Hello all,
It’s been a manic day, but I part of my plan succeeded in that the entirety of Sunday evening and Monday morning was spent in the forgetfulness of having my degree certification announced on Monday. I only realised This Was The Day when I was doing a job for my boss, carting a barbecue from Argos to the Centre of English Studies along with another teacher. A tenner each! Along the way I bumped into a friend I hadn’t seen for ages — my old Alexander Technique teacher, and because I hadn’t seen her for so long I had to relate the bare essentials to her: job, house, degree… Degree! I rushed off and announced to the staff room the This Was The Day. And from this moment begun the world’s most concerted attempt to prevent Pascal from finding out his degree classification.
Up one-way streets I cycled uphill – and quite a hill – to uni, parked my bike, and headed to the grand old School of English. I had a mini flashback to the first time I set eyes upon it – must have been 18, and instantly fell in love with Leeds and its campus, so for this reason the whole day is a bit of a blur. But I’m sure that ice cream was involved.
So into the reception I bounded, and into the helpful arms of Pamela, a receptionist who resembles Snow White’s witch so convincingly it’s almost admirable. I have a long list of grievances to send the School of English and she is one of them, and she did a terrific job of patronising me and other bachelor students for a good three years. For the last time Pam with expert gratuity told me that if you had read the email (I hadn’t received one) that I would know my marks would be published online. So as I was heading to the foyer to flip open my laptop I received a text from a fellow Joint Honours student, Catherine:
Well done on your mark! I need to email you, hope the jobs are going well xx
What mark!? How does she know? I tried to ring her but no answer. I tried to ring her again, but no answer. And of all days, my laptop refused to login to the internet. So then I bolted upstairs to the pc cluster, toying with the idea I might have got a first after all. Door locked. Back down, outside and then to the library. Card invalid. ‘Can you let me through? I want to find out my what degree mark I got… Thanks very much’. Downstairs, another pc cluster, login, Student Services tab, Examinations tab, Results…
The results from your 2012/13 term are currently unavailable.
But that’s not my term! Try again. No time now – I have to prepare for this job interview. Then back upstairs, about to exit the library when the metal detectors beeped and the turnstile locked. Unbelievable! I explain the kind librarian that no, I’m not nicking books (I have nicked one though – no qualms!) but I have instead books from the Leeds library. I’m let through and I make my way upstairs and on to Europe’s largest corridor for my interview about the job as a note taker for deaf and disabled students. It went well. I drunk all the water they offered me. They even offered to delay the interview as I looked panicked, but I said I needed the distraction. Called Catherine again, no answer. A reply! She’s at work.
Through the union, then to another pc cluster to see if it’d work elsewhere. It’s so very likely to be a 2:1, I thought, and in retrospect (and I hate the idea of sounding modest) the odds were pitted against a first. Login, Student Services tab, Examinations tab, Results… The same error. How undignified this was, and how uncomplicated it would have been for the School of English to tear that witch-receptionist from her cauldron to pin the marks up on the wall! One of my last experiences of a Leeds undergraduate was watered down and sterilised by a lazy procedure from my so-called ‘Parent School’; the School of Music presumably being some much more attentive and helpful Uncle which indeed they were. I rung up A Responsible Admin Person and was told I’d receive an email detailing the problem which would be forwarded to the techy computer people. Scrolled the Guardian pages for 20 mins, waiting for that email… Which I never received. I gave up and went for a swim, then headed to the city library for a bit, and then cycled home in the rain. For some reason I had a cracking headache and slept on the sofa, an undrunk cup of camomile tea in my hand. Then Meg, another fellow Joint Honours student (well, ex-student) sent me a text:
Had a sneaky look at the pass list – congratulations! Don’t have too many whiskies 🙂 xx
Really? Really? I sat up and rung Meg at once. ‘Meg! Meg! Sorry I just need to cut straight to it – what did I get?’
‘You got a first!’
With a sympathetic respect for this now most probable news, my headache evaporated immediately, and found myself on top of my unsuspecting housemate Joey, dancing and jumping and whooping and hollering and all manner of boisterous yelling, yes it is true, after four years of toil I have my first! Back out to the dining room, shout down the phone, back into the kitchen, more dancing, jumping, whooping, hollering and boisterous yelling, then into Joey’s room (where else!?) where I checked with Meg that this really, really was the case. Yes it was the case, well done, and along with you did a handful of my other Joint Honours (Ex-) Student friends achieve the same result. Then my headache came crashing back down upon my skull, having transformed into a five-minute migraine, and I lie down on the couch with curly-haired Joey flapping some paracetamol in his hand excitedly. I rung Mum who seemed delighted, but hesitant. Of course Meg’s right, yes I’d better check. I had better check after all, you’re right… Oh dear. I hung up and the seed of doubt took root. Could Meg send me a screenshot perhaps? Dinner needs to be cooked anyway, a worthy distraction. Cooking, cooking… I could ring Elliot! No answer. Or Michaela! No answer. Claire? ‘I’m not near a computer, sorry…’ Then just as I was serving my most sloppy of Vegetarian Slop, I gave Catherine another try, and my first was confirmed for the second time by a friend/eye-witness. Terrific! We had a guest that evening and he brought wine and chocolate. And there I will end the story.
I have a whole refuse-load of opinions awaiting the truck of this tired old blog, but I will save those for then, except for the following: I am of course delighted, relieved and proud of the result (how nice it would be to actually see the damn thing in the flesh) but I remain ambivalent and actually rather bitter about this whole affair, both the ridiculous procedure of finding out, and about the degree as a whole. But all I’ll say for now is that it was never a forgone conclusion that I’d end up with a first – this is not me being modest, simply that the School of English were consistently unsupportive and disorganised. This meant that two-thirds of undergraduate life were unhappily filled with self-doubt. And I’ll end there.
Thanks for all your help throughout the degree. I am so glad it’s over and part of the reason I’m enjoying employment so much is because of my opposition to university life. It might last for a while or I might get sick of it and will crave studying. But as Mark Twain persuasively wrote, ‘I never let my schooling interfere with my education.’
Thanks again!
Pascal xx
Dangling Five Feet in the Air 