Side Project

In order to limit amounts of drivel on this blog, which is more for writey type things, I have created this:

http://jamesashford.tumblr.com/


It's very boring, but please follow/read/share.

University life..

When I wake at half past seven in the evening, my jumbled mind tells me that I am missing my morning lectures. The smell of cooking crawls down the corridor. I reach for my phone and after letting my tired eyes adjust, realise with relief that it’s still Sunday.

Of course, you would expect such mistakes at the end of a busy freshers week. This, however, is a fortnight in to university life. After two weeks at a leading British institution, I am at least five hundred pounds down, hungry, tired and probably pregnant.

At university, especially in a city like Sheffield, it’s impossible not to be confronted with hostility to the Tory cuts. Everybody I’ve talked to agrees that money for education going the same way the milk went is a bad idea, but there isn’t a sense of panic in the air. Nobody really knows what’s coming, because nobody has lived under a Conservative government since they were 5.

Most of the people I’ve met approach their personal finances with the same detached attitude. We all moan about being poor students, but at the moment it’s more a romanticised struggle than a harsh reality. Maintenance loans just about cover accommodation fees, and living can be done on as little or as much as you can convince your parents to part with. Depending on your course and financial situation, you can also get bursaries and grants to help fund your excessive drinking and mystery meat kebabs.

I’m aware that university means another step towards being self sufficient, so I did the brave thing and got a job. Unfortunately I can’t brag about valuing labour and boast a determined work ethic. My job is that of the ‘model’. This involves standing at the front of a shop that is much too cool for me and saying ‘what’s up’ to customers. If you’ve ever been to Hollister or Abercrombie and Fitch, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

There is another aspect to money management at university. It’s the tuition fees. You never really think about them, because they go straight from Student Finance to the university. Having to pay any money back seems a distant and ridiculous notion that shouldn’t be entertained for a long time yet. If tuition fees were to go up and become an urgent concern, it would undoubtedly have a regressive effect on who could and would go to university.

Living away from home is how I imagined it would be. Brilliant, but you do miss the cat. And maybe your mum, sometimes. Big changes affect people differently. I refuse to believe that something is happening until it is in full swing, or has actually happened. University up to now has been a series of parties with a few lectures thrown in. It feels more like an experiment than a lifestyle.

James Ashford, 18

University of Sheffield

http://bit.ly/dA31Y7