Thetownend.com

Of the tef populus went to university. I need to know, so i can understand who's opinion is valid and who is little more than a gibbering monkey.








Anyone who took that last sentence seriosuly needs shooting

Approximately 1 in 8

I'm currently still an undergrad failing my degree :)

HI FIVE

i have  PHD

I have a VW and an STI

I didnt.I had a pretty rubbish time at school and failed all my O levels.I think I was the tail end of when it was more of an accomplishment to get a place at Uni,where as now pretty much any and everyone can go somewhere and do something.I think there were still Uni's and Poly's back then,though im not sure.I also had a pretty rotten relationship with my parents and had to move out and get a job at 16ish.So they're the reason im stuck in a shit job,well that and my lack of any drive and ambition and of course being thick didn't help much.

I went to university, I have a masters degree, and I really am very clever.

Not me. But I have been on a bus that used it's gearbox to stop as the brakes didn't work, you don't get that experience at any yooni.

I went to uni.  Well poly really but everything is a uni these days.  Was working full time in the ents department by the second year, but still managed to get a degree. 

So I too is like really clever like.

I'm going in September (probably)

Bath (only a HND mind), Plymouth and soon (I hope) Newcastle.

I went. Then discovered I will need to go back and do a Masters if I want to get chartered (wasn't told this at the time). I should've just stayed on that 1 extra year, but now I've got to suffer the ultimate hassle of part-time or distance learning.

I went to Poxford Poly - that's when I became the black sheep of the family   :(

I did, Aston.

Civ Eng, zzzzzzzz

I got a degree. I'd say uni was far more valuable in terms of life skills than anything else, as I learned more in my first month at work than I did over three years at uni.

There's no susbtitute for moving away from home, meeting new people and stuff. Great days.

Are you a Civil Engineer now?

I went to uni. Learnt some stuff about english lit, criticism and essay writing and a lot about drugs, drinking, being lazy and ready meals.

Going to work is "the real world". But uni is a laugh and you might as well do it if you can cos after that it is work til you're 65.

Did Civils for about 4 years after uni, site based.....office based structural now.

I'm in my final year, so all being well I'll be graduating soon. I get kinda pissed off when I look back at three years of hard work at the LSE, and realise I could have got the same qualification by doing absolutely nothing for three years at other unis. It's been a good experience, I'll just be pissed off if I get a 2:2 and get overlooked for jobs for some twat who's sneaked a 2:1 from some poly I've never heard of without so much as raising a finger! :D

My main gripe was that Civ Eng was a bloody difficult degree, long hours, very tough final year assesments etc...whilst the most popular course at my uni was something called MAS, management and administration studies, loads of students did that, including all the nice women, about 15 hours a week, final year project was little more than a pamphlet...yet these are the guys/girls that walked into 30, 40k (in early 90s) jobs in the city whilst I scratched around on building sites for about 15k!

Such is life...

Nah....the Tories plan to increase the age to 66 from 2016 and this government to 68 from 2024.

So you young buggers can work longer and harder to pay for us old buggers.....seems fair enough to me  :)

I graduated last summer...que Hertha to pop in and ask how I use my degree working at Blockbuster...

As as Business Administration student, I'd like to give you a brief message: Ha.

Amen to that. If only I'd have known what I know now before I went to Uni!

Are you chartered? I really think I should but it seems like a lot of hard work for a long time.

Did my MBA when I was 33 at 'ULL UNI

No, started it whilst on site, did a couple of years, but current company is too specialist to complete it....probably should have to give me better options in the future, but too far gone now I think.

What's your story?

Went to Polytechnic on a sandwich degree in the late 70's/early 80's

Note to young 'uns - that's nothing to do with fast food, it meant you had to get a relevant placement (yourself) to work for the third year.

Agree with those who said it's as much about life learning as the actual degree itself.

There should be more of that sort of course now - definitely helped with getting a job afterwards.

They still exist, me and Dave are on the same one- we do two placements of 6 months each rather than one though.

I'm really clever too. I mean, einsenstein clever...but i havn't learnt anything at a proper uni, only how to pass exams.

Some guy from Liverpool JMU will probably get a better job than me because he spent 3 years studying soil - great for gardening i'd imagine, or building a sandcastle.

Me, i can do all sorts with numbers but you can't really live off of that - unless you know how to rob a bank without moving from your computer (maybe at the end of this semester...). Back to uni in the future i'd imagine, to convert to a specialist area. Fucking awesome amounts of debt, yummy.

I've always been told that 2:2 from an establishment like LSE will always be preferred to a 2:1 from a Poly. One of the reasons I went to Newcastle for my Masters was because it wasn't a Poly. It's a snobby old game this uni lark.

Sensible choice in my opinion, but the quality of the placement is important. I think degrees should be 2 years + possibly one year working, although I can see that's not viable with the employment situation as it is just now

I'm in my final year studying geography at Plymouth Uni. Had a year off before I went though and went down under to watch England lose the Ashes 5-0 amongst other things.

I was supposed to be doing a 'sandwich' year in the planning department of Swindon Council this year but it all fell through in March when they had to let go of a fair few employees! Don't know why I expected anything else with Swindon Council!

Agree on the importance of gaining life skills. Money management is the key one for me.  

BSc in Applied Computer Science at Reading Uni gained in 89 and Shortened BSc (Honours) Computing and its Practice at the OU just recently finished.

Does me fuck all good but kept me off the streets for a while.

As Juddie says you learn more relevant skills in 1 month in the real world workplace than in 3 years at Uni.

I drank beer and watched two relegations and a promotion whilst studying History and Politics at Coventry.  Uni is all about living away from home, the skills you learn, less so the qualification.

i didn't, i'm fick

Speaking as someone who went to uni, I'm sure you don't need to go to uni to learn about "life skills" or "living away from home".

If you move out of home and rent a place supporting yourself with a job rather than living off a loan (or parents) then surely that is more valid than living in halls and student houses.

Only thing about uni socially is you get to meet/live with quite a lot of people. But you can have a decent sized social circle without going to uni.

That would be discrimination. A degree is a degree, they're all worth the same, no matter what institution - its european education law (or something like that).

Besides, because courses vary widely, some universities will give the graduate specific skills needed in the wider world, whilst others will just throw knowledge at you and expect you to be able to apply these in the workplace.

I'm in my final year, and i'm pretty pleased with the skills and knowledge i have gained in my time at an ex-polytecnic - some "proper" uni's don't even teach the shit i've been taught for the same subject areas. Obviously syullabus' are different from place to place, but most of what i've got at a polytecnic is overlooked elsewhere.

I didn't go and I'm still cleverer than the lot of you.

There's something reassuring about a student of a former polytechnic, not being able to spell the word, or syllabus (pl syllabuses or syllabi).

I've got a degree from a former poly - we can look through all of the legal stuff but a 2:2 from Oxford University has better value over a 2:1 or First from say the University of Plymouth every time.

Did a Bachelor's degree (Civ Eng) with a year out working for a water company in Germany. Decided not to continue onto an MSc at the end of it because I'd really had enough of 12 hour days in the library (in the weeks before dissertation had to be submitted) by that point and really wanted to get some practical experience and get into the industry while I still had some interest in it.

Been working for a Consultant since graduating (2 years), and found out that in order to become chartered I need an ICE approved masters, which would mean going back to school - really can't be dealing with that right now.

In any case, it seems like you get chartered by proving you can give presentations, go to meetings, talk to people, 'manage' people etc rather than actually knowing what you're doing technically.

im doin a english degree at bristhole

How does that work, do you all sit around in a circle and read a line each; then explain what each paragraph means by re-wording it?

I thought i did that at GCSE. Never mind, could always be homeless i suppose.

???????

I went to university.

graduated from the university of nottingham (finance, accounting & management) still studying now though :(

Never went to Uni, did a HND here in Swindon in Business and Finance and had a part time job in the evenings.  I don't for one minute regret not going either - I visited mates at uni a fair bit and it just never appealed to me.  Now working in a job where a degree means very little anyway.

The one thing that always makes me laugh is the sheer lack of common sense shown by any of the Grads who come through our building in their first year, no matter how smart they may or may not be.  I remember school and college and both of them seem to provide little or no grounding for life outside of them, so I'm assuming Uni's just extend that.  That's not being disingenous to all of you at or graduated from Uni, just a comment on how the system seems set-up with the wrong end result in mind.  I've yet to find the skill of answering exam questions or writing lengthy essays discussing the merits of the statement "The camera never lies" to be of much use in the past 15 years.  I'm sure the process works for some "Professions", but most people don't end up in one of those.

I recently went in to help at Kingsdown for a day and it was startling to see just how poor the levels were, but I'm sure my class when I was a kid was the same.  I think schools, colleges and Uni's should all be much more closely linked to businesses.

Never been to Uni but I've got 5/12ths of a degree from the OU - will finish it one day but too busy working stupid hours trying to avoid being made redundant by some complete fuckwit corporate useless clone retard who is about 3 grades higher than me. And all because I told him he was a wanker and proceeded during the next 20 minutes to tell him exactly why and then went back for 2nds a coupel of weeks later.  

I went to Uni (BSc Computer Science). Reading for a BSc means I had to go to lectures and everything. Unlike those part time BA gits that I shared a house with.

Can we break down proper Universities from the johnny come lately jumped up Polytechnics, playschools, agricultural colleges, and so forth please. De Montfort, we all know you're Leicester Poly in disguise. Need I go on..

:)

edit: damn it, the Poly thing has already come up I see. And rightly so.

Haha yeah, all you university wannabes

This.

But it seems i don't go to university - oh well.

I went to the Polytechnic of Wales and am old enough to have graduated before it morphed into the University of Glamorgan. Managed to come out of it debt free by dint of working my knackers off all the way through, I had simultaneous jobs in the Mothers Pride bread factory, a pub and a corner shop.

All undergraduates should be forced to work on a factory production line with a couple of hundred people who hate students. Now that really gives you a realistic insight into the real world.

Loughborough

Demontfort Uni.  Preparation for life.  2.1 in English thanks you very much.  Has helped me not one jot!  Spent my life in the student union working.

I'm a modern university student: I worked throughout my time as an undergraduate and I work full-time during my Masters.

Oh and I worked part-time at the Hygrade factory in Chippenham when I was at college.

So there... :)

The way i see it, i've got the rest of my life to hang around doing tedious jobs which i don't enjoy, just for the money. Thats at least 20 years.

This is the last chance i'm going to get to live with such little responsibility, untill i'm an incontinent senile old fool. And i'm prepared to make the very most of it whilst i can

I wasn't having a pop at the current vintage of undergraduate, or making out my generation had it harder. I know I was lucky to go when you still got a bit of a grant from the council which at least part covered your rent.

I guess what I was trying to say is that if you work to pay your way through uni you learn some of that "workplace common sense" that others have alluded to.

I've had 7 years full time work in IT, got made redundant, and now it looks like I could be heading off to do a History degree, should things work out... Strange way of doing things I guess.

i'd have quite liked to have done a history degree.

There seems to be far much emphasis on individual working though, which i'd be rubbish at. Good luck mr sanchez

Scum.

Birmingham.

[url width=155 height=192]http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s261/Edition30/historytoday.jpg[/url]

That's you that is, that's you and your history buddy on the pull :)

Seriously though, sounds excellent that an opportunity to do something you want to has arisen out of a bad situation

Merrily destroying what's left of Leicester's heritage (with the help of the city council), to build a swimming pool...about three years after the council pulled down another one in the city centre.  Sadly the city council have been destroying the city for years.  A shopping centre that resulted in the destruction of what was believed to be the the last pub Richard III drank in before the Battle of Bosworth (and associated buildings from the era), an underpass and hotel built on top of Roman mosiacs.  And the council wonder why they can't attract visitors to Leicester...it's becuase there's fuck all to see, you twats.  Oh, but we have a shopping centre...that'll do it.

leicesters a dump

Is the shop still there that has a big slide at the front doors? Near the big long asian high street

I agree, the point is, it shouldn't be.  I was a key Roman city...not that you'd know.

Can't remember seeing the slide, I guess you mean on Melton Road.

Ok, mr full of himself....

I wasted a lot of time on that un-named slide in my youth, waiting for my grandparents to finish buying cardigans or something. Melton road sounds about right

Sorry Dave...I meant not that one'd know, rather than you personally.  In other words if you walked around Leicester you'd have little to no idea of the past.

Haha i didn't point it out because of that! I knew about leicesters heritage, it was more the "I was a key roman city", indicating you yourself were a key city of ancient rome....

Its nowhere near as funny now though :(

The fuckers demolished my old local.  The mighty pump and tap was demolished for that. 

Other than from the name, places ending cester and chester normally convention for renamed Roman towns. Which I guess you knew anyway, and nobody goes to a place just because of a name.

I was pleased when Gloucester redid their town centre years ago. They managed to make the town centre roman remains a feature on display rather than bury it under an arcade.

Ah fuck, sorry.