Tasha Dhanraj avoids the pre-university blues

All my friends are sending off their university applications at the moment. I’m not. I’m clever and not doing it until 2011, during my gap year. The stress is off for me. My friends, on the other hand, are going insane. They are spending all their free periods running between the UCAS coordinator and their subject tutors shouting, as though the apocalypse will be brought on by their failure to remember which exam board they did Food Technology GCSE in. I am spending my free periods reading up on how many vitamins are in a Milkybar and whether if I eat two Milkybars, that will be a good substitute for taking two Echinacea tablets. If I’m not doing that, then I am following my friends around and laughing at them.

I do feel sorry for them. With tuition fees, unemployment and graduate tax all set to rise – the only thing that seems to be lowering with university is job prospects and happiness. In Germany, the degree you do will relate directly to a job, but most of the universities my friends are looking at don’t do any courses that are remotely vocational in that way. Many people seem to think this will be a disadvantage in the growing pile of rubbish of all that is post-graduate employment. I say all of this with fingers crossed and desperately praying that the coalition government will collapse by the time I’m looking into going to university so that it will all have gone back to the happy days of measly interest rates on student loans and gallivanting straight out of uni into a job in HR.

“I want to study theology, which isn’t vocational unless I want to be a vicar and no-one looks good in a cassock”

I know this won’t happen. I want to do a degree in theology. It’s only remotely vocational if I want a job as a vicar and I don’t think anyone looks good in a cassock. I’m going to leave whichever university has had the misfortune of my anxiety driven final exams to deal with and jump into a queue of other depressed ex-students at the job centre.

But like I said – I don’t need to worry about that this year. All I need to worry about is studying for my International Baccalaureate to give the best prospects for choice of university – that is assuming I can afford it. I should probably also focus on being nice to all my friends applying now as this time next year I will need their support. Maybe I should stop following them around whistling Hakuna Matata.