s, but they sure as heck ain't the same level. University grades just don't reflect the effort put in or the true ability of students.

There is more to university than academia, but it should always be the focus. Giving academic credit for social activities defies the point of university. Instead universities should introduce a broader boundary for each class, rewarding those who have put in more effort, but not quite reached the levels of the higher class.

This is fairer on students and fairer on employers. It would put pride back into getting a 'good' 2.1, rather than the feeling of stunning averageness, and allow employers to see who is brightest. But they'll probably end up going for the guy who has actually done something. That'll be the president of Neighbours Soc, then.